Hi everyone, Stathony Uptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it is time for a review of this new leroy album, status update music.

leroy is one of the many, many, many different musical pseudonyms and projects that producer and songwriter extraordinaire Jane Remover operates within. So yes, this is essentially a Jane Remover review, but under a different name. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Jane Remover, I'm not exactly sure how to get you up to speed.

Her catalog at this point is pretty sprawling, but I will say, one of my most favorite releases she has dropped and created as of late, was the record, Revengeseekerz, which was this really glitchy, mind-blowing, dense, experimental, noisy fusion of pop and dance music and hip-hop, just all violently crashed and clashed together in a really unique, interesting way that is simultaneously high-intensity, very overwhelming, but there's a lot of super catchy moments that managed to shine through the chaos.

And while this new leroy album is definitely a different kind of experience, that overwhelming, dense sort of sound, feeling, and sensation carries over onto this hour of new music. Now, just because this is not an official Jane Remover release, it's more of a side dish, side project kind of record, that doesn't make it any less important in my eyes. In fact, I think leroy, in the grander network of Jane's releases and musical projects over the years, is one of the more iconic, especially since its debut album, Dariacore, is pretty much the opening defining release of the Dariacore genre.

Now, I'll be honest, I'm not SoundCloud brain rot-pilled enough to accurately lay out the entire history of Dariacore itself, or even lay out all of the criteria one must meet in order to be considered Dariacore, but I will say this: if you really enjoy sample-heavy music, plunderphonic-type experiences, but contained within these really high-energy, glitchy, overwhelming EDM productions, touching down on some of the most aggressive and energetic genres of dance music today, you should get a lot out of this record.

Now, if you want to go out of your way to listen to it, it's not gonna come easily because it's not on any traditional streaming platform from what I saw, at least not the commercial monetized ones anyway. I had to sample this through different listens on Bandcamp, on YouTube. Given this small but mighty Dariacore scene was built off of a culture of SoundCloud remixing and sampling, I saw the record is over on that platform too.

So yeah, there's a lot of samples, a lot of clearly uncleared samples on this record that would pretty much make it nearly impossible to release physically or put up on Spotify, because there's just no goddamn way all these samples are getting cleared. Because all throughout this project you have an array of lifted drum beats, riffs, breakdowns, little sound effects from pop cuts, from rock cuts, from hip-hop songs too, different EDM styles, weird pieces of social media audio or video games.

And of course there are plenty of Jane Remover and Jane Remover-related samples throughout this project as well, as she is no stranger to just sampling her own music at this point. I would compare the experience of listening to these tracks to kind of spinning your way through a Girl Talk megamix or two. But I think Jane and him have far different tastes when it comes to DJing and dance music, and that's where a lot of the major differences are.

Now, right out of the gate on this project, status update hits us with this crazy Megan Thee Stallion sample, and then immediately we are off to the races with this EDM-style build that holds in it strains, or shades I would say, of like trap as well as dubstep, bringing things up to a peak that then leads to a super distorted glitchy drop. And Jane is just pulverizing the mix with as many just crispy, fried, mind-bending sounds as possible. The amount of layers and details and noises that are worked into each bar on this track, it's honestly crazy, and I've heard very few things in my lifetime that simultaneously have this instantaneously visceral feel, but when I pay closer attention to to it, I feel like I'm doing, I don't know, a long-form geometric equation.

I think the first few moments of this record are pretty strong, but it doesn't take too long for things to maybe get a little bit too tacky, or leaning into the novelty of all of these wild, in-your-face samples. Not to mention all the nods toward mainstream strains of EDM, which make songs like "I Did This For Us," kind of sound like a brain rot version of mainstage EDM festival hardstyle, or brostep. But even if some of the influences and sample source material are a tad bit corny, the way Jane pulls them together is still impressive.

Like, on the track "...Like Watching a Zombie Turn," which kicks off like a piece of very aggressive, loud, sample-heavy electro, but then the drop that eventually comes, kind of feels like I'm listening to an emo-tinged alt-rock song with a nu metal twist coming through on these 'wicka wicka' record scratches. I can hear these influences, but I still do wish there was maybe a bit more room to breathe in the mix to appreciate the finer details.

