I can shamelessly admit that I've probably spent the better half of my life in front of a computer screen, and nearly all of that time was spent being on the internet. I could probably write an entire thesis about how the internet has become this seemingly organic, complex, and grandeur entity of its own. Despite it being the product of ordinary and not-so ordinary people, the internet is something unlike many of the typical expressions of the human condition. And this is because the internet is where the human condition goes to exert and challenge itself to the most extreme and deepest ends. Like an underground fighting club designated to be a form of psycho-therapy for spiritually lost young men, the internet is where people demonstrate their true form, more or less.
So naturally, there's been more than enough music releases that encompass the atmosphere that the internet harbors, and the broader outside world that has evolved around it. Because let's face it, the internet and the plethora of subcultures that manifest it have become quite prominent in our development as a society and culture. The same can be said about the very art that is utilized to express this development.
One album in particular that instantly comes to my mind when thinking about the ever growing cyberpunk culture in our society, along side the brutal and unforgiving industrial hip-hop album No Love Deep Web by Death Grips, is the severely underrated electropop album, Taki 183 by French electronic artist, DyE. He is a solo artist whose real name is Juan de Guillebon. I was unable to obtain any relevant information about him or anything about the two albums he's ever released on an indie label. But despite DyE's ghost like status in the music world, and the meme-like quality that the lead single has had on internet culture, this album is surprisingly a lot better than I was hoping it was going to be when I decided to give it a try.
Let me begin by getting out the way the most popular, and more than likely, the only song anybody might know from this album, "Fantasy". This song is driven off a simple keyboard riff that softly plays in the background that is accompanied by a beat set at a slow tempo. I'm not exactly sure if DyE himself does the vocals for the album or if he features unaccredited people on certain songs. Either way, the song's lyrics are relatively abstract and the melody itself follows a wavy and reverb wall of sound indicating the vocals or the lyrics are not the focal point of the song, but rather just another instrumental aspect to it. As I mentioned earlier, you may already know the song because, just like me, you stumbled upon its infamous music video one day on YouTube when it was trending or a friend sent it to you hoping you would be grossed out by the video's content. While I was a little shocked when I first viewed the video myself, I wasn't turned off by the music as I realized that the soft and dreamlike quality to "Fantasy" was deliberately meant to be juxtaposed against the extremely violent and horrific anime sequence being presented before the viewer. This is something DyE has done with several other of his low-budget music videos.
The rest of the album is actually quite versatile and unpredictable as it fluctuates extensively between its electropop and techno influences. It almost seems as though DyE composed the album with the intention that he didn't want any two songs to sound exactly alike, and he effortlessly achieves this objective. Each song on the album encompasses a specific mood and atmosphere that is exclusive to that particular song. The opener "Nike", introduces the album with a happy go-lucky track that utilizes a loud and fuzzy keyboard riff that bounces endlessly with a beat that'll make you want to smile. "Hole In Ocean" is more reminiscent to a traditional ambient track with an alluring beat and deep bass line with vocals that seem to want to take the listener to sleep. The most ominous track on the album, appropriately titled "Vader", is a track that I feel like is the epitome of a cyberpunk song, if a song could really sound as such. It's menacing, scratchy, and immensely noisy as blips of distortion and slight feed-back make me feel like its the year 2032 and I'm a shut-in hacker living the "high tech, low life".
The rest of the songs on the album generally seem to serve as wonderful background music for a multitude of occasions. Driving around town late at night, passing by the endless stream of cars on the highway, billboards for ads you don't care about, and neon lights for shady places. Or occasions like staying up late on your favorite website, connecting with people you've never seen in person but feel closer to them than you do with people you encounter in real life on a daily basis.
But despite all the upsides to the album, there are of course some downsides I need to address. The album can seem a little underwhelming at first, especially if you're not necessarily into slower electronic music, or if you only care about singles and not really albums as a whole. The album can also appear boring after a while, so then it becomes more of a nostalgia piece that's only good to listen to maybe every couple of weeks, if not months. Or it could be the down right gigantic disappointment that is the God-awful title track that sticks out like a sore thumb. That track is so underwhelming that it honestly just feels like someone trying to imitate DyE, rather than DyE himself just making a bad track.
I will admit that this album isn't for everyone but it's definitely impressive enough to be labeled as a "hidden gem" as the only way to find out about it it seems, is through random blogs (like mine), screenshots of songs posted on social media, or somehow finding out about the music video for "Fantasy". I guess what I'm also trying to say is that Taki 183 has become like this personal cult classic for myself and the people who I try to show it to. But given that it's been about 5 years since it first came out, it might never gain any more momentum than it has already, but I'm sure DyE is okay with this, seeing as he still had enough motivation to release the follow up to his debut, Cocktail Citron, just two years ago. And believe me, it's just as eccentric as Taki.
Overall: 7.2 out of 10
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