brakence - hypochondriac (glitch pop)
Guy’s literally eating his own words. Comes in, bitter and spitting gum at the floor with voice patches, and outright twists his own spine in order to say things while not saying them. The way he swallows the word “even” on “caffeine” – “How this shit ain’t obvious to you I’m not e-TWENTYONE”. Or how the word “fuck” on the hook of “argyle” gets caught up in a falsetto run, a little boy being too shy to say outright what’s on his mind, even though he’s allowed to. No singular moment gives brakence that much levity; what comes is a dense release, barely hanging on. Cold in the sonic aspect, yet ultimately naked and near-destitute at its core: a guy, some guy, being let out into the world to be noticed, and it sucks.
Sucks! Sucks so much. He can barely even tell the absence of a warmer mix, and the distance of his voice towards the listener is mute. This album morphs the moments of awful Gen Z vulnerability into moments where the ridicule comes from self-awareness. hypochondriac drives itself through passion that’s aiming for its protagonist to reach a point where he doesn’t need or require said passion. Going past the frenzy of being alive to a state of emotional death – at times, near total, but the green mold-like production indicates that he’d rather be rotten from the inside than totally literally gone. brakence finds so many eyes that he doesn’t know where to look; the vocal pitch shifting is a deviation that doesn’t work. The emo touches of “5g” and “intellectual greed” are bubbled up, because engaging with them further would be recognizing the extent of the problem.
And the problem is neverending. Not one moment of peace in these 50 minutes, yet, despite all the ravaging of how much fame is getting to him, there’s never resentment or contempt towards his audience. At times, this is even a matter of respect: “Baby don’t be my crutch when thissheetget gooory”, that kind of deal. I’ve seen this album described as ‘adolescent’, if only because of its hyperpop leanings and its somewhat undercooked melodrama, both of which are rightful points of comparison. But that doesn’t feel like it it. There’s an undercurrent of a man thrust into adulthood who has the capacity to deal with it, and doesn’t like that at all. There’s never a negation of his senses and his growth, but instead one of reluctance and false expectations, especially when those ideals go toward his art and the mess fully forms.
It could also very easily get lost that brakence is a beautiful, immense vocalist. Fairly easy to mock, and without the right predisposition it’s tiring, but his agitated tone, ready to be wilfully manipulated by sprinkles of metal taverns and ping pong tables, shivers through all realizations with a wide open mouth. Kinda like loading all his thoughts into a hard drive and then watching it glitch as it fails to delete. Popping P’s on “cbd”; hiding into his rich low register on closer “hypochondriac”, which could fall into a cliché piano ballad closer move if it wasn’t so deliberate, and it didn’t have his vocal impromptu of good intentions and surrendering; acrobatting through “preparation exercise no. 7 (trembling)” to let his toxic veil infiltrate the already quivering instrumental; turning the played out “I just wanna be dead” statement on “argoyle” into a failed moment of catharsis, because he can’t bring himself to fully believe it or commit to it, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Not a single moment of fronting here.
The fear that haunts this album (and part of what turns it into one of the best listens of the year) is that it will all be like this. Our protagonist, a guy in the online shadows hitting it big and suffering through it, hiding in overprocessed production and memes and false status and false alarms, eventually back in his room, as lonely as before. A big break, but is this all there is? The dubstep crackings on top of sunny guitars while he goes, “‘Cause behind the smile I’m so PISSED” on “deepfake” – if this is the mountain peak, is everything else as gross as before? Same as it ever was shit? Awfully honest because it never thinks to itself that the things it’s feeling aren’t right, it never deludes itself. This album’s hardly ever clever or witty, but because doing that would be lying to everyone. Anyone who thinks otherwise is obliterated. Notice the sudden and unceremonious tempo and mood change of “teeth”, after she (whoever she is) shows up to try to be around our hero, and he immediately dismisses her as a yes-man – while so many others would find empowerment in that situation – and it near ends with “YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME??????”, since all routes are temporarily closed. The references keep piling up and the fright feels heavier by the hour. Many, many bus rides to this.
Rico Nasty - Las Ruinas (pop rap)
Pop rap in the, y’know, ‘go fuck yourself, also here’s a hook’ kind of way. This album(/mixtape) is for all those angry, boiling nights where you can’t even be bothered to be angry for too long because your eyes are just feeling too heavy. Dealing with shit at an affordable price, because Rico Nasty has never stopped dealing her usual brand of popular hooks. Never a radio hit, per se, but a plethora of tracks easy to understand because their mass appeal to an audience not too properly interested in anything that’s going on can digest these (not-so) abrasive sounds. And so, Las Ruinas is never actually what it says it is. It’s a fun trip through anger, but its pain is performative, because the core cannot be grasped upon.
