Mateo Rispoli has flagged up ‘Hex Dealer’ which is Partisan Records debut from New York electronic punk band Lip Critic. The album, which dropped on 17th May, Mateo informs us that it represents an evolution of the eclectic style that the group began cultivating on their earlier projects and was produced in collaboration by vocalist Bret Kaser and Connor Kleitz. The album is a raw patchwork of iPhone recordings, free VST samplers and synths – sounds that have been maximised beyond their limits, like a chorus of bass-boosted Windex bottles spraying in unison, or a washing machine filled with coins on the spin cycle. Drummers Danny Eberle and Ilan Natter combine breakbeats and pingy snares with heavy cymbal and tom work, creating a singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles. The end result is 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future.
From the monochrome desperation of opener ‘It’s The Magic’, to the hopeful arpeggios of ‘The Heart’, and the junglist lament of ‘Death Lurking’ (ft. Izzy Da Fonseca), ‘Hex Dealer’ is painted with a broad palette of only the most extreme hues of emotion, each marked by a distinctive danceable mania. “We felt like this record was heading towards having our bleakest, darkest tracks, and our most colourful and ecstatic tracks,” says Kaser.
Defined by their frenetic live performances, Lip Critic doesn’t fit neatly into any scene. Their shows are known for their freewheeling experimentation, anchored by the caustic chemistry of drummers Natter and Eberle, who play facing one another with Kaser and Kleitz on samplers in the middle. The environment is something like a f*cked-up rave that a bunch of hardcore kids and punks showed up to. Lip Critic borrows from so many different places that they cease to resemble any of them at all.
‘Hex Dealer’ is a rare album that manages to maintain an air of theatricality for the duration of its runtime without ever feeling contrived. Slipping in and out of radio advertisement-style excitement, downtrodden crooning, and hardcore shouts and growls, every line sounds like it’s being delivered by a cult leader who has occupied the announcer’s booth at a football stadium and refuses to come out. It’s a self-assured fever that exists completely outside of the thematic paranoia that defines so much of modern experimental music.
A project of wide-reaching sonic and thematic curiosity, above all ‘Hex Dealer’ is an inquisition into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption. Lip Critic want to know if there’s anything new left to feel under the pleasure dome; if the words of the man on the soap box are sincere or if he’s just selling the same thing that’s always been sold. The album’s lyrics often focus on the body, ways in which our internal functions can combine with outside objects to solve problems of the soul: putting blood in a printer to live twice, an HDMI cord attached at the stomach that reaches to the heavens. Their most conclusive statement comes in the chorus of the album closer, ‘Toxin Dodger’ – “There is no love that fills me; Only the things that thrill me”.
Lip Critic have announced that they will be heading across to Europe and the UK next month in order to play 24 gigs in support of ‘Hex Dealer’. Thankfully one of these dates will be here in Brighton on Monday 2nd September where they will be performing at Dust in East Street. Tickets for this concert are on sale now and can be purchased HERE. All of the tour dates and tickets can be located HERE.
