👁‍🗨📲 – 👁​点​击​と​👁 Review [Kats Kill Records]

It’s Spotify Wrapped season and Eyeclick have delivered an album that sounds like an entire streaming service’s catalogue playing at the same time. 

Just as artists like Blank Banshee and Internet Club captured the spirit of web browsing a decade or so ago, the duo of Will Wade (Cucks) & Nathan Raile (Enraile, Millennium Edition) have created their own kind of smartphone pscyhedelia with their new album 👁​点​击​と​👁 (I Click With My Eye), available on Pad Chennington’s Kats Kill Records.

The word ‘browsing’ and the idea of websites now seem leisurely and quaint and Eyeclick have updated the aural experience for the app era. Tunes are cut short abruptly as if flicking through to the next Reel and notification pings interrupt without warning. The irritating and uncanny TikTok text-to-speech narrator even makes an appearance alongside other AI voices. There are some moments of extremely audacious sampling (the track ‘Satya तुम्हारे लिए Incense एक’ and its reprise use a pop A-lister’s 2001 anthem as its material) that befit Enraile’s mantra ‘copyright doesn’t exist – steal everything’.

These moments feel like a dare to copyright-detection algorithms, intellectual property hiding in plain sight like a Family Guy Funny Moments compilation surrounded by a Subway Surfers speedrun and a Pinkydoll ‘ice cream so good’ clip.

There are a few bangers of the kind we saw Eyeclick play at their recent NYC Tape Swap and LA Flamingofest shows. They have a real knack for transforming global pop songs into dancefloor smashes and I’m sure tracks like ‘Disgusting புலி (разлад)’ will be permanent fixtures in their sets. Even while working exclusively with samples, the duo’s Ableton chops are on show here with intricate edits, daring use of silence and departures from the 4/4 grid. 

Generally however, the atmosphere is downtempo, reflective and sincere with plenty of slushed-out somnolence and moments of beauty and balladry in the mold of Death’s Dynamic Shroud’s ‘Just To Be Needed’. Eyeclick describe this record as being their love letter to vaporwave and this is clearly audible. Particularly lovely is the track ‘錫安山👍迦南地有機農場👍來新約教會受洗上天堂👍❤️被提rapture ✌️😭👌🙏👂👍❤️🀄️’ with its hopeful and naive lyric ‘Look for the rainbow in every storm / Fly like an angel’ turning from a banal inspirational Instagram quotation into something euphoric and rapturous as it repeats. 

This album feels bittersweet as it is to be the last release from Pad’s KKR label. There will be a birthday/wake in the form of a URL show at 8pm EST on December 1st, featuring Luxury Elite, Christtt, Fire-Toolz, 식료품groceries alongside Eyeclick themselves. Slugfest 3.

Make sure to tune in to pay your respects and enjoy the premiere of the visual album that accompanies this release.

Thom Hosken