It needs to be said, this is one of the best sequenced projects of the year, it’s almost as if these tracks were designed in their making to be Track 8 and Track 14 and so on and so forth. Starting off bitter and unfocused, twisting Rico’s words while also highlighting the misplacement of her features; walking into the rain and the street lights indicate a cloudy walk. Entering some shady nightclub and winding up edging. Seeking abandon back again into the street with a broken dress and wore off makeup, and no one answers the call. Plummeting and sitting on the sidewalk while the rain has stopped, but everything’s still second hand wet. There’s also some conclusion and reconnection to the world on Rico’s hand when she thinks of her son, but that still leaves a world to be explored – could she possibly reach it when there’s so much to trudge through? What about her kid?
I tend to prefer the first half to the second half, if anything because Rico’s intensity is often better placed and used when the backdrop is rougher. But once the entire thing comes together, the cumulative effect is what overrides the experience. Various drum-and-bass beats are what tie this project together, as well as the indulgences of pitch shifted vocals and soft pivots to house that don’t fully engage. It’s that particularly nonspecificity of the sound that turns this project into something cohesive and rich: covering every sound with an echo of rain, never to leave the sight of the sound. When the vocals on “Skullflower” rattle in the background like make believe children, or Marshmello’s fart bass on “Watch Your Man” fades into the background, or the drums come in on “Into the Dark” (right when it looks like it’s set to be a continuation of the previous acoustic cut), there’s no sense of abrasiveness that maybe they should have. The point isn’t to remark upon these sounds, but to feel lulled in because there’s no real escaping.
Lots of fun sounds here to cherry pick, to dive into that performative sense of angst that doesn’t veer into the theatrical. The bookends that are Teezo Touchdown’s never-resting vocal contributions on “Messy”, splitting in two yet restarting and taking control of the blade, the most robotic sequence on this project. The G-Funk approximations on “Gotsta Get Paid” who try to mash it up with cloudy trip hop – the “boing!” sound effect is irreparably awful, but Rico’s slapdash delivery makes it hide in the shadows. Many sounds are outright gross: the vocal stretching on “Black Punk”, the dead-woman-talking background voices on “Phuckin Lady”, the 80s drum set opposite the distorted main vocals on “Chicken Nugget”. Many of these don’t find a way out, and we already know they won’t. So Las Ruinas suggests, why not entertain them? It’s all broken down before our eyes, why can’t we see to it that those sounds are well equipped?
Besides, at times, they can be paired up with tracks that really set a scene, even beyond this shady context. I hear “Blow Me” and I immediately think of people spinning around on some nowhere club, some hallway that never ends lit in gray blue lighting; Rico’s ability to discern those who’d merely want to fuck her is sedated, and she can tell but doesn’t feel like caring, all while a car alarm rings in the background. The remix of Fred again…’s “Jungle” is one of his best miniatures ever, this time actually stepping into a world outside, to find weary faces that don’t want to be captured, and Rico’s hasty appearance, terrifying thought, doesn’t inspire change. The hardest indicator of the ruins’ decay is “One On 5”, a hit in an alternate world where we have a different layout of our barriers out to the world. Brief loss of morals and senses in a deadbeat, modernist empty space with flickering lights; aggression and sex are one and the same, and that’s titillating for once; people whispering a barren chorus to the floor, same as outside; moans are barely contained, but there’s not much to exhale over; a peculiar feeling that no one involved will remember this once they leave. So it’s back out in the rain.
quinn - quinn (experimental hip hop)
I mean, the word ‘experimental’ has been used too many times in too many different contexts for it to properly mean much nowadays. What makes me consider quinn to be within the more esoteric sides of hip hop by way of bedroom pop, never delving into her previous hyperpop roots (besides, like, vocal pitch shifting) is a rather distinguishable sense of warmth and cool air to this album. At times, it’s rather cozy! How many miniatures seem to be drawn from a real, tangible place of inner peace that comes with the understanding that those states of peace don’t come around often, and never really last – and in quinn’s case, it’s only obvious given she’s 17 throughout this entire project. No need to hide anything, and by that there’s also no need to admit anything, because her previous sense of shame is gone. This is an album that never aims to strut or unburden anything; actually, rather chill!
All sense of potential wistfulness or loss that was there on previous quinn projects, here remains, but it’s placed under a different light: at its best, these sounds rejoice over the fact that they’re being discovered, being played, taking notice outside their handmade pillow fort. Picking up on the collected yearning of “two door tiffany”, with rather sweet autotune interplay on the fringes; the carefree “please don’t waste my time” that rides itself along a clipped up bass and stammering honey synths (“you know i gotcha, you know i gotcha”); the Internet-simulated interplay of “i’ve heard that song before”, with its Steve Lacy vocal arrangement but less broad, brimming with confidence as it reaches its breaking moment and scoffs at the drama others create. These are joyful, joyful tunes, that take the impatient feel of a black teens trans woman as a virtue and something to cheer for, maybe even follow in our lives when we may be none of those attributes.
