Review Summary: Ex-music x dead robotgirlscream
Let’s talk about music?
Eutopia is a cult classic/moderately (deficiently) infamous flashcore [2] vocaloid [1] record. It has ruined the days/fertilities of all those ever to encounter it and changed approximately nothing in the world at large. But it is significant.
Uh, so, like…
[1] Vocaloid is a term for all music made with vocaloids. Vocaloids are algorithmic human voices that can be synced to pitch, rhythm, inflection and holographic cleavage in a potentially unprecedented victory for online reprobates (the world over) and introverted schoolchildren (strictly within the wonky, wonky borders of the Land of the Rising Sun).
[2] Flashcore is an electronic subgenre constituted by (uh) everything you’d likely expect: uptempo irreverent glitched-out digitised mayhem, brutal contrasts of acoustics and artificial tones, many flashes.
HikkieP is a flashcore producer. Kagamine Rin is the vocaloid he uses. Now,
Eutopia is the death of music and the endpoint – or at least an endpoint – of what can be done within this deeply warped by-and-for-otakus niche of all niches. It is overwhelming, such a sensory overload of brutalised bitcrushed non-repeating dysfunctionalities that (ironically enough) each and every one of its gazillion unique contours is interchangeable with every other. At times it is catchy – rapturously, diabolically, violently so, as on fourth track “捨てられた幸福” – but, as with every moment here, these moments are fleeting and contrary. Nothing lasts. Everything dies. Nothing is lost. Ten minutes in, you learn to enjoy the dissatisfaction. Fifteen minutes in, you give up on processing it. Thirty minutes in, it is still on.
Eutopia is so rife with disdain for its audience’s good taste and attention span that it is actively unwise to approach it without a grain of disrespect, to give its endless friction something consistent to run against. That said, there is something to be said for the precision and sheer commitment it applies to its extremity. There is obvious, if overbearing craft at play: HikkieP’s flair for the contorted is all-encompassing, sugar-vile, and well ahead of the game (which, admittedly few will ever play). Case-in-point, the second track “Saisho kara Shayou” showcases the kind of cut-up noise/glitch collages and melodic stabs that are now found neutered and under the tepid banner of ‘glitch pop’ all across Bandcamp and Rateyourmusic. The title supposedly translates as “Incel From The Beginning” [3]. This shit came out in fucking 2012. Respect??
Elsewhere, good/bad smash into bad/good things with astronomic levels of collateral kinetic bullshit. “Ryaa” is full of the kind of spoken word samplings arranged by humans who want their audience irreversibly alienated from the communicative/meaningful capacity of the 3rd-party-universal Human Voice for the rest of their days. “雑踏14” and “mandara berobero haichatta blues” cut up gabber beyond recognition and dish it out with flickerings of harsh noise, harsher still for their flickering. On “Raincoat / Admiration / Disgust / Understanding”, Kagamine Rin’s pitch settings are the noise. The eight-minute “The Sound of Distress” concludes with her literally screaming for an exit. We will not discuss the ramifications of this (her being a machine does not mitigate them nearly as much as it should). There is no songwriting: these are not songs.
What to make of all this? It’s hard not to admire the way
Eutopia epitomises the frontier of a form. That the form in question lies firmly beyond what dignified reasonable humans can dangle anywhere close to their pleasure receptors may or may not be a secondary concern. Too bad. If it did not exist, its glitchy#////#blotchy deadschoolgirl crown would be worn with equal dissociated cyber-relish by someone else (perhaps Kikuo) – yet it does, and it wears its crown with a frankly terrifying level of frazzled kowaikawaii abandon. However hollow that crown,
Eutopia is well worth marking as an uncompromising extreme. The artwork is also utterly perfect. Please stay safe.
***
[3] ‘Shayou’ technically means ‘Setting Sun’, but Spotify sure as shit uses ‘Incel’. I don’t want to voluntarily expose myself to the cultural mappings and etymologies of Japanese reclusive boydisasters any more than strictly necessary; it shall go without further research.
