Armand Hammer Drops “Doves” featuring Benjamin Booker

Armand Hammer has dropped new single “Doves” featuring Benjamin Booker, along with short a film directed by Ryosuke Tanzawa
Armand Hammer photographer credit: Ryosuke Tanzawa

Armand Hammer has dropped “Doves” featuring Benjamin Booker. The song is a bonus track that will be added to the duo’s 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 return on guitar and vocals.

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.

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 saw the duo colliding their raps with live instrumentation from an all-star array of producers including JPEGMAFIA, EL-P, Kenny Segal, DJ Haram, and many more. 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.

Armand Hammer 2024 Tour 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

Order We Buy Diabetic Test Strips HERE

Advertisement

Looking for something new to listen to?

Sign up to our all-new newsletter for top-notch reviews, news, videos and playlists.