Oh No, 100 gecs
It’s a cozy basement with Warner Music-branded champagne glasses on the ground, huge rainbow wooden cutouts leaning against the wall, and an orange toy piano—you know, that one with the smiling cat face. The gecs are putting the finishing touches on their remix album 1000 gecs & The Tree of Clues, which drops on 4/20. They have recording sessions with Charli XCX and Rico Nasty later that day. When we arrive, Brady thanks me for being flexible around their packed schedule, but it’s really no inconvenience. Plus, it’s clear the duo is in incubation mode.
The record, without having listened to it yourself, is hard to describe—like much of their music. It’s “post-internet” electronic pop. It’s nightcore. It pulls heavily from the mid-2000s emo era and dubstep. It also plays off the widely popular sounds of PC Music, a futuristic pop music collective based out of London. And though inspired by the internet, 100 gecs extends far beyond it. They embody an all-around punk spirit, only further solidified by their fervent fanbase—when Brady and Les played one of their first shows together at NYU, fans were moshing so hard that the lights on the floor below were flickering and shaking. “There was, like, a study group in there, and they had to end early,” Brady tells me.
On “Money Machine,” a standout single from their debut album 1000 gecs, Laura enters with an abrasive and heady monologue: “Hey, you little piss baby / You think you’re so fucking cool, huh? / You think you’re so fucking tough?” She then proceeds to compare this person’s arms to “little cigarettes” and tells them how she’s going to ghost them after they say “I love you.” In the accompanying music video, Dylan and Laura dance in front of a GMC SUV, their mutually messy blonde hair covering their faces as they headbang and contort. Their choices are peak “random XD” yet meticulously curated, self-aware and next level. But they don’t act like it.
“It’s all very high-concept shit,” Laura says—I think she’s trolling me—referring to the video for “800db cloud.” In it, the duo slyly peeks at the camera from behind various buildings and trees in LA, like two wizards who look like they are about to give you a side quest. “I don’t know if your readers will understand the level that we’re on here. Think about it like this, okay? You see a wall, you just want to peek over it, metaphorically speaking. We just took that and made it more of a physical thing.” The gecs’ sarcastic, nonchalant approach to their work is a nice contrast to the absurdity that explodes within it.
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