SEARCH FOR: GET REFRESHED

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by IllustratorFile Full Playlist (2021) Funeral: SUPERPLASTIC Calm, cool, collected, and chaotic. One of these things may not be like the other, but they’re all equally valid descriptors of one Funeral — one of digicore’s longest standing figures throughout the scene’s entire lifespan. Cycling through a cavalcade of sounds and styles while simultaneously fine-tuning their overall artistic presence over the past 2-plus years, the 21-year-old talent has been able to balance those descriptors with perhaps the most nuanced take on hip-hop and pop his scene has yet to feature.  Standout singles like “crash tonight” and “talktome” capped off a resounding 2020 for his career and the scene he sits so sternly on top of; it was a year that set up an even greater one to follow, and now that we’ve arrived at that point, this promised “greatness” has manifested itself in the form of sheer ambition.  With that being said, enter Funeral’s most ambitious release to date: a defining debut full-length album in SUPERPLASTIC. Spanning x tracks held within a brief, yet entirely realized xx minute runtime, this …

“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 Nick D’Apolito and most importantly, quinn is having fun If you think you have any sort of read on quinn’s artistic status, that’s a flat-out lie; the thing is, no one really knows quinn in this sense. Why? Because she genuinely operates on a different plane of existence than the rest of the music world. Each and every new offering is a top-to-bottom cleansing of all assumptions placed on her based on what fans heard last, and because she’s, well… quinn, of course she tops herself with each of these successive releases, no matter the style, no matter the genre, and no matter the approach she takes in confronting whatever it is.  So don’t say you really know quinn as an artist, I certainly don’t. What I do know, however, is that she’s pretty damn good at following her advice. Because her latest single and accompanying video entitled “and most importantly, have fun” is easily her most pleasant and amusing track in a good while, and it absolutely kills as a result of this. Though retaining the crazed, …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Nick D’Apolito Outback + optic core: “dreamcosm” Oh to be as talented as either of these two forces of dance production… it’s a dream that I certainly have without question, but that really doesn’t matter for someone in my position. I can’t even imagine how other full-time dance-based producers must feel when listening to the continued near-flawless work put out by both BetterTogether’s Outback and Eldia’s optic core — it must be hard knowing that the absolute most has to be done in order to top what these two are capable of on their own and in so many different manners at that. Given what’s been said of their respective solo work, the prospect of their combined talents coming together as one would make any fan and/or contemporary alike ecstatic to no end. And with the release of “dreamcosm” – the first single off of the duo’s forthcoming collaborative EP set to drop less than a month from now – consider that idea of a “prospect” to be dead and buried. Instead, pay witness to the expected greatness …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Nick D’Apolito DV-i: “Resonance” With drum and bass still on its gradual journey of increased relevance throughout 2021, the genre has been recently jam-packed with artists both new and old to the approach coming through with some exceptional offerings at a blistering pace. But even though it can be difficult to peer through the mass amount of new content coming out of this style each and every day, it is quite easy to still see the work of a tried and true purveyor of the genre like DV-i shining as bright as it always, always does.  And if for some reason you’ve had trouble identifying such a bright and magnificent star like she is based on her latest output this year, her latest single “Resonance” is practically unable to be ignored once listened to for the first time. I’ll just put it straight; this is without question the best single offering out of the d&b-sphere to release this year, and it even rivals some of DV-i’s most exceptional work beyond just the past few months as well. It’s …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Nick D’Apolito Preface: In Memory of Lucas Foster This column is not the place for mourning, but it certainly is the place for memorializing. So much has been said about the impact of Lucas Foster – a beyond-exceptional writer who suddenly passed away this weekend – by so many others far closer to him; as a longtime admirer of his work, craft, and overall presence in the grander music blogging space, however, I feel as though I have a necessity to extend my greatest gratitude for what he was able to do during his short, yet remarkably resounding life as an equal-parts human being and master of their craft.  Be it subconsciously or direct as can be, reading the work of Lucas whenever I could inspired many of the undertakings I went through in my much more active blogging days. He was the ever-true root that others, and even he himself, grew out of as this online blogging landscape blossomed more and more over time. By extension of this notion, it would be difficult to dispute that anyone …

“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 Fresh Reflection: A Year Later, and How I’m Feeling Now Is Better Than Ever I never thought I’d say this, but let’s ignore “hyperpop discourse” for a moment. You know, the discourse that began in the summer of 2020 and still fervently lingers to this very day. It has made up the majority of this column’s content, the content of my closest working contemporaries, and has cast a cloud of influence over all music discourse and its respective content. It has dominated my life, and it has probably dominated yours, too. And I’d like to forget about it… at least for like 5 minutes or so. Because I want to take us all back to the album that arrived just before all of this discourse truly started to kick off and become as inescapable as it did and still is. Just before all eyes were placed on Charli XCX’s role in making the hyperpop playlist as forcefully influential as it is today, she put out an album that, in the context of everything discussed here, acted …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Parent Company doxia: “hopeouttheroof” The level of admiration I have for someone like doxia is unreal. Every single time they come through with a solo offering, the track never fails to get lodged in my head for weeks on end. It’s honestly something about their gripping, yet soothing inflection combined with just how unorthodox their delivery is that does it for me; these two aspects make for some of the catchiest hooks and even verses alike within the digicore scene and beyond. Their greatness, even in all of its unexplainable tendencies, is just so praiseworthy for being how it is.  Their latest release “hopeouttheroof” of course follows suit, because how could it not? It’s another ridiculously catchy single that sees its repetitive hook utilized in all the best ways possible with its infectious nature. This is another example of just how comfortable the trialx12 mainstay is in their own sound, and they have certainly earned the right at this point to settle in with such a consistently effective approach given how incredibly impressive their body of work is …

“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 …