Mirage by Hooky

Years after digital distortion stopped ruling the world of internet content, a new wave of musicians are reminding us of these technical shortcomings that we at one time took for granted. Crushing their poppy, chiptune-adjacent hip hop under the weight of digital compression, Hooky’s new record Mirage takes a refreshingly varied look at the lo-fi sound that has so thoroughly saturated the internet. Through the dense fog of low bit rates and small file sizes, a faint outline of the promise that the internet once held appears in the distance, tormenting us with its luster and shine as we now live with all the negative fallout that we incurred by chasing this promise relentlessly. Ancient, thin synth sounds coexist with modern hip hop production techniques, mixing a nostalgia cocktail for a narrow age demographic that watched the world burn in real time through increasingly high resolution internet videos.