Tag: EDM

  • ALBUM REVIEW: underscores – U

    ALBUM REVIEW: underscores – U

    Written by Rory Marshall

    Mainstream pop, while widely loved, has to play it safe to appeal to its broad audience. But once in a while, there’s always someone to shake up the landscape and bring new ideas into the mix. Enter underscores, the Fil-Am headphone-clad hyperpop darling with her newest album “U”. The album is more accessible than her other work, featuring all the ear-catching hooks, dance-beat tempos, and melodies that beg you to sing along tropes that mainstream music tends to have- but that doesn’t discount its experimentality in the context of pop as a whole.

    Coming from her last project, her sound has taken a U-Turn from grungy electro-pop rock seen in “Wallsocket” to going back to her roots, equipped with influences from dubstep and future bass, harkening back to her early SoundCloud days. The album exudes confidence and charisma, paying homage to her production inspirations; taking the intensity and edge from dubstep icon Skrillex, while taking a softer page from Imogen Heap. It’s a love letter to the genres while being unmistakably underscores.

    Although the album is on the shorter side with only 9 tracks and a runtime of 34 minutes, no track shows any lack or feels thrown in as an afterthought. Every synthesizer, vocoder, and LFO is intentional and produced to a tee while not going farther than it needs to. Each song stands on its own while being cohesive as an ensemble. It’s a testament to the ear she has for music production, with it being an album with no features, and her being the sole credit for the production.  

    As impressive as the production is, the themes and lyrical content were not left by the wayside. With the glitz and glamor, laissez-faire hookups, and Hollywood parties that ultrastardom brings also come unrequited love, isolation, lost identity, and sobering self-reflection. It’s easy to forget that with each track being a dance-worthy banger, underscores is taking the opportunity to outline the dark side of fame. Rather than causing a dissonance between the lyrical content and the music instrumentals, underscores was able to toe the line between the headbanging and crying in the club, creating a metaphor for her experience being in the spotlight.

    With all the confidence and conviction that the project radiates, there’s a constant shadow of self-doubt cast over the tracks, sewn into the lyrics. While tracks like the explosive opening piece “Tell Me (U Want It)”, “Music” and “Do It” carry the “Live fast, Die young” detached attitude that one adopts for their life of fame, tracks like “Bodyfeeling”, “Lovefield”, and the tragic closing track “Wish U Well” show the consequences that can come with it. The life you left behind, and the pitfalls of losing oneself. This is succinctly captured in one of the most vulnerable tracks of the album: “The Peace”. A track about changing yourself in any way just to keep the one you love in your life. While it’s a devastating prospect, the authenticity of her words cuts deep into the hearts of listeners who’ve found themselves in the same position: “And I won’t smoke unless you’re smoking too  / Uh, yeah, I just wanna keep the peace with you”. 

    With the depth that ‘U’ has, by the time you’ve finished it, you’ll realize the toll it had on you. It’s wonderfully nuanced, capturing the double-edged sword of notoriety in a maximalist hyperpop masterpiece. It’s a breath of fresh air for the mainstream pop scene as a whole, giving the masses a break from songs with hooks engineered to grab your attention in a 10-second TikTok. Everything from the production, the songwriting, and the overall vibe that underscores created for the project; The heart put into this album is undeniable, and the sound speaks for itself. Labeling her a trailblazer in the scene would be an understatement, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear her influence pop up in the mainstream moving forward.

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  • EP REVIEW: RamonPang – The Answer Breaks

    EP REVIEW: RamonPang – The Answer Breaks

    Written by Louis Pelingen

    LA-based musician RamonPang is a lover and educator of electronic music. His short-form content alone shows his firm testament to providing a history of the development of electronic music. He imparts curiosity for everyone to keep an eye out for experimental music and bridges a space for new people towards the beauty and ethos of the genre. All delivered with insight, open-approachability, and passion that drives him forward, especially as a Filipino making waves within a mostly westernized genre such as IDM.

