In a sleeve note on 2022’s His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering, Backxwash expressed an awareness of the impact that the dark themes and trauma it dealt with were likely to take on her mental health, making clear a desire for a break. His Happiness… completed an imposing trilogy of pained and furious industrial hip hop records. Largely autobiographical the lyrics were raw and tortured, the music suffocating, heavy and abrasive. While ultimately cathartic it’s a draining experience, even as a listener. Raking through the ashes of that inferno, Only Dust Remains finds Backxwash taking a breath and settling into the aftermath.
The overall mood is reflective but such things are relative, this is still intense and emotionally heavy stuff. There’s plenty of self hatred, thoughts of death or suicide and existential terror to go with the regret and remorse. Sonically, Only Dust Remains is lighter and brighter, with glowing warm synths, less horror vibes, more space and a lot more words. His Happiness… closed out the trilogy on a hopeful moment, with ‘MUKAZI’ riding a syrupy Philly soul loop (Flashlight’s ‘Every Little Beat Of My Heart’) and that feel carries over, the metal samples and noise dialled down in favour of a wider palette of subtler sounds.
‘Black Lazarus’ builds from a loop of voice and hand percussion, gathering elements beneath the vocal, as the beat comes in it takes on the feel of a reverent procession, a wordless choir lifting it higher. As a title ‘Black Lazarus’ perfectly sets up the themes of death and resurrection continuing her conflicted use of religious imagery even as it concludes dismissively, “Nobody pray for me, nobody’s saving me.” Gospel returns in the later section of the impressive ‘Wake Up’, the longest and most complex thing she’s done so far. ‘9th Heaven’ is a belter, with some really nice work on the beats, the elegant switch into drum ‘n’ bass being particularly sweet.
In an instructive contrast with the wailing banshee image on the front of 2021’s I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES, the cover shows her sat, hands folded in her lap, in a white smock or, perhaps, a baptismal robe. The symbolic death to the old self in order to be reborn echoing in her fight for identity. Only Dust Remains impressively explores more varied and melodic production, balancing light with the darkness and losing none of her work’s raw emotional punch. There may or may not be relief here but the all consuming rage has become sorrow and even hope. Holding onto the all caps styling ‘DISSOCIATION’ features a lovely buoyant loop and Chloe Hotline’s outro chorus: “And I start to feel like I’m past this road, and I’m starting to feel like I’m back in control.”
