On Repeat: Koreless Is Toying With All Of Us In Joy Squad
Tristan Young @talltristan
Naming a track Joy Squad implies either a riotous and jovial pop outing or something far more obviously Orwellian in its ironic annexing of a nominally pleasant term. In the case of Glasgow-based producer Koreless, it’s undeniably the latter. The track immediately aims to overwhelm with inception style blares that wash over with a prickly granularity, but are no less encompassing because of it. As the second line of frazzled and decayed synth come in the cinematic parallels become unavoidable as the sequence recalls the most ominous musical moments of Blade Runner. Things take a curious turn for intrigue however with an unnatural precipitation of plummeting low end keys, permeating the track to the point where it might be something akin to a melody forming. Joy Squad begins to truly come alive with a fractured scattering of digitized hums and yelps. The song revels and leans so convincingly into the unmitigated unnaturalness of it all, priding itself on its near hauntingly synthetic nature. Embedded within the schizophrenia of the randomized synth that perpetually bottoms out and the twitchy delirium of the faux human vocals is a tone that is comfortably situated between menacing and taunting. That sense of mercurial dread reaches a cursed crescendo when the static viscera of the more momentous synth briefly synchronizes with that of the mini drops and synthesized vocals, into a swell of malice whose playful edge dissolves under the weight of impending doom. The peculiar hostility of it is so asymmetrical that it’s almost hard to pick up on beyond a slight sense of destabilizing disorientation, but that’s what makes the track so effective. It can unmoor you from your conventional observational prowess in regards to where intrigue, anxiety, and animosity intersect and overlap. The components then partly fade away leaving only the unnerving key drops that begin to modulate more and more, eschewing what little schematic structure they were adhering to as if the track was melting. It almost seems like we are being toyed with as the song sheepishly subtracts all of its instrumentals, only for them to rush back once more with a flood of everything all at once. It’s melodically engaging as hell, seducing you with a kind of pernicious hypnosis that you can’t help but be rhythmically manipulated by. It ensures that one of the most subtly oppressive electronic tracks of 2021 is also one of the best.