Quadeca

So.. the algorithm served me this guy called Quadeca one night and he had apparently just dropped a new album, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper that was making the rounds and people were stoked about.. So.. i listened in the dead quiet of my house one night after a workout and was ABSOLUTELY FLOORED. I stayed up extra late to even do a re-listen after my first listen-through. Like, a true genre-bender… hip-hop to neo-psychedlia, alternative R&B, pop, bossa nova, .. like,… it’s all there. Just about the start of every song from that album had my brain kinda saying.. well this is interesting i guess i’ll keep listening and then by the end, I realized I was truly bopping my head to the music and thoroughly enjoying the ride I was being taken on (waging war is a such a perfect example of it). It happened track, after track, after track. I can’t describe his stuff… you just have to listen to it.. 

And then only to learn HE MADE AN ENTIRE ALBUM TO REPRESENT EVERY SINGLE SONG?? 

Okay, so consider me impressed enough to start going back and listening to his stuff… ONLY to learn that he started as a YouTube rapper in like 2016 – the KSI diss track era, freestyles, that whole ecosystem. THIS is his biggest hit..? Come on…

So, like, easy to dismiss as “internet rapper makes beats in his bedroom,” except… he actually WAS making beats in his bedroom, and those beats got REALLY fucking good when he went full experimental hip-hop/art pop and basically said “yeah, forget everything you thought you knew about me.” It’s like if Earl Sweatshirt, Bon Iver, and Radiohead’s Kid A got locked in a studio together and just continued to craft stuff… what typically starts with haunting sample manipulation, builds into this absolutely gorgeous wall of sound, with vocals buried and warped like he’s transmitting from another dimension until it reaches into ambient/post-rock territory. It’s legitimately experimental without being inaccessible.??

It’s cool. I hope you dig it as much as my brain did.