- Varg2™ looks to EDM and hardstyle for his latest stylistic turn.
- Varg2™ throws up the middle finger a lot. It's nearly become his trademark, both in photos and in his tendency to buck any and all musical expectations. But while he's never appeared as (or appreciated being billed as) a by-the-book techno act, in retrospect it was hard to predict just how far off of that course he would veer. Lately he's been lacing hybridized trap, ambient, and noise with icy electronics, enlisting collaborators like Swedish rapper Yung Lean, french singer and producer COUCOU CHLOE and Posh Isolation's Croatian Amor. The most recent Varg2™ records splice these influences together, landing at a new sound far outside the realm of his techno works, culminating in his newest label, Cease 2 Exist.
SIREN CALL—his latest three-track EP, billed on his Instagram as #fuckboytrance—is anchored by a sound that, hiding beneath a veil of distortion, is unmistakably EDM. Its title track is a grainy vision of hyper-euphoric, endlessly building big room trance. And in case you thought he'd gone soft on his middle-finger-up, tongue-out attitude, SIREN CALL's first dance floor-friendly moment is about as far from deep techno as you could go. "STARS COME OUT AT NIGHT / FBT" is pure, ripping hardstyle that adds industrial grit to the genre's already carnivalesque aesthetic. It's searing and brash in a way that little of his work has been before.
The EP also features Varg2™'s third collaboration with fellow Swede Bladee, who has undergone his own sonic evolution. While still holding down his status as a Drain Gang founder and internet rap wunderkind, he's been adding new colors to his palette, most noticeably on 2020's Good Luck, where Mechatok laid Bladee's highly processed croons over bright, bouncy Eurodance-influenced beats. While his collaborative work with Varg2™, including this project's opener "FELL," continues to pull him into the greater electronic music sphere, Rönnberg offers a fitting counterpoint to Good Luck, casting Bladee in darker atmospheres surrounded by overdriven EDM leads, doom 808s and festival-sized drops.
There's a sense of unhinged freedom in how Rönnberg fits these different jagged pieces together into a dramatic, but unified, aesthetic. Here's hoping Cease 2 Exist continues down the exciting rabbit hole where all of these sounds connect, but, knowing Rönnberg, there's sure to be another 180-degree pivot right around the corner.
Tracklist01. Fell feat. Bladee
02. Stars Come Out At Night / FBT
03. Siren Call / CCGG (4 M4J4) Blow Pop Crop Top*