GutterPutter

Hip hop itself is a genre that I find myself struggling to listen to in regard to finding one album that sticks out well above all of the other crops. These days, most artists either tried to follow through the noisy, ruthless footsteps with varied success, enter electric territory with little samples, or peep into the same-old-same-old jazz & boom bap aesthetics. It’s not as if there’s anything inherently wrong with them, but the allure can run dry if the bars consist of just ego-stroking claims & socio-political hearsay without much ‘thoroughness’ (as in, a singular pivotal notion around the community) being put into the writing. rural internet, made up of zombAe, Charlotte Crosby, & doin’ fine, aren’t one of those kinds of act with their LGBT+ focus & a highly vibrant set of influences that earns them a humble following. escape room is their latest outing from September 22 & while there are some points to nit-pick & critique, the overall final project is one that is quite hard to forget after numerous listens.

Consider for example the zany inclusion of the baroque horns with the trap drumbeats in ‘i am not brave’ with the angsty verse from zombAe around the need to speak out. doin’ fine rapping about her fears around the lack of trans female representation makes for an affecting piece for fans from all angles to enjoy or emote. In just under 6 minutes, the trio had fit in a lot of musical compartments that, while its liberal expansion might backfire very now & then, it mostly lands in ways that you don’t expect it. Expect that to become a common pattern in the whole album as song structure might as well be close to being abstract. Fans of the likes of the Unicorns might find here a volatile source that’s nice enough to expand their musical taste to as for all the abrasive sounds, the primarily linear song structure makes for one fun ride to hop in.

‘zipper’ dominates in its bombastic beats that is reminiscent of the Neptunes, yet the very glitchy production delineates the similarity & shifts the typical structure with an abrupt screaming vocal within the screeching noise. ‘time’ has a chorus that sounds like it’s out of s 2010s’ hit girl band single, yet the absence of the perfectly fitting pitch and the mixing makes for a very claustrophobic listen. ‘iron lung’ has its rockier direction in conjunction with the drum-and-bass rhythm, ‘bubbles’ has its wonkily glitchy samples in sync with folk instrumentals, ‘anymore’ even has a sprinkle of twinkly synths like a new-wave song before a power-pop hook with a lo-fi mic for extra haziness. The whole album is just as informed by the unpredictability of hyperpop as it does with progressive rapping.

The diversity in the vocal delivery and flow ranges from monotonic cloud-rap delivery in ‘spikes’, to the squeaky exaggerated autotune in ‘charlotte’, to the triplet flow alike to Migos in ‘luca’. Vocoded rapping & singing can also be found in ‘rapture’ as the line between natural acoustic instrumentation blurred with the rapid-pace rapping. ‘vriska’ sees the electronics being warped in its sound to capture the utmost mania of doin’ fine delivering verses around her anxiety of loneliness through internet culture. The risk in the references made to Homestruck & Danganronpa in the last song is indicative of how even with the expansive, memetic focus of hyperpop that escape room had clearly taken notes from, they can slip past anyone’s attention. I do admit that I’m one of those kinds of people as I barely follow the web comic & the video game at all.

If there is one track that I think is wholly deserving of all the praises in the world, it’s the title track right in the end which ties all the musical experimentation & themes into one big odyssey. It can shift from the chiming plucks of the mandolin to aggressive hard pop punk in a flick of a switch as zombAe raps about censorship, murder, & greed. What should come off as being insanity on paper executes quite well on paper with the extra verses from Charlotte Cosby & doin’ fine about paranoia & identity respectively. When that passes, the labyrinthic approach to songwriting shows its wings once more as the banjo peers through with Crosby rapping about taking revenge on all the abusers in the world. Another change once more with a cacophonic wave of horns, the next two parts leads to the notion of getting out of the whole escapism desire from doin’ fine & zombAe. Yet, while doin’ fine expresses the goal to tear down the hierarchy to satisfy her freedom without any objectification, zombAe’s verse is one of resignation even if they do want to take vengeance. With a dark ending, the whole album fades into sampled snippets of interviews & comments before the blaring instrumentals have come to the close.

Where do I end off on escape room? It’s an album that, to me, sits between the noisy, transgressive kind of hip hop like Death Grips & the diversity of hyperpop that you may well understand by now. It might have a postmodern kind of feel to it in its reference to both the gaming community & internet culture, its middle-fingered gesture against conventional songwriting, & its malaise at how society works. The whole listening experience can feel like a fanciful roller coaster ride put into an oral perspective; there is only pure speed that whizzes through a conglomeration of many different sites of interest. It might be one that I actually enjoy a lot as a matter of fact & I would’ve rated it higher. The extravagant layers of production & genre influence however can come off as being overwhelming even by my taste & can thus hinder the trio from becoming one of underground rap’s definitive up-&-comers. Nevertheless, I’m interested to see where they’ll go on to next & wherever they’ll double down on either one of the two most well-accented genres of this record.