100 gecs courtesy of Skullcandy
If I was to guess 20 years ago what music would sound like after the apocalypse I would have probably described something like 100 gecs. That is not meant as an insult. This Midwest duo combines keen pop instincts with a saboteur’s willingness to see where technology can put a glitch in the matrix. If you liked the combination of danceable beats, poppy vocals and heavy-metal guitar riffs that, say, Brooklyn’s Sleigh Bells provided in the last decade, and you wondered what would happen if artificial intelligence got a hold of that formula, 100 gecs have an answer.
Performing as 100 gecs since 2015, Dylan Brady and Laura Les really arrived with their 2019 debut album: “1000 Gecs” was unlike anything else, at times sounding like a record played at the wrong rpm. But both audiences and critics fell for it.
This year’s sophomore album multiplies everything by 10 — not just with the title, “10000 Gecs,” but by making things even more zeitgeist-y and of this short attention span era. Only two of the ten songs pass three minutes, and if you don’t like one genre they’re speedily experimenting with, another is quick to follow.
Les told The Guardian about the thinking behind one noticeable change between albums: less Auto-Tune on her voice, after the pitch-bending cyborgian software so omnipresent in pop was such a big part of the first record. “I’m not a very good singer,” she said, “so I generally haven’t tried to sing without manipulating my voice a whole bunch. But on this one I wanted to do less of that and I like it. I don’t like having to rely on a tool every time I want to do something.”
Footage of the pair performing in concerts has them bouncing around stage using voice modulators as they perform an ode to junk food, “Doritos & Fritos,” or pump-faking their audience by slowing things down for a brief moment on “I Got My Tooth Removed” before accelerating into a novelty ska song. Welcome to their hyperpop world.
100 gecs and Machine Girl perform 7pm Wednesday, May 10 at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale. 100gecs.com ~ David Rolland
