The Holy Hell of Cursed Jumpstyle

a.k.a. The gabber offshoot has always been a little crazy, but its newest iteration mirrors the fried mental state of its creators, who came of age in a world that's seemingly gone off the rails.

Hi there. Shawn speaking. As promised, I’m on vacation for a couple of weeks, but I just wanted to pop in real quick and say that today’s essay was put together by Kieran Press-Reynolds. A young music and culture writer based in Brooklyn, he’s done some incredible work for places like Pitchfork, The New York Times and no bells, and though he’s now an independent freelancer, he spent the past few years on staff as a Digital Culture Reporter at Business Insider.

What I like about Kieran’s work is his willingness to go beyond—way beyond—the usual PR-driven, industry-boosted narratives, conversations, trends and scenes that tend to dominate music discourse. In a time when most established music journalists are either ignoring or actively dismissing what’s happening on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, Kieran happily tunnels into the digital muck, unearthing and documenting cultural movements that are not only bizarre, but hyper-online, intensely visual and wildly independent. Admittedly, these movements are rarely rooted in traditional notions of good taste, to a point where they might even repulse some readers—or just leave them suddenly feeling very old, especially if they’re over the age of 35 or so. But for anyone with an open mind and a healthy sense of curiosity, the stuff Kieran writes about is fascinating, and his commitment to detail—his work is always stuffed with not just names, but a plethora of hyperlinks—provides plenty of breadcrumbs for anyone looking to follow him into the abyss.

In this particular essay, he writes about jumpstyle. (For the uninitiated, it’s a specific strain of gabber music.) I’m guessing that most First Floor readers have little to no knowledge of the genre, but as Kieran demonstrates, its latest iteration—which is strongest in places far outside the usual axis of easily marketable “cool”—has become not only immensely popular, but profoundly weird. And yes, it’s inspired a whole lot of insane dances, too.

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The viewers of 2024’s most baffling electronic hit speak like they’ve just discovered a lost civilization they’ve been hunting for since birth. “I’ve been searching for so long trying to find this,” writes one person on a YouTube clip. “I need a medal for finding this song,” adds another. The title is an incoherent sequence with Cyrilic symbols — “*✻H+3+ЯД✻*7luCJIo0T6…” — that makes it nearly impossible for English keyboard users (and anyone, really) to search for. The tune is weirdly addictive; it begins with a pocket of ambient nothingness before slowly spiraling into a glittering jumble of jumpstyle kicks, breakbeats, and acrobatic synths. Everything is tied together by a kind of occult harmony that’s both hooky and hellish. Despite the nonsensical title, it’s somehow amassed over 20 million streams in the last couple of months. Nothing is known about the pseudonymous artist vyrval; this is their only release to date. 

Though the song has been out for a while, it’s become a low-key Russian anthem in the wake of the Crocus City Hall massacre on March 22, in which Islamic State terrorists killed 144 people attending a rock concert in Krasnogorsk. Many comments on YouTube uploads of the song mourn the victims with candle and heart emojis, and TikTokers have made clips crowdsourcing details about the attack using the song. The thumbnail itself has become infamous: an ambulance driving in the darkness with someone hanging off the back. “How did this song go viral after the terrorist attack?,” asks a YouTube commenter. “Let us remember, we love, we mourn.” Many people have also nicknamed it “flowers blooming in Antarctica” after a popular meme about climate change destroying the world. The song could be the national anthem of a 2092 dystopia. 

Whatever you want to call it, vyrval’s ballistic banger is the biggest tune in a growing wave of psychotic jumpstyle music that seems made to express existential fears: technology has gone too far, we’ve broken the world beyond repair, autocratic autobots will soon seize control and so on. In the comments of the clips that accompany these songs, people write what’s basically apocalyptic science-fiction, imagining grim future scenarios: “Me watching an AI generated video of me doing the most atrocious War crime ever.” The visual aesthetic mirrors the freakiness: unsettling cyber graphics are superimposed on neon landscapes, with distorted limbs and objects. The cover of YOHEI_божьесеребро and sharkdrug’s cardiac arrest-inducing “상어 용병_*3333*_sinn” (“Shark Mercenary” in Korean) looks like Satan drew up some clip art in MS Paint.