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Live Review: Superorganism find internet fame with 'Everybody Wants to Be Famous'

12 January 2018 | 9:07 am | Kyle Fensom

Superorganism meditate on the nature of internet fame in their latest single 'Everybody Wants to Be Famous' ahead of their debut album

SUPERORGANISM have been floating around internet publications ever since their debut single, ‘Something For Your M.I.N.D.’, was mysteriously uploaded to Soundcloud back in 2016. Since then, a steady trickle of singles has slowly built their buzz, establishing the band’s buoyant art-pop sound and ideology. An eight-person collective who formed through the internet and hail from all corners of the globe (including New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and Australia), Superorganism make the kind of music that resembles their internet-based conception and existence.

Their latest offering, ‘Everybody Wants to Be Famous’, is both the lead single from their upcoming self-titled debut, and their smartest meditation on the state of internet fame to date.

The track is glossy and excessive, oversaturated to the point of near-chaos, featuring a cartoonish sound collage of camera shutters, cash registers and bird chirps. Meanwhile, a collection of colourful, squelching synths bleep and oscillate, sounding as if they’re pulled straight from the analogue obsession of mid-2000s indie-dance. A crunching bass line swirls underneath lead singer Orono’s half-spoken, half-sung vocals that list off cultural observations in the style of Damon Albarn or James Murphy. The melodies are simple, but deceptively infectious, with Orono’s imperfect delivery bringing an intimacy to the track. It all feels very deliberately nauseating and mind-warping in the way we’ve come to expect from Superorganism, but at the same time it’s undeniably real, fun and impossibly bubbly. Superorganism’s point is clear: an overdose of pleasure and instant gratification in the pursuit of internet fame can numb you to potential breakdowns in privacy and morality.

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The structure of the track mimics this point: lacking any identifiable verses, the song is instead dominated by three choruses, each of which plausibly could’ve been the song’s main hook but combined they give the track an effervescent energy that passes the song’s three-minute runtime in a blur of maximalist pleasure.

The track’s visual companion is literally (appropriately) a Youtube-style video of Orono kind of playing at being a famous and wealthy Youtuber. Similar to the PC Music camp, Superorganism operate like a meta, hyper-modern take on the large-scale Scandinavian pop production factories. It’s no surprise, then, that their aesthetics draw on the era of 2000s pop where Max Martin et al. owned the cultural landscape, incorporating quirky, neon Myspace aesthetics, and the inchoate visual language of early internet memes into the video.

In a smart referential callback to the group’s mysterious internet origins, the video frequently features comments underneath the fictional Youtube video purporting that “Orono is not a girl, she’s a HOLOGRAM”. But more than that, Superorganism’s meditation on the nature of internet fame – “Everybody wants and nobody’s ashamed / Everybody wants you to know their name / Everybody wants to be famous” – reads as a pertinent piece of commentary on today’s world of Jake and Logan Pauls and made-up, fictional popstars.

Superorganism's debut album is out March 2nd through Domino - you can purchase it here.

IMAGE: Edward Cooke

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