Admittedly, the bleaker moments could stand out as tougher pieces on their own, but within the entire project, as signs of newly boosted confidence, from a voice ready to speak her mind but also not lose herself in her battles, they’re stirring and emphatic. I could do without the long, pointless interlude “food 4 thot”, needlessly the longest song here. But everything else does the trick. “american freestyle” gets itself not only on quinn’s bars, stern and steady through their calling of racist America, but also on her distracted backing vocals, who seem to know this entire speech like the back of their hands (“then adopt them black kids so they can act like they white(?), damn!!”). “i see you” is somewhat unsettling, but brushes itself off enough that quinn never has to overdo an MC Ride accent or anything like that, because obviously she’s not fucking a white man’s spouse, but rather flirting with the idea from her overstuffed room. Even the album’s outro, “you don’t gotta be here if you don’t wone’a”, doesn’t allow for too much darkness: her recounting of a stressful moment when she was 10 with an eating disorder ends with her dad telling her, “if my grandmother she’d be disappointed in you”, and present day quinn agreeing. But the way she says it is almost like she expected that response, and deep down, was even OK with it.
Funny this is a self-titled, not only because quinn’s been making music under many different nicknames throughout the years, but also because it’s clearly an album for a specific moment in her life: nothing is as heavy as it used to be, but she’s bracing herself. She can be defensive on “i see you” or “some shit like this”, but that’s not it, and she knows it. These sounds are guided by themselves – and therefore, they serve as guides to her. Plenty of wandering samples, like on “Xianjian Rare Earth Metal” or “oh”, where the loops are reflections with a journal entry. The centerpiece of this album, right between “i see you” and “food 4 thot”, is “song about imAGINARY PEOPEL”, a breezy pop tune that follows up on none of the turmoil the title indicates. Hidden in the second half, there’s “warm and fuzzy”, a looped sample that quinn sings on top of while rambling, smoked out, and that second part of the sentence doesn’t matter: what matters is the old-school melody taken from any surrounding context. It stares at the clouds, gearing up and moving towards more. So much left to go.
Kali Malone - Living Torch (drone)
Really hard. Unbearably hard. Straining, to do. To pass on. To take that next step. Difficult to keep it up, or the alternative, to give it up. But we do, every day. What’s the cause for that?
Kali Malone performs drone music, and combines the analog systems of the ARP 2500 with classical instruments like the trombone and the bass clarinet. That’s the foundation of Living Torch, and it carries itself through with 2 tracks in 33 minutes, each being their own piece and not (necessarily) attaching themselves to each other. She carries on with the traditions of American minimalism and the electroacoustic movement – she even recorded this alongside the Groupe de recherches musicales. The basis here is to place the intense timbre placements throughout the length of this album, playing towards the long-winded two pieces with different intonations that suck the listener through various sad fields. Microtonal all the way.
Unlike many classic drone pieces, aiming for the meditative and contemplative, Kali Malone moves all the goddamn time. The first part is surprisingly opulent, without ever falling into cheap film score tricks. Learning from her long winded organ pieces in 2019’s The Sacrificial Code, where she emphasized the use of said instrument’s space, the bass clarinet and trombone feel aired up; the release of those instruments is as important as the sounds themselves. Sometimes, they interact with the ARP 2500, but not often – sometimes, they just stay in the background. The images feel static, but they’re quite violent in their approach: heavy smoke dissipating the air, people on awful streets with coats on when they don’t need them, veins popping out of thick necks. But there’s barely even any room for that. The pitches overwhelm the sounds; at times, it feels like one’s sleeping through the whole thing, eyes going REM, and the light flickering of some dirt hotel is nearby. The result? No one can rest. As the 10 minute mark kicks in, it starts to resemble a proper bygone hymn, too understated to have a melody, but saying farewell to something. Not even a physical presence, but a sense of grief overwhelming some halls, and no one can cry. Living as numbing psychological torture.
If the first half was setting the grounds as an acknowledgement of failure, of the heaviness, the second half is outright too far gone. Kicks off with a wounded wolf about to be eaten, and it stays that way. There’s a lonesome guitar, like some plastic mockery of the old West at night; the classical instruments continue oscillating like nothing was wrong; fever boils into soaring pits that try not to quietly resign, even though that’s clearly what they want deep down. The sound construction is cutting: everything is right next to each other, there’s no room to even emotionally move, all aiming upwards. 5 minutes in, the same guitar lick leaves to be replaced by stretched up noise performing that same melody, and it stays growing for 10 more minutes. Said minutes act like a big wave, retaining the same intensity but often dwindling down the volume, to no avail – it’s an alleyway shakedown, and you really might be left with nothing. Slowly, air begins to be artificially incorporated, like a breathing machine, indicating that death may come, but that doesn’t mean anything will stop. Of course, slowly it does (to its very mild detriment), but it acts as no comfort. We slowly return to the same acting intro of the first half, but something’s off: the instruments don’t hold the same weight as they used to. The implication being that this cycle has gone on since before the track started, and the debilitating is chronic. It’s really hard.
In essence, mainly to rip all expectations aside, all peace leaves, if ever there was any. Gotta give it up – can’t do it. Stubbornness, passing the living torch, is what drags us into this hell. We were always in it, but turning it into one, reaffirming its status as one, only keeps it going. This is music to perpetuate, because any other option is just long gone out of reach.