Broadband internet, easy access to DIY recording technology, video-game soundtracking, and the ubiquity of stimuli – in the world, in our screens, in our heads – inevitably gave birth to hyper-, digi-, and glitch- core, each of which can be grouped under the broad umbrella of maximalism.
Which is still proliferating: notably, the volatile gash will release at least you know what you’re laughing at in September; Hakushi Hasegawa’s Honest Feeling Album comes out in late August. Add to the list $quib, who follow their 2023 EP, Micros, with their first LP, Erring.
Erring, like other maximal projects, is spurred by the principle MORE!!!. That said, there’s also evidence here of deft curatorship. The succinct “Warbler”, for example, is a mishmash of discordant accents and delicate vocals run through a battery of effects. Saloon-ish piano notes, however, stir melancholy and a sense of otherworldliness. Indeed, Mark Fisher might be caught off-guard by the track’s hauntological qualities. As uninhibitedly collage-y as the piece is, there are ancient ghosts grumbling in the mix. Loss and a heartfelt wish to return to a past never actually experienced drip from the track like a honey-flavored corrosive.
“Schrodinger”, garbed in lo-fi references and random distortion spills, brings to mind Phil Elverum two hours into a very bad trip. Lyrically, the piece is a throw-a-bunch-of-notecards-into-a-blender pastiche, the text reassembled to provoke the experience of being trapped in social, financial, and emo-cognitive cages (“Our committees would love this fishtank / Shit out something / … Spirituality past-person profile”). Absurdism meets a tamped-down wish for connection meets chat-room cynicism.
Again, while maximal treatments are pretty much synonymous with $quib (members: Brock Bierly, a “real” person, and Krotida Satyra, a fantasy figure), Erring points to a definite singer-songwriter ambition, a desire to actually express cogent themes. No doubt, Alex G is in Bierly’s songwriting DNA, though a track like “Not th [sic] thinker 2” exaggerates Giannascoli’s bent for obliquity until it feels like a totally different animal. In terms of production, Machine Girl’s hardcore tilt, SOPHIE’s pop-glitch cum violent sketches, Arca’s frenetic drumscapes, and the messy frissons of 100 gecs are packed into the subtext, reframed in a Gen Z malaise.
“3boder” is diaristic synth-pop, Bierly accompanying his agitated-stoner lyrics with upbeat synths and splashes of static. There’s an odd blend of casualness and urgency present, the track occurring as a manifesto scrawled by an agoraphobe who dreams of going back in time and starring in a classic noir film. “Ephus roundshot & floater” is built around synth flurries, a fusillade of beats, and spurts of metallic/high-pitched noise, as Bierly offers a semi-sultry delivery, occasionally recalling Gotye, albeit if Gotye had holed up in his room for a week, refusing to respond to his texts and DMs.
The 12-plus minute “Warning (if I had a hammer) 2” is presumably a cover of the Pete Seeger tune (the lyrics are similar), though the song has been reconfigured, a strummy acoustic guitar replaced by a strummy pawnshop electric run through a cheap amp (or at least a cheap-amp effect). Belches of distortion intermittently flood the sonic field. If the Seeger version conveyed a progressive political message relevant to post-WWII society, the $quib version unfurls as a post-tech, post-humanistic, post-confessional attempt at catharsis. If Bierly even has a hammer, he’s wielding it metaphorically à la Sisyphus, building things that immediately fall down, entertaining himself as the prospect of going anywhere becomes less and less appealing.
Far from simply reveling in formulaic maximalism, erring seems to have been prompted by an old-fashioned emotional impulse; i.e., the intention to express and evoke a particular something. Bierly’s sideways reflections on longing, loss, fear, and ambivalence infuse his sonic architecture. And vice versa. Erring sounds very 2026 but feels perennial.
