Editor’s Note: Jane Remover came out publicly as a trans woman in 2022. This review is presented as it was originally published in 2021 and uses their prior artist name and pronouns.
Back in January, dltzk’s “52 blue mondays” tore through the digicore scene like a comet. The SoundCloud-based community, which emerged in the late 2010s from online rap circles but pulls from a wide range of influences, has seen its profile rise in the last year, with co-signs from Charli XCX, Phoebe Bridgers, and Trippie Redd. On “blue mondays,” dltzk (pronounced “delete Zeke”) ropes what feels like 25 moving parts—sampled screams, waves of synths, drums that snap like chattering teeth—into something unwieldy and beautiful. Their voice is bitcrushed and blown out but cuts through when it matters most, like a perfectly snarled, “Fuck you, let me do me.” The song is a bomb site, noise so noisy it sounds ambient, a massive piece of digicore architecture that, at the end, comes crumbling down—how could it not?
“blue mondays” is the centerpiece of dltzk’s immersive debut Teen Week, which charts a course from where this “post-genre” music comes from to where it might go. It also serves as an introduction to dltzk, the 17 year old from suburban New Jersey. A prodigious producer who cut their teeth making type beats and lending a hand to other artists, dltzk centers their voice as a vocalist and songwriter here, mapping out feelings of insecurity and loneliness through evocative images. On the gorgeous ballad “cartridge,” dltzk is triggered by a tweet that reminds them of their dad. “Sorry I’m not what you wanted, I know you can’t try again,” they sing, over a delicate 8-bit composition you might hear while leaving home in an old Pokémon game.
Home—both in its online and IRL forms—occupies a central space on Teen Week. Both worlds come together on the soaring closer “seventeen,” where dltzk sings about spending their days scrolling and feeling jealous of artist friends with bigger followings, but also about being perceived disdainfully at school. They sink into their sweater with the A/C off; they’re “mad over tiny letters.” When they sing, “I wish I blew up like yesterday,” it’s less about material aspiration than it is about becoming.
Much of this album is about that process of leaving people, places, and past selves behind. In conveying how they feel, dltzk sometimes leans into rote Tumblr fodder—“If you died on social media would anyone know?” goes one line. More often, though, their words are strikingly personal and affecting. It helps that dltzk sings with the kind of feathery warble that makes Drain Gang’s Ecco2k sound so honest and compelling. (Teek Week pays direct homage to Ecco2k several times, sampling his 2019 song “Blue Eyes.”) Occasionally their admiration turns to limp imitation, like on “let down” and “dysphoria,” but other times, it carries the intimacy of someone giving you a personal concert.
A key element of “52 blue mondays” and several other songs on Teen Week is the Amen break. One of the most historically significant drum loops, it’s recently reached digicore producers, who’ve taken to weaving it into their glitchy compositions like it’s an energy-boosting cheat code. Digicore’s fascination with dance music isn’t new, but this particular flavor of breakbeat craziness, likely inspired by internet drum’n’bass artists like Sewerslvt, steps away from the pure chaos of canonical songs like “Pressure” and “movinglikeazombie” towards enveloping, atmospheric textures that feel more in step with the scene’s Plugg origins.
When dltzk unleashes it, it’s as powerful as ever. The two-song run of “beast friend” into “woodside gardens 16 december 2012” is electric; the latter practically explodes into an Amen break after two minutes of delirious buildup. dltzk has a strong ear for motion, assembling sound in structures more akin to escalators than conveyor belts. With each track, they push this genre further from its roots towards something more complex, more definitively of its own substance.
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