Fantast is an alternative pop band from Vienna, infusing pleasant and introspective pop music with that industrial beat and sound and turning it into more elaborate electronic soundscapes as an analysis of the frenzy that lives within us – perhaps an appetite that comes from the times we live in – turning it into sociopolitical critique from note to lyric by creating entirely different worlds of imagination. They describe this condition as one’s role in the ubiquitous dance on the edge and our participation in keeping it so, using their explorations as a sort of poetic activism for the soul.
Their latest single Repeat is one such worldbuild, a hyperpop 155bpm metronome rhythm and punchy percussion set a hyperreal ethereal ticking clock backdrops to slower raspy vocals and whimsical synthwork like Hitchcock’s violin, an incredible machine of frenetic moving parts that is so much more than the sum of its parts. I love how absolutely frantic the synthwork gets as the track progresses, glitchy and unbound.
The lyrical structure is intentionally contrasted to the production, describing a fascination for what has already passed. The author is trapped in a bubble of memories, a coping mechanism for the dark present. It’s alluring nostalgia however prevents him from moving onwards, a glittery prison for his consciousness in its endless loops and metronome. As time passed by / recounting days we had / consuming my own past / never facing my own life; a hard-hitting critique on the nature of progress itself.
| As the only safe haven to get away from the present, enveloped in a nice and warm, glittery world of the past, a feeling of a lack of any future and melancholy arises. A time machine that only works in one direction, taking you to recurring loops of a retro feeling. |
Repeat is quite the avant-garde endeavour into industrial hyperpop, but what emerges from the machine is a deeply human story that feels perfectly explored through the frenetic montage of synths that Fantast crafts. A cutting edge thoughtpiece, I urge you to listen to a song unlike any other.
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