    Those characteristics also apply to his music as well. Major influences such as Aphex Twin and Four Tet have paved to what he wants to create in his own music: colliding unpredictable edges of IDM with the inviting structures of EDM. A staunch set of elements that never breaks apart within every project that he has pulled together thus far. 2021’s ‘Nature System’ is sleek and eclectic in its flexible melodies and otherworldly textures; 2022’s ‘Third Places’ focuses more into the communal space, sweeping up soulful samples and saturated mixes into nervy dance grooves; and 2024’s ‘Life Cycle Waves’ is elastic and varied, where walls of prickly IDM and meditative ambiance contort on one hand and meld on the other.

    A year later, what does the ‘The Answer Breaks’ EP add to RamonPang’s discography? Simple: a set of lean, accessible cuts that’s just as shiny and punchy as ever. Each track transports to a grounded, yet breathtaking soundscape. “The Answer” hypnotizes with that female vocal looping across textured drums and fizzy synth lines. “Broadcastyl” is dreamy and energetic in its buildup. Shimmering synth pads and jazz samples allow the steady breakbeat to unleash its energy, capitalized further through the guitar passages that rev in its melody. “Daly City Skyline” sets the stage for ’90s breakbeats to slide in. Pulsating acid synths and crashing drum rhythms gradually energize, similar to a race car willing to exhaust all of its gas just for a thrilling chase. ‘Brand Blvd’ puts everything into a calming finish, where inclusions of kalimbas add a playful charm around rapid rhythms and swells of glacial synth waves.

    While the sonic display of electronica that RamonPang exports into the EP doesn’t expand much in comparison to his past works, the tight approach to melodic making is a focus worth highlighting. An experimentation that never leaves RamonPang’s lucid soundscapes, only deepening the way he arranges his compositions. The answer may not exactly break new ground, but its compact structure is enough to leave a pleasant impression.

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  • EP REVIEW: ARKYALINA – Underneath Your Jagged Lines

    EP REVIEW: ARKYALINA – Underneath Your Jagged Lines

    Written by Louis Pelingen

    The moment that Arkyalina — also known as Tavin Villanueva — put out “readmymind” last year, it showcases just how much young acts like him are willing to synthesize different points of influence and make it their own. Cementing their own sonic identity and stylism that never compromises their passion and their intensity as musicians, both in recording and live performances. As someone who has seen him perform live, intensity is indeed the emotion that he pulls off well, all paired with scarlet red visuals and a sharply detailed mask that complements the jagged guitar work, skittering beats, and burnished vocals that he exposes in his performances.

    After releasing a couple of singles that now lead to his debut EP, ‘Underneath Your Jagged Lines’, something has shifted between last year and now. There is an adjustment towards how Arkyalina delivers as a vocalist and as a producer, providing more emphasis on build-ups and pulsating electronics to give his voice more space to play off with. The rhythmic shuffle of “Gaze (By Your Side)” and the squealing EDM pads of “Wish” are prime examples of this, where Arkyalina pairs back his intensity and allows himself to unravel in it, carefully crafting sharper melodies along the way.

    Of course, that guitar-driven, vocally fervid side of him is still here. Besides the already stellar “readmymind” with all the layers of chalky drums and blurry swells of strings that give Arkyalina soar vocally, “Ersatz” and “Remembrance, a tragedy” deliver in this front as well. The former’s rampage of guitar riffing leads to one glowing crescendo, and the latter’s weighty drums and guitar rumbles only amplify his anguished singing and screaming.

    Those contrasts do make some sense as Arkyalina unveils the tension within his writing. Detailing a post-breakup relationship that’s weighed on a lot of give and takes, with him giving so much of himself to the point that he is stuck in a rut. Never exactly willing to let go, as he reminisces on the time that he and his ex have spent together and reminisces about the moments where both of their flaws have been shown. It leads to Arkyalina constantly being in this push and pull stasis, constantly stretched apart by his internal angst and melancholy, but even then, he shows that he still cares about that relationship at the end of the day. As noted on the last track, “Remembrance, a tragedy”, he tries to reach out, acknowledge his mistakes, and hope that there’s still a chance to recoup from those mistakes. Even if such chances of reconnecting might be too late to be considered.

