The first mistake one might make when approaching 100 Gecs is taking them too seriously. Seriously, don’t. Understandably, this has become a lot more difficult given their meteoric rise and the establishment of Dylan Brady and Laura Les as hyperpop tastemakers, thrust upon them following the release of their seminal 1000 Gecs. With their “if SOPHIE and Hudson Mohawke produced for 3OH3!” sonic aesthetic, 100 Gecs have largely been responsible for driving hyperpop in its current direction, as heard in the music of Dorian Electra or Rebecca Black. Their sophomore album, 10,000 Gecs, has been one of the most eagerly anticipated in recent memory, though details on the album itself have been elusive. Singles mememe and Doritos & Fritos would be our first and only clues into where the duo would be heading, and for all accounts it appeared more satirical than ever before. It makes sense. With 100 Gecs, Brady and Les chose to assume the role of jesters in the pop landscape. Their wry irony and dry humour would shine a light on the absurdity of the pop machine and internet culture that birthed them, with their reliance on overwhelming maximalism acting as potent capitalist commentary on pop music itself. Perhaps more so than anyone else, 100 Gecs is entirely a product of the zeitgeist. They occupy a position as conduits of chaos, cultural whistleblowers on the vapidness of the industry. Though after 1000 Gecs’s success, it’s plausible that they saw themselves begin to assimilate into the system they had vowed to rage against. Arguably, the critical success of 1000 Gecs and its placement on almost every “Best of 2019” list would have led to a reckoning for Brady and Les. It would seem they had begun to ask the question: who is 100 Gecs, really? The apparent answer isn’t all that surprising: they’re a bit of a joke.
Download and stream Snake Eyes here
Snake Eyes, a three track EP surprise dropped with the official announcement of 10,000 Gec’s release date, is a testament to this agenda. The music here runs for about six minutes in total, and takes shape as ridiculously bawdy, messy concoctions that function in the name of bad taste. On Torture Me, they enlist Skrillex. The irony is lost on no one. While the producer has worked hard on pivoting his image over the past decade, his inclusion here is a throwback to his days as dancefloor disruptor, the ultimate purveyor of broish humour and low-brow dance music. With its brosteppy future bass breakdowns, Torture Me is gratingly loud and rambunctious, a reminder of the origins of 100 Gecs’s entire creative point of view. The Beastie Boys dubstep-punk of Hey Big Man combines chugging guitars with walls of distorted bass and dumb as shit lyrics like “went to a party and I did a human centipede,” while Runaway plays on the emo-punk emotionality of Avril Lavigne’s My Happy Ending or aunty of Owl City’s attempts at profoundness. Snake Eyes as a whole is an exercise in the politics of bad taste, one that exists specifically to remind us why 100 Gecs exists in the first place. It’s a reclamation of their creative integrity. Knowing that critics are currently watching their every move, it’s genius. A realignment of the artist to the manifesto, Snake Eyes is a necessary mnemonic device in preparation for whatever 10,000 Gecs is going to throw at us. If we had to guess, we’d say it’s going to be obnoxious as hell, an exodus of 100 Gecs’s status as critical darlings and their arrival as this generation’s punk icons. We, for one, are so here for the mess.
Listen to Hey Big Man from Snake Eyes below.
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