#7 - saya - "blood school" / sprinks - "Paradox"
You know you’re getting to the good stuff when you hit the realm of SoundCloud users with hieroglyphic text in their names. The mysterious bubble around saya — aka “saya #cc ᏲᎥᎴᎿᏫᏒᎥᎯႶ akaꔫSayako ☆ﾟelfaction” — and the groups they’re affiliated with (canteen collective, #elfaction, MAGENTADREAMLAND?) feels like a parallel society where cloud rap was the first genre ever invented and the pop charts thrum with video game soundtracks and kitschy elevator music. Their prolific catalog brings to mind a tropical resort in the year 2039: cyborg butlers swiftly ferrying trays of frozen margaritas to jacuzzis floating in the clouds; unnaturally healthy trees flanking trails that light up with every step. The vocals radiate elation in a smushed incoherent way that feels like dystopian ad fodder; the instrumentals belong in a coming-of-age anime.
“blood school” could be the tragic fall of this futuretopia: saya’s melodies spin out into a gleaming meltdown of Auto-Tuned regrets. One of the coolest things about niche internet music is the intertextuality - it’s like the outside world of rock and pop doesn’t exist to these artists: Dariacore DJs pluck samples from digicore singers; hexD remixers morph mutant rap into shoegaze fuzz. They have their own insular canon. On “blood school,” saya flipped a piano piece from a tiny account with 200 followers into a poignant intro that tees up the song’s chaotic turn.
Fellow deep-web denizen sprinks stepped outside the internet music canon for a more daring sample trick on “Paradox.” It rewires Mareux’s eerie coldwave megahit “The Perfect Girl,” which is itself a cover of The Cure’s 1987 song of the same name. In sprinks’ edit, all the seductive slowness has been excised in favor of apocalyptic synth-strobes. I wish they made a video for the track; their clips are like if Voldemort made skater edits, spasming with witchy flashes and disorienting angles.
A bonus: I can’t tell if 7Nightz’ “Nightz_ᏕᏂᏋ ᏝᏋᏖ ᎧᏬᏖ Ꮧ ᏝᏗᏬᎶᏂ ᏗᏕ ᎥᎥᎥ ᎧᏉᏋᏒᎴᎧᏕᏋᎴ, ᏕᏂᏋ ᏠᏬᏕᏖ ᏕᏖᎧᎧᎴ ᏖᏂᏋᏒᏋ”—someone boot up the Venutian translator—is goofy or genius. It’s one of the most bizarrely entrancing things I’ve heard in a year of extremely madcap music. After submerging you in a dreamily washed-out 80s beat, 7Nightz begins moaning with heavy reverb and a chorus of sampled background moans (“this hentai so gud,” someone wrote). Then he starts crying about feeling like he can never be himself. Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” cuts in behind him and its yearning nostalgia sounds weirdly perfect. The effect is like a kind of demented mural, a composite of timelines collapsing into a montage of clumsy sadness. It’s the last song 7Nightz posted before they disappeared seven months ago.
The list:
#10 - bar italia - "Missus Morality" / "maddington" (tie)