SEARCH FOR: ANGELUS

I always talk about how producers deserve so much more recognition for the sonic landscapes that they bring to life, and I think that this should be even more so emphasized in the world of hip-hop. Beatsmiths like Zetra, Glasear, angelus, kimj, vvspipes, umru, and literally countless others have been pushing past all of the boundaries that the music business once had in place to create some of the most distinctive and out of this world sounds just so that the emcees they work with can push the limit as well, and I think that this is something that can never go overshadowed. As for Whethan, he evades the hyperpop label because he is a producer who can do so much more, but the fact that he is able to include hints of this subgenre alongside so many other styles of music makes him one of the most talented hitmakers in the entire scene, at least in my own personal opinion. After working with many different artists, Whethan has become a staple on my playlist and his latest song “COMPLICATED” with aldn and 8485 is just another track that I instantly added as soon as I listened. The instrumental is …

angelus is someone who has truly changed the way I look at music, both from a writer’s perspective and from a listener’s perspective. Even though they are still in the prime of their teenage years, they just seem to be a sponge who absorbs knowledge and skills from all sorts of different influences, and not a single one of these musical inspirations can be pinpointed as a bite or a mimic. Instead, they almost use their inspirations as a sort of challenge to push their music beyond its limits and ge4t out of their comfort zone, and the results have not only furthered their own career immensely, but it has also furthered the careers of many other hyperpop and digicore friends that angelus works with as regularly as possible. Now, I have to praise Overcast because I always do when I write about one of their videos, and the fact that they have their hands on the pulse of the most intriguing new artists never fails to impress me, so you knew that I had to write about their latest video for angelus’ song “paradise” that dropped right before the weekend hit. Obviously, Daniel Jordan K directed this movie, and …

This year we have seen a great number of artists rise up from the undergrounds built on discord and take over the mainstream in a major way. If you’re not somebody who has tapped in with the genre known loosely as hyperpop or digicore up until now, there’s no doubt you’ve heard its influence across all popular genres. One standout from this scene is angelus, who has always been at the forefront of the boundary-pushing genre that continues to blossom. Being an artist who never felt like they fit in their surroundings, the community built online over the last year has allowed artists to flourish in ways that weren’t previously available. If one thing is clear, it’s that angelus is unapologetically themselves and this shines through everything they create. Back at the start of 2020, I covered angelus as being a unique voice with an immaculate ability for production. Since then, they’ve only continued to evolve into the beast we see today. At only 17 years old, angelus has already shown a lot of what they’re capable of by proving they’re one of the focal points in a groundbreaking new genre. The past year has seen the genre grow from …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by IllustratorFile Maple: PLASTIC SURGEON If online music’s limitless boundaries were to symbolize any single notion in regards to its own working status, it would have to be the fact that there’s no such thing as “too much” anymore. Today’s online acts are able to freely string together as many genres, scenes, and collaborative showcases as they’d like, and if the product is resounding enough, nuanced enough, or just downright effective as a standalone creation, it becomes yet another contributing piece of evidence to the above belief as it is.  I could go on and on about the pure and utter freedom of the online music world, but that would be pretty damn boring after a while (even that intro paragraph… pretty boring, yeah?). So just like with most, if not all forms of art, it’s always better to show, not tell. And fittingly enough, resident super-producer and all-around musical exhibitionist Maple just dropped an all-encompassing project that does a lengthy amount of showing… 20 tracks worth of showing, that is.  PLASTIC SURGEON is an hour-long romp through just …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by 5outho (For Curiosity Shop) Fresh Reflection: Curiosity Shop’s “Hidden Meadow” Event Curiosity Shop, one of the most premier progressive electronic music collectives on the rise today, celebrated its first anniversary this weekend by hosting its Hidden Meadow event on Twitch. The event – organized by Curiosity Shop’s founder and leading artist Cole Longanecker alongside other members of the collective – showcased a number of strung-together mixes of all things dance and electronica, past and present alike, both through the sounds of their mixes and the visuals that were artfully paired with them. All of these performances followed Curiosity Shop’s primitive 3D-graphic centered ethos through aesthetics, sounds, and styles all the same — altogether creating an unforgettable experience not just for its remarkable content and sheer quality of the performances themselves, but also for their equally masterful visual cues that were either made by the artists in their own right, or done by any number of the fantastic designers that lent their work to the show. The simple fact that the collective was able to showcase such telling artistic …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Parent Company “Prying Eyes” Is A Natural Next Step For Tropes Even in scenes as dynamic and diverse as digicore has shaped up to be, certain commonalities between its artist-base are all-too-prevalent. Among this scene’s most standout shared traits is its artists’ willingness to explore any and all creative outlooks in regards to their career progression; from incorporating new sounds and styles into their sonic approach, to simply taking on a “fluid” artistic development with no set structure overall, these artists are finding solace in consistent artistic exploration from all avenues.  Following suit in this light is PlanetZero and Graveem1nd mainstay Tropes, who surprised just about everyone this past week with their out-of-the-blue release “Prying Eyes.” The 4-track EP takes a full dive into the worlds of alternative, punk-centric pop — fit with guitar-centric song structures, deeply personalized themes, and other traits consistent with this particular approach.  Produced entirely by easily their closest and most trusted contemporary dltzk, it’s a project that impresses beyond its explorative traits in full. The pure quality that these two bring in this …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Main Cover by Brixton Yorker // Special Cover by ddertbag Editor’s Note I feel as though it’s important that I acknowledge why this week’s column is slightly different. This is a special edition of “Get Refreshed” where – aside from the below trio of notable releases I intended on highlighting before the present news hit – I take a backseat and let the people whose voices are most important to the week’s online music discourse be focused on and listened to as they deservingly should.  Those voices come in the form of past and present members of the integral, impactful, and illustrious online music collective called Bloodhounds — the aforementioned news surrounding the group being the sudden and shocking announcement of its conclusion this past Wednesday. As one will see by the end of this piece, the amount of space I’ve reserved for reflecting on and chronicling the legacy of the digicore-purveying collective is entirely appropriate given just how remarkable their legacy has been and forever will be in regards to the continuing era of online music.  Below these few …