I was pretty blown away, though, by the track "CrowdKilling 101," which is this fast-paced hardcore piece of techno with these eerie metal guitar intervals that are very clearly lifted from the most recent Knocked Loose record, if I remember correctly. Some of the breakdown pieces from that song make their way into the cut as well for some really heavy passages. There are some southern hip-hop refrains too that I didn't quite pick up on, but again, giving big Girl Talk vibes. Maybe not an immediate influence given the heavy sample culture of SoundCloud itself. But, you know, at least in the spirit of these different elements of dance music and rock music and hip-hop coming together in such an entertaining way.

The following, "Nothing Lasts Forever," is like this trap EDM anthem with about maybe four or five different strains of dance music fusions to come after the intro. But it's still really cohesive throughout, even with a cool beat-switching build around the midpoint of the song.

And that's the thing, even if a lot of the sounds and samples of these tracks are disorienting and really chaotic and difficult to make sense of, the structures underneath all of that madness are still very much there. You can tell that Jane really cares about how these tracks are built out and don't merely want them to all just sound like an incomprehensible mess.

Still, as a producer on this record, I think Jane tends to wear her influences on her sleeve, but maybe the pressure to do anything super original or out of the box isn't really there, given just how sample-heavy the material is and how much I think she's just kind of like, focusing on DJing through this experience and just giving the listener a thrilling feeling, something akin to a midnight rave.

The song "Chase This Feeling" is giving big Porter Robinson energy to my ears, though I was actually surprised to see online that quite a few of the samples throughout the track are just actually other Jane Remover songs. But yeah, the track is super bright, synthetic, idyllic too. And I'm continuing to love the energy and the momentum of the following tracks too, for the most part.

The psycho glitch reggaeton breakdown of "#BoyLetMeKnow," which also has some very prominent Carly Rae Jepsen samples. Meanwhile, "The Summer I Turned Pretty," for the most part, just kind of feels like a really good over-the-top remix of Danny Brown's "Lift You Up," with some touches of what sounds like Sophie and even "Duke Nukem II."

Now, I will say, in some ways this project really does live up to its title of status update music. The whole run of this tracklist does feel like a compilation of sorts, like this is just kind of, 'what I have been doing and creating within this certain sphere of sound for a particular period of time, and I'm just kind of laying it all out here without much care or focus on the overall album experience.' Because at least for me, after a while, I think some of Jane's moves here start to get, not only predictable, but like, there's only so many insanely sample-dense, glitchy, dubstep breakdowns I can take before I start thinking like, 'Okay, I mean, we kind of did this earlier,' especially as it's like all hitting me with just full distortion, full volume, just like non-fucking-stop. It really does like genuinely begin to fry my brain. Toward the back end of the record, I do find Jane's flip of Zara Larsson's "Pretty Ugly," "Get Ugly," to be very entertaining though.

It sounds like if Justice were remixing that song, but doing so in a way to where it would appeal to a harsh industrial noise rock audience. Is it a totally pleasurable listen? In my view, not entirely, but, you know, the attempt here is impressive. And then oddly enough, the album ends off with what, by Jane's standards, is like a pretty glitzy, straightforward, sweet-on-the-ears cover of "Summer Fling" by Melodic Chaotic, which I genuinely do enjoy quite a bit. It just feels like a very odd, kind of tacked-on moment at the very end. Or maybe, I don't know, like the sweet Tootsie Roll center in the middle of a ghost pepper flavored lollipop.

Because as exhilarating and as thrilling and as entertaining and as engaging and as stimulating as this project is for sure, especially in the first half, after a while the experience does become a little sweltering. I am sweating like a fucking dog because listening to this thing, especially on headphones, feels like hunkering down, getting locked into the hottest sauna you could possibly imagine.

Still, the madness of Jane's production, her mind, the versatility of her ear and her abilities on this record, nonetheless, it's all very impressive and it's all very unique. And even if I'm not really in love with this project itself, it's really cool to hear how a lot of the talents that go into music like this also sort of carry over and share so much in common with Jane's other music, which I tend to enjoy maybe just a little bit more. Because I mean, none of this is to say that I found this album to be bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't know if I envision myself going back to the whole thing anytime soon.

But there are definitely some key tracks that are mind-blowing bangers as far as electronic dance music and sample-based music are concerned. Which is why I'm feeling like a decent-to-strong 7 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Music, Jane Remover, leroy, forever.