DJ Muggs really doesn’t get enough credit as one of the most significant sonic visionaries in rap history. Muggs has been making rap beats since the late ’80s, and he’s changed the entire sound of the genre at least once or twice. Last month, I wrote a column about Cypress Hill’s self-titled debut, and it got me thinking about how many people were influenced by Muggs’ menacing cartoon funk. Muggs has always been an expert sample-flipper, and he’s used strange, hallucinatory sound even in the context of massive hits. Consider, for instance, the screaming horse-whinny thing that gives House Of Pain’s “Jump Around” its electric charge.

Muggs has kept making music since the early ’90s, and he’s gone in some very cool directions. In the past decade or so, for instance, Muggs has been teaming up with great underground rappers like Roc Marciano and Mach-Hommy, making full-length collaborations with them. Muggs has also dabbled in trip-hop and dubstep, and now he’s got an album of ominous, tingly instrumental music on Sacred Bones. That doesn’t even seem like that big a stretch for him!

Muggs actually has two new projects out today. One is the Dies Occidendum album, and the other is Past Is Prologue, an eight-minute documentary short about his own twisty history. In the first scene of the short, we see Muggs, in the early ’90s, chopping up the same Turtles sample that got De La Soul sued. He also talks about his history with classic rock, which rules, and which gives great context to the doom metal guitar sounds that sometimes show up on Dies Occidendum. We already posted the early Dies Occidendum tracks “The Chosen One” and “Nigrum Mortem.” Below, stream Dies Occidendum and watch Past Is Prologue.

Dies Occidendum is actually the second album that Muggs has released this year. Last month, Muggs teamed up with Brooklyn rapper Rome Streetz on the impressive collaborative album Death & The Magician. You can stream that one below.

Dies Occidendum is out now on Sacred Bones. Death & The Magician is out now on Muggs’ own Soul Assassins label.