It was an extreme moment. it was a normal moment. In the weeks and months after the World Trade Center attacks, as the country mourned and people drunk on revenge, TV on the radio Tunde Adebimpe and David Andrew Sitek had to figure out how to get back to work. “If we're going to die,” Adebimpe told Lizzy Goodman years later, inside Meet me in the bathroom“We should probably make a bunch of shit we like first.” By the time they released their debut album, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babiesin 2004, Adebimpe and Sitek — now joined by singer/guitarist Kyp Malone — had found a way to do the shit they liked. But they never forgot death.
Now reissued for its 20th anniversary with a collection of demos and singles, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babies it's an album in which extremes—of sound, of feeling, of thought—are domesticated and normalized, even embellished, until their extremeness becomes so routine that you can take it for granted. Bass tones humming with the shake of an idling Harley are amplified into laconic quantized rhythms. Guitars that sound like synthesizers or distant drones flow gracefully into the songs. Only three songs have live drums. the only cymbal is a hat. Malone pushes his voice to the top of his register and stays there, following Adebimpe's lead vocals from above like a guardian angel. And Adebimpe, possessor of one of the greatest voices of his generation, sings with the urgency and desperation of someone who has slept for too long and has woken up to find his house burning. by William Basinski The decay loopsreleased around the same time, captured the sense of horrible possibility that 9/11 made apparent: The world was bigger than we thought, and this was a tragedy. Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babies it's about what it's like to live with that knowledge. “All your dreams are over now,” Adebimpe and Malone sing on “Dreams,” after warning, “But your heart can't mourn.”
That dynamic, of trying to create joy and meaning in a hostile world, is something that Adebimpe and Malone – as well as touring bassist Gerard Smith and drummer Jaleel Bunton, both of whom would soon become full-time members – they should face each time. they took the stage as Black musicians on an overwhelmingly white stage. Desperate Youth begins with Adebimpe finding himself in “a magical movie” in “The Wrong Way,” where he reflects on the role black artists are so often forced to play: “Teaching folks the score/About durim, understanding, agape, babe /And sweet, sweet love.”
