I’m old enough and jaded enough re: music that 99.9% of all new so called experimental artists on the scene over the last 10+ years have bored the ever-living stuffing out of me. Not so with GARCY420. He has put out a few singles and matching video arrangements that are all of utterly fantastic in their diversity to the norm. I’ve heard a great deal of experimental music in my time, and I have heard a lot of totally inappropriate and misleading adjectives applied to certain releases.
What attracts me most to GARCY420’s music is its quaint immediacy. On the recording, his songs are all solid but fragmented and distilled pop structures of electronic bent. He knows exactly what he’s doing as a creator of great melodic fragments and upbeat pop and dance riffs. While most of his stuff reveals a distinct digital influence, heck, there is a stench of real instruments too.
This is what makes GARCY420 material so accessible despite the sonic claptrap. Unlike so many experimental musicians, He starts with a solid, intensely stripped-down melodic and harmonic foundation. The finished product is then reconstructed and deconstructed with all manner of noises both digital and organic. It reminds me a lot of Prince’s most successful experiments with stripping down funk arrangements to their barest elements.
The main difference: In the case of some Prince’s song your mind is left to fill in all the arrangement’s empty spaces, and that’s exactly what makes it work so well. In the case of so many of GARCY420’s songs, your mind is occupied trying to figure out what the song was supposed to sound like in the face of an onslaught of samples and treated noises taking the expected elements’ place… that’s exactly what makes GARCY420’s music work so well.
This is why GARCY420 has got it going on, with his latest track “Bitter Break Up”. He can write a song that the average layperson can immediately hang their hat on, and then turn it into genuine art by drastically cutting up the sonic surface without damaging the song’s all-important innards.
Unlike so many experimental musicians, he also clearly knows the value of simple structure and motivic economy, and recognizes the dangers of self-absorption and taking oneself far too seriously.
You have to listen carefully to “Bitter Break Up” with a knowledgeable ear to recognize the amount of effort and creativity entailed. It seems completely spontaneous, wonderfully casual, and filled with absolutely brilliant life and sonic invention from end to end.
This recording has virtually all mid-range and treble to the fore and a deep bass bubbling under, from start to end, with the individual sonic elements compressed to the point of unrelenting harshness on a revealing set of speakers or phones. Here you can experience all of the crazy digital detail and impact that is in this high energy dance track.
OFFICIAL LINKS: WEBSITE – YOUTUBE – SOUNDCLOUD