In a landscape that likes to flaunt its sense of individuality across its cast of talents – for good reason – there are more than a few acts who seem to have an influence on just about everyone. Saturn is absolutely one of those select few artists who can lay claim to such a title, paving the way as far as vocal delivery and lyrical thematics are concerned within the growing online music scene.  Their efforts have been cemented in stone up to this point, but that surely is not enough to satisfy such a prolific and progressive act like they are. Continuing to develop their sound and overall artistic approach alike as more and more tracks come to light, they are proving their status as among the most gifted and inevitable superstars of that aforementioned landscape each and every trip.  In saying this, it is no surprise that a new project from them is in the works moving into the new year; seven songs are on their way from the influential figure, and the excitement for what is to come could not be any higher from those in the know. That fact becomes exponentially more apparent when taking a …

10. Typo – Kuru My insecurities with recency bias are unfortunately forcing me to place this song at the bottom of the list, but if I wasn’t so concerned with that it would certainly be placed much higher. Kuru is a prodigy of modern pop music, and though I could’ve picked any number of his singles throughout 2020 for this list, he has never made anything quite like “Typo,” plain and simple. It had to be placed on this list out of respect among anything else. Kuru was able to spin the usually-brash and detail-lacking stylistics of drill music into an atmospheric pop ballad that showcases one of the single best performances from a solely vocal perspective all year. This hook is genuinely unreal — defying all set conventions in order to craft something that will stick in the memories of this entire year as we look back on it in the future. The instrumental carries that exact same demeanor with it as well, just bursting with atmosphere and thematic weight all the same with its soaring synths and aforementioned drill-centric drums. This is a song that is unforgettable in ways that most other tacks couldn’t even comprehend nor at the …

The pressure for rising acts to make a statement in every single musical medium possible as they embark on their rise to prominence has been ever-present throughout the course of history and is still vividly existent today. Impressing on a single-by-single basis is one thing on its own, but it is something entirely different for a promising act to prove themselves in their first-ever project. Building off of this sentiment even more, this situation becomes that much more daunting when one’s rise to prominence is dictated by their rapid release schedule of singles alone, and to burst on a given scene with as much force and talent alike this way, the logical next step would be to take up this task to create something far more ambitious. That situation is exactly where one of the underground’s most recent prodigies in Roxas found himself before releasing his debut EP “Realm Of Light” just a short time ago. The Graveem1nd standout had already cemented his place as one of this year’s most in-demand talents to grace this already-crowded Internet-based scene with a flawless string of singles that all added something new to this limitless talent that we see now — but in …