Review of More Retro Tech Fetishism For The Algorithm by LickNand

An album which uses old sample packs from the 90's found on archive.org mostly. Trying again to master production techniques to make things sound lofi but in very specific and accurate ways, using subtle clipping and emulation of poor quality speakers, tape saturation etc - but combining this with some layers which are "clean" to give it a new sound.

Despite the very normal musical content, this style of cybergrunge is nevertheless influenced by the concept of "noise music" or "music of noises" - using the timbre and texture of instruments and tracks as an equally or even more important element of the music than melody or rhythm etc. The melodies of the album are designed to be as unremarkable and boilerplate as possible, so that more attention can be paid to the timbre and atmosphere.

Most of it is pretty cheesy ambient stuff, although there are more "punk" tracks like the fast paced atonal stupidity of awwer33wer3wer.wav and Horse5, the rough beats on Chronicle7 and Magic2, as well as the aggressively-strange psychedelia of Eat11.

Reveiw of First Blood by Stay Well Forever

The alternate-reality shoegaze project of LickNand, Stay Well Forever is a fictional band. The album features vocals by Vocaloid Luka on the opening self-titled track, as well as very drowned out vocals by Ellie Voyyd on Slumber Project, with a slow piano and guitar barely audible from degraded sound, like it is being played from a boombox in an abandoned subway station.

The track Seeyou continues the vibe of lofi reverberated minimalism. The overall project is to sound like a one-off mid 2000's netlabel release that languished in obscurity. Tracks like Ill Forever and Shattered Face bring a more punk influence, while the track Ermine has an inexplicable and jarring IDM breakdown part with sampled vocals stuttering behind the wall of guitar.

The album concludes with the slow-motion hypnagogia of Carry On followed by one last wall of sound in the untitled closing track.Overall the album was an experiment in making laptop shoegaze that went pretty well.

Review of The Grudge Part 4: Potemkin by LickNand

A very chill cybergrunge album, which is not as pretentious and just overall pretty good stuff. Very good lofi textures throughout, often pushing lofi to just the exact point where it is nearly unbearable and unlistenable, but not over the cliff, and with melodies and beats which make one want to continue listening despite the raspy, degraded quality.

Cybergrunge00 is a beautiful Com Truise type track, but heavily degraded and lofi to the point of being an aural sneer at hi-fi snobs and producers. The Opening track fopen(); has a beat that is good, head nodding while exploring a videogame world most likely.

The tracks MDMA and Temporal Grunge most embody the cybergrunge sound - a distinct old-school kind of sound while using strange new compositional methods - the cybergrunge sound is often a bit like a parallel-universe version of existing genres or musical styles:

for isntant the track Turing Tarpit poses the question "what if, in an alternate timeline, dubstep remained a completely non-radio-friendly, ugly, freakish and somewhat scary underground genre?" or with the track Dugin contemplating what it would sound like if Atari Teenage Riot had taken their influence not from hardcore punk but Stoner Crust metal - a recurring stylistic motif in a lot of cybergrunge, that is - crossover genres which are "impossible", that is to say, fusion genres which could never exist in any conceivable timeline.

except for the LickNand-Voyyd-cybergrunge timeline.

Reveiw of Hubris by LickNand

The album opens with a track called "Antihyperflop", which seems to be a Modern Classical serialist composition with a crappy lofi acid loop on one channel. The opening then of the album is weird. It should feel like a OPN-style exploratory meandering hypergrunge "jam" by AI recycling the music of planet Earth.

Less remarkable or interesting are the normal breakcore tracks, Breakcore Vault Mix [7:59] and Gut Punching Gurus Megamix [12:03] the latter of which especially encapsulates a hyperpunk vibe with the style of the inexperienced "producer", with barely any midrange and over-compressed high and lows throughout the mix.

Mortalscript++ also features the atonal modern-classical at times with a junky guitar solo that makes no sense. To seal up the weird "hyper-punk", a track of very strange atonal violin dubstep on Hop-Flipping Over the Haxor Docks contains multifarious genres wrapped up with a brostep synth and nauseating FM Synth leading into a dreamy pad which still maintains a certain gut-wrenching, or even a wretching, dry-heaving type beat.

Further unremarkable but satisfying tracks like 99 Years follow, Golden Stallions out of place comforting and emotive, forlorned ambient which is followed by a closing track, Network Administration, which is an alternate-universe version of Dungeonsynth using slow reverbed drums and a long meandering eastern european drone/solo.