By Storm

The debut album by By Storm makes it clear that the project of the two surviving members of Injury Reserve can move forward five years after “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”, while distancing itself from that apocalyptic sound.
Producer Parker Corey and rapper RiTchie with a T focus on processing grief through a series of experiments built on the skeleton of hip-hop, drawing heavily from eccentric singer-songwriter traditions, electronic folk, psychedelia, and more.
It is abstract, melancholic, and dramatic music that suggests rather than describes, leaving many questions unresolved: this is what happens after life’s great sorrows—those that are incomprehensible and difficult to process.

The fragile “Can I Have You For Myself?” addresses the difficulty of imagining oneself as a parent, introducing a new person into the dynamics of a couple. “Just for a minute, can we soak it in and just tangle?” RiTchie asks.
A brief melody repeats in an enchanted loop, and a hip-hop beat only arrives after more than three minutes: the melancholic torpor turns into motion, a robotic clang that coexists with the gentle guitar in the background.
From an obsessively repeated arpeggio begins the following “Dead Weight”, an anxiety-ridden crescendo in which the initially plaintive voice becomes a frantic reflection on identity and personal path. As cacophonous breakbeats whirl, the voices multiply and the soliloquy turns into an anguished dialogue, reinforced by the chorus:

That's not in the picture
No, no, no, that's not in the picture
It ain't dead weightIt ain't dead weight
It's not in the picture
No, no, no, it's not in the picture
It ain't dead weight
It ain't dead weight

Crushed by the weight of loss, the track self-destructs, allowing “Grapefruit” to begin only with a lugubrious pulse. We are inside the chaotic mind of the rapper, dismantled and reassembled, distorted and split in a nightmarish atmosphere. Images follow one another like a hallucinatory stream of consciousness, where a human body split in two becomes as appetizing as a juicy grapefruit.

After this triptych, “In My Town” explores over seven minutes the moral doubts of an independent artist, torn between tempting commercial offers (fuel cards offered by Live Nation are mentioned) and artistic integrity. Fundamentally a track that touches the exposed nerves of capitalism applied to art, “In My Town” floats in a psychedelic cloud—suspended, unreal, hypnagogic.
Another seven-minute piece, “Zig Zag”, turns a nursery rhyme into a punch to the gut: no matter how hard one tries, pain cannot be dodged (“You ain't dodge nothin'”). “Best Interest”, featuring Billy Woods, sinks mercilessly—with distorted sounds and paranoid verses—into the listener’s mind.

The final triptych is more explosive: “Double Trio 2” opens with an explosion of orchestral jazz, triumphant and surreal. A liberating assault that leads to the brighter closing of “And I Dance”, a carefree dance (“Dance with me, that's all that we can do”) that still echoes death (“This what it feel like on the other side”).
In the closing track, Groggs’ death is confronted head-on with “GGG”: the three consonants recall the friend but also serve as an acronym for “Ghosts Go Ghost”, as if the bond between the two had been permanently severed. In processing grief, moving forward is a mixture of liberation and nostalgia, a second death that reveals itself day after day, as time passes and memories fade. “Don't let me go, don't let me go,” RiTchie repeats, while a piano plays a harrowing melody—until the track is suddenly cut off: the conversation, therefore, is not closed.

“My Ghosts Go Ghost” manages to sound creative and will not disappoint those who still recognize “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” as a remarkable album of experimental hip-hop from this decade. It is important, however, to emphasize that it sounds like something substantially different: an introspective journey into the advanced stages of grief, disorienting and moving. It is a challenging listen, one that improves when attention is paid to the fragmented lyrics, often in free form, much like the most intimate thoughts.
If its form—full of layered and distorted samples, dreamlike sounds, and filtered voices—may suggest comparisons to Dälek and Clipping, an emotional reading leads more toward the bitter reflections of the aforementioned Billy Woods and especially toward other albums centered on grieving, from “Skeleton Tree” to “Carrie & Lowell”, developed through a very different musical language.

02/03/2026