Each month, Consequence puts the focus on an artist who is ready for the big moment with Cosign. For May 2024, that award goes to New York electro-punks Lip Critic and their crazy new album. Hexagonal distributor.
A few years ago, the members of Lip Critic (Danny Eberle, Connor Klutz, Bret Kaser and Ilan Natter) were a pair of bored college students at the State University of New York at Purchase. All the musicians, in one way or another, had found themselves feeling slightly discouraged by the crop of local bands. While there were many rather pleasant acts, nothing triggered those deep synapses hidden in ancient recesses of the brain. So, they did what they had to do: they completely fucked up.
“We were kind of bored and felt a certain stagnation in the music scene around us. It just didn't seem like there was much to be excited about,” Kaser recalls. “There were a lot of great bands and a lot of great musicians around us, but there was a feeling that we were all, you know, like kids with iPads: dopamine deprived.”
And so Lip Critic was born, an outlet for the gang's most outlandish ideas, ideas that might otherwise seem deeply impractical or deeply misguided. These are ideas like touring with two full drum sets or developing a video game to accompany a single release. They are the kind of decisions that, if there had been a responsible adult in the room, would have been canceled immediately. You can almost hear the answers: You I know that will make traveling a lot more difficult, right? What do you mean you're a punk band without live guitars? Don't you think your resources would be better spent elsewhere? To which Lip Critic would respond with a cavalcade of deafening synths and squealing pig samples.
“Only bad ideas work,” Natter says with a laugh, referencing a DIY meme on Facebook that has become a rallying cry for Lip Critic. “Keep your good ideas away from me,” Kaser quickly adds.
You can hear those exciting bad ideas come to life on their exciting new album. Hexagon distributor, which is an appropriately aggressive, uninhibited, and completely absurd effort. The maximalist cacophony of the album's 12 tracks falls somewhere between Death Grips and Nine Inch Nails, Autechre and Rage Against the Machine, Burial and smashing your head against the wall.
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