Body Meat, the solo project of Philadelphia producer Chris Taylor, has announced his debut album. Starchris arrives August 23 via Partisan. Taylor has shared his new album’s lead single, “High Beams,” which blends together trap, nu-metal, and dance to tell the story of a programmer’s first-level boss fight. The new song also comes with a music video, which you can watch below.
“‘High Beams’ is about a programmer anxiously creating a game from within a cave,” explained Taylor. “He codes all of the functionality, the rules, and physics, every parameter to his liking. He then tries to instantiate himself into this world as a copy. But an oversight within his sloppy code work creates a bug within it. His instantiated copy is unable to be removed and begins hunting him. The programmer, terrified, tries to destroy the copy of himself. Nothing he does can stop the copy from moving towards him. He starts to realize he has done this before. The copy remembers him, and knows that he has to warn the programmer. The programmer is cursed to write this code over and over again. Only the bugged copy can break the cycle.”
Partly influenced by the world building and storytelling of RPGs, Starchris follows a hero’s journey through boss battles, cut scenes, and self-realization. Though it’s Body Meat’s first full-length album, Taylor has rolled out several EPs, records, and singles since debuting in 2016, including 2021’s Year of the Orc and 2019’s Truck Music. Body Meat signed to Partisan in 2021.
Revisit Pitchfork’s Rising interview “Get to Know Body Meat, A Philly Weirdo Who’s Rewriting the Rules of Rhythm.”
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Starchris:
01 A Tone in the Dark
02 The Mad Hatter
03 High Beams
04 Electrische
05 Focus
06 Right Here
07 Crystalize
08 North Side
09 Starchris
10 Im in Pieces
11 Demons
12 Ōbu No Seirei (Spirit of an Orb)
13 Paradise