Experimental pop duo 100 gecs just dropped a cat-and-mouse chase fever dream of a video for the Hand Crushed By A Mallet remix.
If you’re over 25, you’d be forgiven for not having heard of – or having any interest in – 100 gecs just yet. Consisting of friends Dylan Brady and Laura Les, 100 gecs create the musical equivalent of chaos. After making their debut on the video game Minecraft, the pair released an album, 1000 gecs, in May last year. The album received incredibly positive – if slightly confused – reviews that mostly reached an agreement: 100 gecs sounds like the distant future of music.
The Hand Crushed By A Mallet remix features Fall Out Boy, Craig Owens and Tumblr-era artist Nicole Dollanger. It’s a chaotic, fun take on the song that opens with the unmistakable warbling of Patrick Stump’s soulful voice before descending into full-blown mayhem. With old school pop punk choruses, and Skrillex-style drops among a medley of nonsense sounds, it’s a clash of noises, artists and genres that shouldn’t work but somehow... does.
The song appears on their latest release, a remix album called 1000 Gecs And The Tree Of Clues that features reworked versions of all the tracks on 1000 Gecs – and then some. It isn’t just their mostly Gen Z fans that 100 gecs have managed to grab the attention of, either – the remix album features some pretty impressive collaborators, including Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Dorian Electra, Hannah Diamond, and more. It does, however, also have some crowd-sourced fan contributions in the mix.
The video itself is even more chaotic than the song – consider wearing sunglasses for the blinding version of a cat and mouse chase in which a mouse steals a key from a mushroom-headed monster before being chased through a colourful, bright, psychedelic universe. Directed by Dario Alva and written by Weston Allen, it’s the perfect world to match the track’s uh, diverse soundscape.
100 gecs may not be for everyone, but Hand Crushed By A Mallet is a fun track just insane enough in its ADHD-style back and forth to hold the attention of basically anyone, no matter how destroyed your brain might be right now. Plus, if artists like Fall Out Boy and even Skrillex, who called 100 gecs’ first album “one of the most exciting things that happened in the whole decade,” are endorsing it, it’s probably worth keeping an eye on.
Check out the video below.
