On Spalarkle (Alys), the first single of her latest LP, Spalarkle, hyperpop-adjacent English producer felicita brought a touch of electroclash to the PC Music palette. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. With the imminent return of indie sleaze on the horizon, felicita’s lo-fi electropunk lends itself nicely to the present moment. This is perhaps most urgent for PC Music who, though once the indisputable purveyors of pop’s future, have been uncharacteristically quiet of late. Though the hyperpop movement can be traced right back to A.G. Cook and his band of misfits, in recent years the style has become most associated with the chaos of its Americanised form in the vein of 100 Gecs or Dorian Electra. Impish burnout rock mutations played on synths instead of six strings, obnoxiously smashed into happy hardcore and brostep. If PC Music were the aloof art freaks, the current hyperpop vanguard are the class clowns. The sophisticated, futurist approach developed by PC Music is no longer hyperpop’s standard, and the label has done little to challenge its current position in the underground pop sphere. This is what makes Spalarkle so timeous. It’s an album that embraces the new direction of pop’s ever moving current, while maintaining PC Music’s stylishness and cool kid enigma.
Download and stream Spalarkle here
felicita, real name Dominik Dvorak, has been one of the label’s more elusive players. Spalarkle is somewhat of a breakout for her, and as a pivot from the sci-fi ambience of 2018’s hej!, feels like Dvorak’s loudest statement yet. Elecroclash and indie sleaze are clear cornerstones, though they’re approached here by way of mind bending psychedelia. On tracks like the bubblegum bass cum fidget house of Cluck, these styles allow for a playful irreverence that echoes the album’s gibberish title, toeing the line between trash and unbridled genius. Riff Raff features OhEm in classic electroclash fashion; speak-singing surreal lyrics about notions of fame and glamour above throbbing tech house. The title track meanwhile, features a vocoded Caroline Polachek and spiky, chugging synth riffs. These sleazy bits are balanced by a handful of tracks that return Dvorak to the spacey ambience of her earlier work. The minimal bleeps of ForeS Hopi provide respite from the onslaught of tracks like the bass-grime of Beast. Spalarkle is remarkably dexterous in this regard, an album that tempers its most batshit moments with moments of introspective pause, necessary given how truly bizarre some of the ideas are here. There’s the aquatic orgasmic two-step of Sex With Anemone, layered with samples of voices making whale noises, or the lyrics of Resistance which swing from “I want my puppy” to the word “marzipan”’ entoned with clerical reverence.
With Spalarkle, you get the sense that Dvorak is attempting to open a portal to a not so distant alternate universe that sits between the fabric of our own. The lead melody of the title track, a giddy, maddening little nursery rhyme of a hook destined to soundtrack a Mad Hatter’s tea party, becomes a repeated motif woven like a spell across the whole of Spalarkle. It’s a refrain used as the key to not only access Dvorak’s acid wonderland, but to leave it. The minimal techno of Exolight Shade whispers it beneath waves of bass and a sledgehammering 4/4 pulse. Compared to the bright eyed and bushy tailed acid drop of Spalarkle’s introduction, it delivers you gently back to reality from the trip – glowing, curious, and still a bit confused.
Listen to Cluck from Spalarkle featuring Kero Kero Bonito below.
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