fex skyscraper review

before i review this amazing album i MUST provide a good bit of context just in case you're unfamiliar

a little lost media history lesson, if you will (lost media fascinates me)

okay so

it was the 1980's

some german dude, darius, was making mixtapes by recording stuff off the radio

because, y'know, it was the 80's. and that's what people did back then. retro, huh? physical media is so retro

anyways... as time passed he managed to identify almost all the songs on these mixtapes

but there was one... mysterious... song... where the question of its identity stumped him for years. what would eventually come to be known as "the most mysterious song on the internet"

it remained an open question for a good while but the search really got kickstarted in 2004 when darius' sister lydia gifted him an internet domain for his birthday. he created a website to aid in the identification of songs in his collection

eventually in 2007 his sister began posting a snippet of the mysterious song to usenet and song identification sites. and the song spread across the internet slowly. the search was on!!!

although but one drop in the bucket of lost media, something about the song's unique atmosphere must've drawn people in and got them curious enough to try to identify it and want to spread awareness about it

it just had a certain je ne sais quoi that's hard to pin down. an otherworldly unreal feel to it. like so much music is available and identifiable today. so it's trippy when there's a song you... just can't figure out

several peeps'd make attempts over the years to identify it, and the search even went viral in 2019, but none were successful...

until 2024

it ended in the best possible way when the band was identified by a reddit user who'd been looking into the history of a yearly german music festival that featured lesser-known acts! and the band members were alive!!! and willing to reunite!!!!! FUCK YEAH

they'd been totally oblivious to the whole search the entire time lmao

they were a german banned called "fex." like. effects. so the opposite of NOFX i think

and the song's actual title? "subways of your mind"

after seventeen long years, the mystery was finally solved

nobody saw it coming. i sure as fuck didn't

so they got back together, did an acoustic rendition of the song on the radio, then dug up a buncha recordings from the 80's and put together an album called "skyscraper" and released it on bandcamp

and it's really really REALLY fuckin good

it feels like a gift to all the internet sleuths who searched for so long to identify this one elusive track

the first track, the title track, is my favorite. it opens with a helicopter-y sound that sets the whole upward trending vibe for the record and has funky slap-and-pop bass (which i love just generally) throughout

and they keep up that momentum throughout the whole record. like it just keeps on fuckin rockin

not once does it really ever let up in sheer bangerosity

legiterally

pure undiluted retro vibes. it's like an 80's band time traveled into the future to give us all this awesome album. or like a window into a recovered past thought lost for so long. a portal to an alternate reality. i dunno. it's trippy

oh also they released a music video apparently, featuring darius!!! which is really fuckin cool

what a truly wholesome happy ending for everyone involved. that's so rare

also wow i just realized darius did the album art too? wild!!!

click here to listen to and/or purchase the album on bandcamp!

so i'd say that's an 11/10. go listen to it now!!! lol