CAPTION A: Austin trip-hopper Botany and Philadelphia think-hopper Lushlife put their heads together as The Skull Eclipses.
CAPTION B: “That shit was the worst rhyme I ever heard in my life/ ‘Cause the greatest rapper of all time died on March 9/ God bless his soul, rest in peace kid.” — 21 years later debuts The Skull Eclipses.
CAPTION C: Among the numerous luminaries highlighted on the Matthewdavid-mixed project, none glows with the same stupefying brilliance and accented ambiance as New Age limelighter Laraaji.
CAPTION D: Before the Judica-Cordiglia recordings, there were Laika and her comrades. Before “Spacecrafts in Rajasthan,” there was “Yearn Infinite II” ft. Laraaji.
CAPTION E: “This track points to the original ethos of The Skull Eclipses, which was to create loose ambient music using the hip-hop textural palette, rap vocals included,” said The Skull Eclipses. “In that sense, it is not an interlude, but a fruition of that beginning idea. The pacing of the LP ultimately benefited from the inclusion of a shorter version, but Laraaji’s contributions — which were mailed to us by Laraaji himself on DVD-R’s after he agreed to lend electric zither to the track — were too priceless to not present in-full somewhere.”
CAPTION E-1: With blessings from Botany himself, the aforementioned somewhere is here, now. The original, complete, non-album version of “Yearn Infinite II” can be heard below.
The Skull Eclipses headline Union Pool in Brooklyn tomorrow and Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia on Friday, with the storied support of alt-rapperati Dälek and HPrizm (a.k.a High Priest of Antipop Consortium).
More about: Botany, Laraaji, Lushlife, The Skull Eclipses
