#guppyloid: world tour

[luuurien]

Guppy - Guppyloid: World Tour

(Electropop, J-Pop, Electro-House)

Some of the most innovative and well-produced vocaloid music in years, Guppy's debut album positions them as an absolute powerhouse of modern electropop. Acutely aware of its unconventional use of Hatsune Miku's voice in oily trap bangers, noisy aggrotech beats, and glossy electro-house madness, Guppyloid: World Tour is a tour-de-force of freewheeling pop alchemy.

☆☆☆☆☆

Just like the other projects releasing off Dismiss Yourself this year, Guppyloid: World Tour is an album that could only ever exist on a label as inventive as them. A bit of a mystery artist, little about Guppy is known except for the music they make and their few posts on social media - a fitting presence for a vocaloid artist like them - but what that facelessness also does is force you to focus entirely on their music to get an understanding of them, unable to utilize any visual or vocal cues to build your idea of Guppy off of. Thankfully, their music is more than incredible enough to be all you need to fall in love, their 12-song debut some of the most innovative and well-produced vocaloid music in years that proves the style still has tons to offer today, joining the camp of artists like Kikuo and Dennoko P who take advantage of the iconic voice synth software in similarly unconventional ways. Guppy, however, is willing to veer away from the avant-pop and glitchy electronica sounds of their contemporaries into entirely new waters, treating Hatsune Miku to a buffet table of modern hip hop, brash electronica and industrial, and heavier dance styles than Miku's usual sugary dance-pop, the resulting songs unlike anything else out there right now. Guppyloid: World Tour knows how odd an album it is, and it fully embraces all the delightful peculiarities that come with it. Guppy thrives off how they can use absurd concepts to their advantage, finding ways to incorporate Hatsune Miku's bubbly voice into all kinds of strange situations: lead single Gloop features a drill-inspired beat heavy enough for Chief Keef to croon over, but Miku's chipper rapping and hilarious "You thought you could fuck with Miku, bitch?! I'm gonna kill you, motherfucker!" that comes completely out of the blue makes this one of the most surprisingly enjoyable songs this year, and the rapid switch into a dembow groove with mechanical synth stabs and fast-paced raps on the preceding Haus is just as bewilderingly fun. Guppy more than manages to make J-pop infused bangers that can compete with the best of them throughout World Tour, ピンポン's four-on-the-floor drums and shimmering guitar lines situated around light brushstrokes of distortion and glitchy electronics, and Suenalo featuring digital brass and more organic instrumentation as a way to open up the album's second half with an unexpected traditional pop tune, but rather than feeling like by-the-numbers electropop to fill in the gaps these songs are just as creative and compelling as any of World Tour's more outré outings through their exuberant energy and explosive production - Guppy may just be working with vocaloid right now, but it's incredibly easy to imagine what a live singer could do with ぐるぐる目が's sunny bitpop beat or the thrilling key modulations placed all throughout ゼッタイワラウ・ズットエガオ. It's always a challenge to get an album with as many ideas as World Tour to work as one cohesive piece, but Guppy's commitment to putting their all into whatever the desired effect of a particular song is - Gloop's vivacious trap, Nosebleeder's buoyant complextro, カラコン's glowing electro-house - allows the album to do anything and everything it wants without ever losing control of its overarching vision of fun, futuristic electronica. There's also an underlying balance to World Tour's seemingly random switch-ups and detours, Guppy's sound decidedly wild but never for the sake of it. When Calico seemingly trips into a new groove and vocal melody about fifty seconds in, it's not out of nowhere, instead making space for light piano chord backings and flickers of synth and guitar before heading back into the synth-lead sound of its opening moments, and the switch from elegant orchestral strings into a frantic gabber beat on the album's final track 死 ends up a brilliant way to show off how well Guppy can bring distant elements together to create contrast and excitement in their songs. Each of these songs still stick to their guns for the most part, but the splashes of color that come from Haus' purring synth bass or ゼッタイワラウ・ズットエガオ's tense bridge section leading into the final chorus are just enough to take World Tour to the next level without causing the album to gridlock itself into genre-bending experimentation just to say it can. Wherever Guppy takes the album, there's a reason they do so, and the magic of World Tour comes from discovering the core of these songs through their sugar-coated exterior. Over time, the initial confusion of what these songs are trying to do fades as you become more comfortable with their ingenuity and playfulness. Guppyloid: World Tour couldn't have been any better a way to be introduced to Guppy's tour-de-force of freewheeling pop alchemy, a constant rush of sleek electronic beats and radiant vocaloid singing, reeling you in with its unorthodox sound before revealing how simply enjoyable it all is in spite of that - seriously, how in the world are songs like Gloop and 死 as good as they are? World Tour's ethos is that there's nothing Guppy can't take on, and they prove again and again how well they can navigate different styles and keep all their idiosyncrasies an essential part of the formula. For Guppy, vocaloid is less a specific J-pop style and instead a jumping off point for all kinds of electronic mischief, Hatsune Miku's voice as primed for audacious hip-hop as it is gummy synthpop, World Tour's unlimited palette giving Guppy access to a sound no one has strove for until now. It's one undeniably bizarre album, but it wouldn't want it any other way - Guppyloid: World Tour does absolutely everything right in treating you to the deeply intriguing, ridiculously engrossing world of Guppy.