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.
On their whirlwind February 2021 debut, Teen Week, dltzk combined bitcrushed vocals, EDM bombast, and elements of drum’n’bass into an angst-ridden portrait of growing pains. The 18-year-old digicore artist’s recent follow-up, Frailty, touches on similar themes but dials down the energy. Taking refuge in shoegaze, indietronica, and emo, it sounds more like an earlier generation of bedroom slowcore acts than, say, 100 gecs.
One of Frailty’s standouts, “search party,” begins with fuzzy, muffled vocals and acoustic strums that resemble Alex G. As dltzk murmurs about being lost and out of reach, the melody repeats and a busy signal beeps. With each verse, the instrumentation changes, swinging between chaotic distortion and eerily scant production. Split the difference between a space bursting with noise and samples and a space with just a beat and a voice, and you’re left with a sense of desperation—as though dltzk were attempting to communicate however they can but coming up short anyway. As the track closes with screams and blown-out guitar, dltzk is somehow able to make a digitally packed space feel emptier than ever.
