Audiopile Review: If We Buy Diabetic Test Strips was Armand Hammer at their most explosive and otherworldly, Doves is the sound of everything unraveling—leaving behind only dust and echoes. This post-rap disassembly pushes the duo closer to the genre-defying territory of fellow hip-hop experimentalists Injury Reserve’s swan song By the Time I Get to Phoenix more than any of their previous work. While the Kenny Segal’s static-drenched and soaring shoegaze production on “Doves” is a 9+ minute behemoth unlike anything they’ve released before, Armand Hammer and Segal mercifully added “Ox Blood,” previously only available on their near-unobtainable “BLK LBL” release, its warped strings and cryptic atmosphere suit the dark edge of the EP perfectly. Rounding out the project, Segal includes a stuttered and dusty remix of the Billy Woods-featured “Nostrand” from ELUCID’s 2022 album I Told Bessie and a hypnotic remix of “Squeegee” from the group’s breakthrough album Haram. As if that weren’t enough, Side B features instrumentals of the aforementioned tracks and a mind bending ELUCID remix of the title track, dragging Doves even deeper into the apocalypse. For a bit, it seemed like these tracks, released either digitally or via vinyl sold only at shows, would not be obtainable, so it’s great to see Armand Hammer hooking it up for their growing fan base and giving this the physical treatment it deserves.

In February of this year, Armand Hammer surprised everyone by dropping a surprise single “Doves” along with an accompanying short film. The song was a 9+ minute epic, produced by Kenny Segal and Benjamin Booker, while also prominently featuring the latter on vocals. Lauded as some of the duo’s best work, “Doves” was also added to the digital version of Armand Hammer’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips album as the closing track. However, the song was not made available in any physical media, and that was no accident. We had plans. Now those plans have come to fruition. Armand Hammer and Kenny Segal have given us a Doves maxi-single that features the below tracklist (please don’t sleep on the ELUCID remix either!)