Only Dust Remains is a confrontation, ending in an assault on the senses, the lyricism pulls no punches and takes no prisoners.

Backxwash aka Ashanti Mutinta is a Zambian-Canadian rapper & producer based in so-called Montreal, Quebec. Backxwash describes herself a Rapper / Producer / Cryptid and this album Only Dust Remains contributes to a back catalogue that bristles with evocative and challenging projects in leftfield hip-hop, industrial music or whatever label you feel like giving it all. 

This album, the fifth full length in the catalogue of this project, carries on where the previous trilogy left off.

The album features appearances from, interestingly, several RnB, Pop and Shoegaze artists like Chloe Hotline, Michael Go, Ora Cogan, Fernie, Magella, Pet Wife along with neoclassical artist Morgan Paige. To illustrate its depths, I want to highlight my two favourite tracks. Black Lazarus and Undesirable.

The album's opener, Black Lazarus’s instrumental opener is two intertwined rhythms of vocals and a drum beat. Together they evoke in my mind the image of the body as an instrument, like a sole Hamboner using every limb and orifice to produce sound, alone, with no ensemble to support them. 

The lyrics start seconds later, a guitar riff simmers below the lyrics as Backxwash begins a story of crumbling in a world where the idea that someone’s response to “you okay?” is anything other than “yeah I’m good” is a threat and an obligation, a tiresome one.

At the end of this section with its nihilistic refrain, powerful drums and throbbing synth crash through the temporary silence as the lyrics seem to stop mid sentence for a breath of air. 

A section later, a sample of choral vocals from (what sounds like a) classic gospel record, plays back in fourth in canon with the drums. In the lyrics she lashes back out at the dark forces that drag her under

They keep hyping me up in the wrongest ways 
Said “Tonight is the night” they were sort of waiting 
Screaming back at the shadows like go away 
Bitch I might lose the battle but not today 
And for every second chance I just wave my hands 
The devils make their dance Fucking hypocrite

Then, she talks about how often, suffering here in the west, despite various proximities to social death experienced by the maligned and marginalized, can feel hypocritical when you can quickly watch deliberate and indiscriminate death waged against people elsewhere in the world. Citing Gaza, South Sudan and the DRC. 

The final verse begins, a piano creeps into the instrumental. 

As they…pray for me, 
But ain’t no anybody here saving me 
And the only death I fear is painlessly 
And I've made it out of clear agency 
As they…pray for me 
The only way to live is dangerously 
Cause for every second chance, 
Devils wave their hands 
Angels make their dance, 
I just feel like it’s fucked

The word “fucked” echos and throbbing synths kick in, conjuring an almost angelic soundscape, before the looping chorus. 

Nobody pray for me (Nobody pray for me)
Nobody's saving me (Nobody's saving me)

The track then fades to oblivion.

Undesirable starts on an entirely different footing, the beat is cut from what sounds like a Hindustani folk record, Backxwash's instrumentals have always been off-kilter and always been refreshing. I'm drawn back into her back catalogue. Her 2018 albums like F.R.E.A.K.S and Black Sailor Moon feature a lot of guest producers and the instrumentals leaned towards a very leftfield set of trap staples combined with a strong video game soundtrack / chiptune influence, but my favourite track from those two projects is the track Aesthetic from Black Sailor Moon, as it's *Just* Britney Spear's Toxic and it goes hard as fuck.

You can see the clear development of Backxwash as a project into the 2019 record "Deviancy", which both names one of the lyrical themes but also shows her deviate into a sensual combination of hip hop, hardcore punk and industrial inspired instrumentation styles. The groove of tracks like 'Burn Me At The Stake' and the pulsating synth of 'Bad Juju' set the pace for her later albums, the mood gets more sinister, the occult influences simmer to the surface and the stage is set for her trilogy. 

The opener for the first album in the trilogy God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It Black Sabbath's own eerie title track of their cult first record. The second record in the trilogy I Lie Here Buried With My Rings And My Dresses deepens and meditates on the stylings of the previous one, a highlight for me being the track 'BLOOD IN THE WATER' produced by Clipping. The third record HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING carries on this unrelenting, thundering style until the crescendo in MUKAZI which flips this all on its head with a nostalgic closer to the autobiographical trilogy. 

So yeah, when I heard Undesirable I instantly smiled. The lyrics nod towards this obvious development and progression.

Look, I appreciate how far I’ve come
And don’t you think I don’t appreciate all these albums?
My point of view is sort of pixelated, the vision’s fading
I’m more in tune? I think that shit’s degrading 
Weak and dangerous 
But I’m just saying

The lyrics hit hard, the bittersweet notion of turning that chemical weapon made of broken dreams into art that’s appreciated by many but still is the by-product of your own suffering.