To engage with the sprawling, twenty-eight-track behemoth that is Rellyo Bambini’s “Cloned & Upgraded, Insert Soul Here (Rebirth Edition)” is to willingly plug your neural pathways into a mainframe that is rapidly overheating. Most artists treat albums like curated dinner parties; Bambini has thrown a rave in a server farm where the dress code is ‘Cyberpunk Baroque’ and the appetizers are flavored like anxious memories.
There is a moment, somewhere amidst the collision of punchy electronic drum machines and wobbling synthesizers, where I suddenly recalled the taste of a 9-volt battery I foolishly licked as a child that sharp, electric tang of metal and energy. This record offers a similar shock to the senses.
The sheer volume of material here suggests a manic download of consciousness. The instrumentation doesn’t so much blend as it does violently argue and then embrace. Heavy basslines from the EDM sphere elbow their way past orchestral strings, creating a friction that shouldn’t work, yet undeniably does. It mirrors the chaos of scrolling through a social media feed at 3 AM: a satire of digital finance culture sits uncomfortably next to a sincere, heartbreaking meditation on death and legacy. You find yourself dancing to a critique of deceptive internet personas, only to be slapped in the face by a wave of Cinematic Soul that demands you sit down and reckon with your own mortality.
It creates a highly mercurial atmosphere. The shift from aggressive defiance to dreamlike introspection happens with the speed of a strobe light. One minute you are in a neon-lit, dystopian dreamscape chasing authenticity; the next, you are adrift in a melancholic serenity that feels like staring at rain through a window in a high-rise mega-structure.
What strikes me most isn’t the futuristic vision, but how remarkably human the messiness feels. In an era of polished algorithms, Bambini offers twenty-eight distinct fractals of the human condition, packaged in chrome but bleeding red. It refuses to categorize itself Indie Pop, Alternative Hip-Hop, and Synth-pop are merely costumes worn by a restless spirit.
This collection doesn’t ask for your passive attention; it demands your RAM. By the end, you aren’t quite sure if you’ve been upgraded or formatted, but the static in your head hums a beautiful tune. Can a cyborg heart break with the same intensity as a biological one?