    While this overall theme can justify why Arkyalina’s decisions in his vocal mix and delivery are a bit more meticulous and submerged as he is swimming through his own emotional headspace, it can also lead to those choices exposing some of the EP’s weaknesses. “Ersatz” is lacking one more verse to really make its crescendos hit even harder; the glitchy, gauzy flair on “Everything Falls Apart” blurs so much that the melody washes out from one way to another; and the attempt for this weary vocal timbre amidst the heavier production mix on “Black Sea” becomes one note, especially as Arkyalina’s delivery doesn’t exactly vary and the buildup to that scream on the end of the song is so faintly heard.

    But, overall, ‘Underneath Your Jagged Lines’ is defined by choices and shifts that are intentionally thought out. Filled with meticulous mixes and vocal tones that emphasize the EP’s reddish intensity and bluish melancholy, all of which put Arkyalina in a space where there is still a lot of traversing to go into, recognizing the highs and lows that he must confront and refine upon. In wading underneath those lines, the waves will smooth their jagged edges, turning them into a more resplendent texture.

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  • ALBUM REVIEW: agatka – BLACK SPRING

    ALBUM REVIEW: agatka – BLACK SPRING

    Written by Lex Celera

    After a feature in Fax Gang and Parannoul’s collaborative album, and an appearance in Sining Shelter’s 2024 compilation tunes for a true home, Texas-based agatka’s sophomore album Black Spring arrives in the wake of what can be described as a tumultuous time for the artist.

    Presented as a “true documentary of all the things I’ve felt in the past year and a half” by agatka, Black Spring is a pulverizing blood rush straight to the dome when considered in its entirety. Across each track, the project warps in different tonal and sonic shifts and constantly dips itself into abrasion balanced out by tracks that allow you to catch your breath. “PISTOL ROUND,” “ROLL THE DICE, I LOSE AGAIN,” and “DOORDASH THERAPY” (in what appears to be in the same arrangement heard in tunes for a true home) barge in guns ablazing, simmer down, then pick up again at five tracks down; trap 808s, beheaded producer tags, Vocaloid sample flips, gutteral echoes, and high-energy grooves, deftly find their respective places in the album, alongside its shoutouts including Fax Gang, Andy Milonakis, and Counter Strike. In this regard, agatka falls in line alongside their contemporaries in placemaking their discography with internet artifacts, which serve as not just sonic decoration but also as referential material for the extremely online.

    Not only that, but framed within America’s sociopolitical landscape, Black Spring is also a direct response to and a first-person observation of America’s many failings, especially under its current administration, from a first-generation Filipino immigrant. “I FEEL FANTASTIC” depicts scenarios of violence against the far-right and a distrust of the system at play.

    Stitched by its commitment to verisimilitude, agatka has created a body of work that not only appears coherent in its accumulation of unapologetic angst and trauma across the span of it being produced, but condenses it into a vision that lands. I find myself returning to a number of tracks after initial full album listens: “CAMERON COUNTY COWBOYZ” emerges as a standout in its juxtaposition; wrapped around a silky smooth sample, stream-of-consciousness confessional lyrics end in a crescendo that pierces right through: “I can’t let go / I haunt myself / just like a ghost.” Meanwhile, “LORD FORGIVE ME” and its ruminations on existential and spiritual crises are on top of a thumping club rhythm, which comes across as catharsis in its three-minute runtime.

    Beyond these categorizations, Black Spring emerges as a body of work that could stand beyond its fixation on the present. Recorded across different locations in the United States over almost a year, the fifteen-track album comes across as an assemblage of raw moods and textures that carry the weight of its lyrics from the moment it was written down, distilled into a form that persists as something almost universal. Almost all of the lyrics of each track are written in the present tense, creating a sense of immediacy that, when addled with heavy production or laid bare, transports you to the same room where each track is made. Political statements and world-weary confessionals are rendered in the same way; one that can be seen as both tactile and tactless.

    Devoid of any need for metaphors, agatka’s “BLACK SPRING” serves as a teller of their own unfiltered truths.

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