Friday 11/13: CGI dog—"Wish 2"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the Los Angeles electronic musician CGI dog.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the Los Angeles electronic musician CGI dog.
CGI Dog—"Wish 2"
Eli Enis:
CGI dog’s debut album Replacer, which dropped yesterday, can literally only be described as Electronic Music. There are notes of glitchy trip-hop, psychy art-rock that channels early Gorillaz, drum and bass channeled through PC Music-style kookiness, downright gorgeous power ambient, and many more references from all over the production spectrum. One of its standouts is a song called “Wish 2” that’s a fucking haunting banger. It features deep and dirty auto-tune that harkens back to the poppiest Salem tracks, a glowing guitar lead smeared with reverb, a vocal melody that verges on emo-rap without the nasally inflection, and a bouncy industrial section that sounds like it could’ve appeared on the Fight Club soundtrack. The whole record is commendably daring and well-made, and I like all of its many detours, but I wouldn’t be mad if CGI dog made another record in the vein of “Wish 2”.
Eric Bennett:
Oh, this is excellent. Friday’s blurb is always my favorite to write about because it invariably ends up being a song I never would have found otherwise. This week is no exception. CGI dog’s “Wish 2” sounds like a lot of things I’ve been listening to or thinking about stitched together. The biggest thing for me is how much it calls to mind a few songs from Sen Morimoto’s excellent new album. The gravelly, scowling delivery in his song “The Things I Thought About You Started to Rhyme” is present here, too. The cold yet blistering production may be more severe than my reference point, but I’ve been listening to Torres’ Three Futures on repeat, and some of the synths feel like cousins to each other. CGI dog has, at present, twelve monthly listeners. Let's just see how long that remains the case.