Would anyone object if I referred to bye2 as breakcore* and wrote about 200 or so words based specifically on this premise? Well, that's what's about to happen, so consider yourself trigger warned/primed. For those who have not been introduced, bye2 is a Birtsol-based electronic producer who makes darkly whimsical rave jams that split the timbres of jungle with phantasmic, Dreamcast-forged sythes, bathed in acid house so that they may better cleave a burning incision in the defensive barrier between your ego and the interfacing mechanisms of a growing, omni-gormandizing, cybernetic reality. bye2's best-known album is likely the orbcore reanimator Teeth Restoration, of which 2022's Metamorphose is a direct follow up and companion. Metamorphose was released sometime after the artist arrived for a year-long scholastic-sojourn in Japan and embodies a refinement of the artist's persistent aural fetishes, many of which you can later find exploded and effaced almost beyond recognition on their noisecore null point 麻雀暴力射精倶楽部： Unpleasant Fate Mix I, but which retain their virtual vibrancy and essential identity on this release. Icey electronic digital dragons' breath chills the nerves of overclocking break sequences until they turn over into quixotic, hyper-real caches of unfurling gateways, floating 3D rendered mazes, and oozing collision grids, pregnant and buckling under the pressure of a burgeoning bubblegum crisis. Metamorphose, and bye2's work in general, doesn't tend towards the outrightly abrasive in the manner that you might expect from a breakcore artist, although the twistedly playful deployment of rhythm, crystal-cresting melodies, and accenting plunder of samples has a certain punky, prankster edge to it that will keep you guessing and on your toes while you're whisked along the rails of a neuro-hacking splunk through the back allies and tunnels in which the economy of the possible is brokered with the limitless harvest of desires housed in the unconscious. Metamorphose feels like the sonic rendering of a superstructure in a mega-city, transformed by its trans-infobahn inhabitance into a site of endless engagement with their greatest loves and deepest fears- and I guess there is a pharmacy where you can buy slugs there too...
High on Kitty on Fire Records.
