100 Gecs

Missouri's duo 100 Gecs debuted with the mini-album 1000 Gecs (2019), that was released after Brady had moved to Los Angeles and Les to Chicago. The ten brief songs (or musical pranks) have a clear antecedent. The hysterical rapping of wildly manipulated voices in 745 Sticky alternates with Aqua-esque electronic melodies like a Frank Zappa of the autotune age. Neither the convoluted rhythm of Money Machine nor the bombastic distorted beats 800db Cloud can completely hide the influences. Zappa-esque is certainly the faux-classical instrumental interludes I Need Help Immediately and Gecgecgec, and totally Aqua-esque is the dance-pop ditty xXXi. The catchy ska Stupid Horse sounds like a merge of Aqua and the Dance Hall Crashers. A more serious approach is attempted (with mixed results) in Hand Crushed by a Mallet, which shifts from the operatic branch of house music of the 1990s to minimal rap music of the 2000s.

Les had already released two EPs under the moniker Osno1, Hello Kitty Skates to the Fuckin Cemetary (2016) and I Just Don't Want to Name it Anything with "Beach" in the Title (2017), as well as the album of collaborations Big Summer Jams 2018 that included a collaboration with Brady, Feels Good.

Brady had already released the solo album All I Ever Wanted (2015) and the five-song EP Dog Show (2017), followed by a number of singles: Hesitate (2017), I'll Make You Miss Me All The Time (2018), Peace & Love (2018), Georgia (2018), 7/11 (2018). This Car Needs Some Wheels (2019) was his collaboration with Josh Pan.

100 Gecs' EP Snake Eyes (2022) feels like a demo.

The lazy duo finally released what was billed as a full album, 10,000 Gecs (2023), but in reality was still a mini-album: ten songs for a total of 27 minutes. This collection of goofy albeit exuberant parodies consolidated their status a premier musical satirists. If the abrasive hip-hop of Billy Knows Jamie and One Million Dollars fails to engage, there is no denying the Frank Zappa-esque effectiveness of 757 and MeMeMe, childrens' nursery rhymes for their silly musichall. They can still dish out catchy ska ditties like Frog on the Floor (which sounds like the Dance Hall Crashers without the verve) and especially the hyper-festive I Got My Tooth Removed, another cute sketch of their musichall. Dumbest Girl Alive sounds like a punk-rap version of Eurythmics and the duo's shocking zaziness triumphs in the anthemic grunge Hollywood Baby, somewhere between the L7 and the Breeders. As a collection of catchy quirky gimmicks, it had few rivals in 2023.