Hi, everyone. Gethony Yatanao here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Quadeca project, Life 1.

Here we have a new album from multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer, songwriter, Mr. Ben Lasky, aka Quadeca, who is now several projects deep into a miraculous transition from a YouTube rapper to alternative pop conceptualist with a pretty impassioned cult following.

Each new project he's been dropping in recent years seems to hit a new ambitious high with an abundance of texture and narrative. There was, of course, I Didn't Mean to Haunt You, which many of his disciples consider to be a modern classic. And then there was last year's Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, which in a lot of ways was a culmination of all of his influences and musical accomplishments up until this point, bringing touches of indie pop, indie folk, hip-hop, art-pop, chamber-pop. Yeah, the album can be a bit much at times, but its track list is packed with highlights and is still highly inspiring even if some of its naughtier bits are slow to digest.

But for this review, I would be remiss if I didn't also mention another favorite of mine in the Quadeca catalog. That would be his Scrapyard mixtape from 2024, which kind of brings together a bunch of material extras, loosies, songs that were kind of dropped on this sequence of EPs that were released in 2023. And of course, all of these tracks wouldn't necessarily make much sense in the context of I Didn't Mean to Haunt You or any other Quadeca album, for that matter, simply because many of them are standalone and feature much more experimental or odd genre combinations, bringing together pieces of emo, and folk, rap, and R&B, among other things.

But still, as weird as this project was, the songwriting still very much hit for me. And the fact that the mixes and production on this project were presented in a bit of a rough state, it just didn't make these songs any less catchy. And I very much see Life 1 in the same light, not so much a major, new, high-water mark of artistry and fine-tuned arrangements and DAW craft for Ben Lasky.

More of an in-between project where he is kind of taking some shots in the dark, throwing out some cutting-room floor material, dicking around, even getting a little bit silly too. The standards that I feel like a lot of fans have come to expect from his more major moments in his catalog are more or less thrown out the window. But doing so allows him to kind of venture into the unknown a little bit and also show us another side of him creatively.

I would even say the material on this record sounds even rougher around the edges than what we had previously heard on Scrapyard, almost as if Ben is getting more comfortable with the idea of kind of showing his audience what's really underneath the floorboards without him having to polish it up too much. The mixing on "The hero never dies" is way more out of whack to my ears than anything on Scrapyard, and feels especially off-kilter with all this clunky percussion, and what sounds like all of these Jim Whistle one-shots. Not the kind of thing I think you would put in your beat if you wanted to convey to your audience that this is a very serious work of art I've created here. So yeah, there are some elements of this track that are grating, but simultaneously, a lot of the vocal harmony arrangements that Ben puts together on this track are genuinely impressive.

On a lot of these tracks, I think Ben is also playing it a little fast and loose with structure. There are some tracks that end a little abruptly, some that do get quite repetitive and redundant, like the opener, which I think could have used maybe a bit more progression if it were to be kind of a finalized piece. As, yeah, a few of the songs on this thing that are on the longer side do sort of overstay their welcome, really past the point to where Quadeca has made his point musically and lyrically.

And as I alluded to earlier, I do want to dive a bit more into the fact that he's getting a bit goofier with the tracks on this record, purposefully dropping in these ridiculous ad-libs and vocal inflections that don't really sound all that flattering, but at the very least are pretty funny. And there are moments on this record where he is straight up penning comedic lyrics, or painting a silly character portrait, like on "THE GAMBLER," which is a short track all about a guy who gambles his money away and spends his days kind of chatting with an AI bot and loses his family, gets divorced, total loser. And there's even horse sound effects and car sound effects on this record when the lyrics call for them to just be kind of placed in the background.

Occasionally an instrumental passage or two on this record gets zany as hell, but not every, tornado of layers on this thing denotes a what-the-fuck. There's some wild, unbarred experimentation on this LP, moments of beauty as well, like the very subtle and folky palettes of the final two tracks, which I don't think feature Ben's best songwriting, but are at least arranged interestingly.

But despite all of its unkempt imperfections and oddball characteristics, there's actually some standalone moments on this record that I think do make for just a great Quideca music, generally. It would pass the smell test for a more casual listener. "Make you my what," for example, which I think is a really smooth, lovely bit of doss-sculpted Baroque pop, where the vocals do go a little off the rails, but the lovesick sentiment of the lyrics really kind of makes it all make sense, the amount of passion and fire going into that singing.

"It goes like this" kind of smashes together ornate indie folk with some danceable pop and R&B. You have these classic clubby grooves and claps that are somehow working alongside these classically-tinged arrangements. A wonderful chord progression, too.

"Like you always do" is a captivating and somber piano number. And "Dark magic" is Quideca fully in his R&B bag with some awesome horn loops, off-kilter beats, smooth vocal harmonies, and to kind of spice things up, seemingly some guitar or distorted tones that bring this almost shoegaze-y quality to the song, that you just wouldn't normally hear in the context of these influences, and yet it somehow works.

I'm also inspired by tracks like "Baby steps," where I hope in the future I hear Quideca fooling around a little bit more with the idea of a palette of instrumentation that sounds like a live band is playing it, because there are some killer drum fills and grooves on this track.

So overall, with Life 1, do I love it? Do I think it's Ben's best body of work? No, and I think he would readily admit that to you. But it was still very fun to listen to, and it was clear that he also had fun making it. Some of this record's silliest and most preposterous moments, while they can be a little obnoxious or eye-roll-inducing, certainly none of this album was boring.

And for somebody who is very much a Scrapyard evangelist, I think there was a good handful of tracks on this record that could go toe-to-toe with that record's best moments. And even if this album was amazing, I just don't really think it was intended to be. It's clearly a mid-major project release, where Quadeca is just allowing his fanbase to see what he's doing when he's just kind of chillin' in the sandbox. Which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong six on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Quadeca. Forever.