Spencer Hawk’s middle ground…
[Video]
[5.33]
Katherine St Asaph: What just happened?
[5]
Austin Nguyen: Like getting your skull thrashed with a brick five times, Parasite-rock-style (once for each remaining brain cell) and trying to hold a rave in the motherboard of a post-rage-room computer while getting high off of soldering fumes. Imagine scrolling through the feed of an Instagram account dedicated to compiling every Finsta post that’s ever existed and will exist; this song would be the finale: The Shitpost to Begin and End All Shitposts, a neurotic five-point collision of 1) “no thoughts, head empty,” 2) fire-siren obnoxiousness, 3) pining existentialism/existentialist pining, 4) mid-late aughts nostalgia, and 5) anti-capitalist middle fingers (Elon Musk and McDonald’s are a given, but I know NYU as two things: the school that has no campus and the school that will not think the word “financial aid” in your direction). I really don’t know what’s worse: The fact that I’ve received memes from this person via AirDrop and follow them on Instagram, that my stomach is churning just listening to this while sitting down, or that this is the first PC Music song that I maybe actually wanna laugh and dance to (Caroline Pola, aside)? And no, not the Fortnite default dance.
[9]
Al Varela: I struggle to get hyperpop a lot of the time. I don’t even think it’s a case of not being my genre, I think it’s just specific things that bother me that keep me from enjoying its absurdities as much as I want to. What I don’t like about “Thos Moser” is that it indulges in bad impulses as if it was a joke. Whatever ideas it has are poisoned by a layer of irony that makes me wish I was listening to music by people who actually take it seriously. I don’t mind purposefully obnoxious music or absurd experimentation like this, but there is such a thing as doing your job too well.
[2]
John Seroff: *he hits play again, he adjusts his headphones, determined to get all the way to the end of “Thos Moser” this time, he grits his teeth, cheeks start twitching, lips pull back, his nostrils flare, holds breath, finally gasps loudly, he hits pause* — “How… how long did I make it? Was it almost over? Am I there yet?” — *progress bar reads 1:31, song looks at him with pleading bloodshot eyes* — “”wHy D0n^T u 1000000v33 mE3e3E3E3!!?!?!?!??!1111eee33333eeeee”” — *he shuts down the phone and plugs it into a charger, he goes for a long quiet walk*
[2]
John Pinto: I already wrote and then cut this whole confused thing about 80’s pop being too dependent on factory presets and hyperpop being in a similar position with regard to the stock sounds on Logic Pro/Ableton/FL Studio/whatever, so let me just say that “Thos Moser” is a romp, it’s a bop, and I like it fine. But with shoutouts to fellow travelers and a description of the scene’s little Washington Square Altamont, it also puts hyperpop at the Self-Referential Point of No Return. I am a grumpy old man who quit Tumblr this year, so nothing strikes fear in my heart like imagining a “post-gecs” wave that refries what’s already been refried.
[6]
Oliver Maier: I think what sets Gupi and Fraxiom apart from the many, many hyperpop breakthrough acts this year is the sense that they were born to make this stuff. A handful of their contemporaries take a stilted, overly studied approach, as if reading from a manual on How To Make Provocative Songs About Being Online (Dylan Brady Snares Included!). Gupi and Fraxiom get it instinctively; “Thos Moser” is rich and organic in its total brainlessness. Fraxiom machine-guns the stupidest punchlines imaginable and they all land beautifully (“Check like wet Coca-Cola / Chek like Caroline Pola”). It’s this unfiltered approach — mirrored in Gupi’s constantly morphing house beat, like he’s slapping the top of a busted monitor and watching the shapes change — that sells “Thos Moser”. Enough Gecs imitators are trying to cushion their aggro sound in pleading-face emoji lyrics and pop formalism. Gupi and Fraxiom are trying to sacrifice their brain cells in pursuit of a banger.
[9]
Crystal Leww: In the second half of 2020, mainstream media realized that it could no longer ignore the need to cover the year’s buzziest genre, hyperpop. The coverage was fine at best, but woefully “How do you do fellow kids?” about 95% of the time. The challenge is that “hyperpop” has largely become an umbrella term to describe any somewhat internet-based dance music that’s influenced by a range of Y2K pop through early twenty-teens EDM-pop. Unfortunately, media has largely focused on the strain of hyperpop that it understands and has been covering for half a decade — the one centered around Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP, where Charli was working largely with the PC Music crew. This always feels incomplete because even Charli herself has moved on to a more diverse set of collaborators that only feel loosely connected by herself and the vague ideas of “internet” and “dance music.” The 100gecs strain of hyperpop feels like a more straight line from nightcore, which even half a decade ago felt more chaotic and trollish in how it curated than the PC Music crew, which felt more about creating original works exploring the true essence of pop music sounds. Gupi and Fraxiom’s “Thos Moser” is one of the best examples of the 100gecs strain — it borrows sounds from autotuned pop vocals of the late 00s to EDM-pop thumps but they are combined in ways that are barely cohesive while Fraxiom has no problem threatening to piss on Zedd. “Thos Moser” is also, unfortunately, a perfect example of why it’s so hard for critics to meaningfully cover this strain of hyperpop — which finds its identity in chaos. For a field full of people who take their opinions seriously, it’s tough to be asked to do the same of the song equivalent of someone putting their hands to their face and making loud fart noises.
[9]
Scott Mildenhall: There’s a difference between chaotic and merely messy, and “Thos Moser” falls on the latter side. It seems so in tune with its audience of converts that it’s particularly hard to criticise, though — more than most music, it does what it does for the people who like it. Outside of that group, it’s possible to focus on the bits that bring to mind hits that painted with similar palettes — “Exceeder” or the oeuvre of Fedde Le Grand — songs more clearly defined, with an abundance of angularity nonetheless. But for one reason or another, Gupi & Fraxiom aren’t playing that game.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: I’m sorry, but I’m just too old for this shit.
[0]
Ian Mathers: Maybe the kids ARE all right. Certainly more fun and valuable than whatever I was doing at that age.
[7]
Frank Falisi: There is something in the way we connect. And there is something in the way. There are more barriers than ever. And if you stare (I stare) straight into despair there is the way this trap feels more permanent than the other ones, graver and hungrier. But if you squint (I am trying to squint) through the pitch and crumbling systems, you can see something like anything possible. If you squint, maybe you see sounds like “Thos Moser”, the goo cackle lobbing itself against the walls with extra aplomb, a panoply of future flange and the oldest question that matters: “can I meet you uptown?” It’s just weird enough to make you want to hang out with people, however possible; just love enough to think that this might be how we get through this year and then the next.
[9]
Taylor Alatorre: This score is actually supposed to be a [10], but the 0 got eaten by the Pac-Man computer virus, also known as the cursed emoji Xok. It is presumed unrecoverable.
[1]