Armand Hammer enlists Benjamin Booker for 'WBDTS' bonus track and short film

ARMAND HAMMER SHARE NEW SONG & VIDEO  “DOVES” FEATURING BENJAMIN BOOKER + KENNY SEGAL

photographer credit: Ryosuke Tanzawa  "Doves" feat. Benjamin Booker WATCH: https://youtu.be/boQTfioZhbk LISTEN: https://armandhammer.ffm.to/wbdts.OPR “one of rap’s most popular indie voices”  The New York Times "a moody, unsettling, sharply observed album" Pitchfork “billy woods and ELUCID raps are, like Hieronymus Bosch paintings, packed to the brim with both carnage and humor” Vulture "one of the most dynamic underground rap groups in the country, speaking to communities that the mainstream has forgotten"  The Washington Post (February 27, 2024) - Today, powerhouse NYC rap duo Armand Hammer shares an entrancing new song “Doves” featuring Benjamin Booker. The song is a bonus track that will be added to the duo’s widely praised album We Buy Diabetic Test Strips on DSPs in March and future physical editions. “Doves” is co-produced by frequent collaborator Kenny Segal and Benjamin Booker, who makes his long-awaited return on guitar and vocals, who together add another haunting layer of enveloping atmosphere to the duo’s soul-searching raps, which reverberate throughout the mix. Alongside the single, Armand Hammer is sharing a short film for “Doves” directed by Ryosuke Tanzawa (MIKE, Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blue). The video captures the duo comprised of billy woods and ELUCID in the calming solace of New York in January, traversing both the smooth and rough edges of the song’s sonics with layered visuals of the duo weaving their way through a snowy New York and an assortment of Tanzawa’s black-and-white photography archive.

photographer credit: Ryosuke Tanzawa  Speaking about working with Armand Hammer on the visual and their intention with it, Ryosuke Tanzawa expressed, “Sage Elsseser, also known as Navy Blue, connected me with Woods last year, and I was very much looking forward to doing a video for Armand Hammer (Tabula Rasa & Stone Fruit are important tracks me) but I never expected something 9 minutes long, with basically everything...it's quiet and loud, intimate and vast, beautiful and ugly - all of those things in one. I was a bit intimidated by the scale of the track at first and asked Woods to give me some time to think about whether I would be the right director for the project. When  I went through my archive of black and white photos and started testing them out, laying them over the singing parts of the track, I felt like ok — this is going to work. So I called Woods and told him I wanted to do it. It turns out we had more or less the same idea of where and how to film him and Elucid. In the end, me and my producer Sean, with an arsenal of cameras from super 8 to iphone, shot it over the course of 3 days on a snowy January week.”  We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, Armand Hammer’s masterfully written opus, has been celebrated by outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian and hailed as one of the best albums of the year by Vulture, Pitchfork, Paste, and The FADER. FLOOD called billy woods and ELUCID “two of the best bar-for-bar emcees and creatively thrilling verbal stylists on the planet." The album saw the duo colliding their raps with live instrumentation from an all-star array of producers including JPEGMAFIA, EL-P, Kenny Segal, DJ Haram, Black Noi$e, Preservation, August Fanon, Steel Tipped Dove, Child Actor, and Sebb Bash. Holding true to the sonic identity they've successfully cultivated since their 2013 debut, familiar faces like Pink Siifu, Moor Mother, and Curly Castro make contributions while also bringing new and like-minded peers into the fold, with features from Moneynicca (of Soul Glo) and Cavalier. Virtuoso jazz musician and celebrated composer Shabaka Hutchings shows up on flute, one of several musicians who sat down with ELUCID and celebrated engineer Willie Green for a jam session in 2022 that helped pour the foundation of this album. Alongside the success of We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, Armand Hammer is in the process of wrapping up their 28-stop tour this month, capping off a long list of shows that traversed throughout North America and Europe. Check out “Doves” above, see below for upcoming live dates, and stay tuned for more from Armand Hammer coming soon.

Upcoming Live Dates 3/3 - Los Angeles, CA - BLK LBL pop up 3/6 - Mexico City, MX @ Pitchfork Festival Mexico City  3/20 - Boise, ID @ Treefort Festival 3/23 - Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival  4/5 - Iowa City, IA @ Mission Creek Festival 4/6 - Kansas City, KS @ Record Bar 4/7 - St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway 5/28 - Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound Festival 6/13 - Helsinki, Norway @ Sideways Festival 6/16 - Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo Festival 7/26 - Suffolk, England @ Latitude Fest 7/27 - Brno, Czech Republic @ Festival Pop Messe