For a moment in the early 2010s, dubstep was the new delirious sound of the electronic world. Laser-shining cues and side-scene vomit like brostep and riddim took over from the dark, dark British style of the aughts and set the festival circuit on fire. We all know how that ended, but the style never really died, and now kids who grew up on mainstream music from Monstercat and Trap Nation are spewing their own futuristic insanity and calling it dubstep. Perhaps the most exciting new generation producer is Syzy — a master sound designer whose new album, The weight of the worldit's the genre's most intoxicating debut in years.
The California producer has been working in the shadows for a while now, dropping some ear-wrenching EPs and experimenting with crazy side quests in the SoundCloud underworld. They did dariacore mashup oddities and Fried online Jersey club as a member of the anarchist collective TwerkNation28. cult streamer iShowSpeed raptured one of their beats for an infectious viral hit. The weight of the world combines these funny impulses with pristine technical know-how. It's an artful take on a genre often derided as mindless carnage.
These songs feel like you're looking at pixelated constellations, where synth shards sparkle amid dark clouds of bass fog. Syzy stacks the songs' sumptuous intros and outros with vocal chops, hellish crashes and soft ASMR sparkles. Elaborate drops feel less suited to craziness than to pay close attention. “HEART123” sparkles madly, as if a glacier could be stretched like an accordion. The ecstatic climax of “Caught up (in circles)” is like seeing color after a lifetime of monochrome. “Come to your senses!” deftly cranks up the volume and then drops two drops in quick succession: The first is fake, but it's a pump fake compared to the fantastically sweet second, which looks like a monster robot pushing a torrent of neon green bile.
The weight of the world it feels so immersive in part because Syzy had no intention to be purely functional. Instead of dropping macho bass or gritty, the artist references hyperpop and homespun alt-rock (as twikipediaof “seams”) as primary influences on this record's emotionally dizzying sonic palette. The erupting of chattering noise on the intro smacks of Jane Remover's “kodak moment.” The kitsch “Eureka!” sample pattern is reminiscent of something from an Underscores movie. “In your face!” shivers with shiny Rustie synths, as if bass wizard G Jones was taking a class in Computer Musicology. The five-minute outro on “Experience (HIGHER)” is so full of murky audio signals and pixelated fog that it's like shoegaze for cyborgs.
from our partners at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/syzy-the-weight-of-the-world