#4 yeule: 𝖌𝕝𝒾,c̶̳͚̈́͌̿͋̔ͅ𝖍 ρ𝖗𝕚n̶͓͉̣͉͚̂̏͐ƈᵉ𝖘ร

My name is Nat Ćmiel
I am 22 years old
I like music
Dancing ballet

Crushing up rocks and snorting them
And genderless people
I like to eat
But I don’t like it when it lingers on my body

I like to take up as little space as possible
I like pretty textures in sound
I like the way some music makes me feel
I like making up my own world

And the people who live inside me
I like to dress up and not going out
I like my cat, Miso
I like touching myself

And I like being far away from my own body
I like sweet things
Physical and consumable
I like short sentences that say everything I felt at one go

I like obsessing over people
And then throwing them away
I like being a boy
I like being a girl

I like getting fucked
And I like to fuck
I like to be pure
I like believing there’s a cure
But, most of all, I…

My Name Is Nat Ćmiel

It’s… quite an opening, isn’t it?

On first listen you’re likely to feel slight tings of something close to repulsion. You know this is weird but you can’t quite put your finger on the distaste in inspires within you (“What makes you uncomfortable?”). Perhaps it’s yeule’s (stylised without capitalisation. Yeah, I know, I hate it too, but here we are) heavily treated voice often sounding childlike and so their polite and matter of fact assertion that they “like getting fucked/And I like to fuck” and especially the admission that they “like touching myself” seem uncomfortable and even exploitative to be allowed access to. This is all getting a little too Lolicon, know warra mean? And they’re named after a Final Fantasy character?? This is all getting a little to close to 8chan anime PFP for my liking. Is it getting hot in here? I feel like it’s getting hot in here. Are they a weeb?? But they’re from Singapore? What do you call a Singaporean weeb? A seeb?? Now I feel racist as well! What do they mean when they say they like “believing there’s a cure”? A cure for what?? What is this sickness that you’ve pulled me into?! What are you telling me?!?!

It eventually becomes clear that yeule isn’t telling you anything at all. This incredible album’s incredible opening track is actually yeule chanting to themselves, attempting to centre themselves by listing off their human definitions, trying their hardest to reaffirm that they actually exist in the physical world. yeule is their persona. yeule is their online presence. yeule is their footprint on the digital landscape. But their name is Nat Ćmiel! They list everything that they know about themselves, everything that marks them out as an actual living being. These facts are good, bad, or just nothing (seriously, who doesn’t like “Crushing up rocks and snorting them/And genderless people”?), but they are actual things that happen to actual people.. aren’t they…?

Are we even ‘real people’ anymore? Or has the definition of what is ‘real’ simply shifted? Do we not just exist as far as we effect the world around us? Is the world now not really a physical place but a series of tubes within which we all have to insert our own content in order to battle for the recognition of existence in the cesspool of online presence? Now there are certain people who exist far more than others. People whose reality is far more valid. You can now put a number on your existence. This blog has 199 followers. Yeah, I know, that’s annoying isn’t it? But if I had one more it would look like I was just making up a number, and youse know how precise I like to be. But that’s my existence amount. That’s how ‘real’ I am in 2022.

That opening track is also the last time we can be sure that it is actually Nat Ćmiel speaking. Over the rest of the album yeule is difficult to pin down, seeming to exist outside physical reality. When they sing of loving you, you’re never sure if they’re talking about a person, their phone, their online presence, or their ‘followers’. We’re also not sure if there’s much of a difference. 𝖌𝕝𝒾,c̶̳͚̈́͌̿͋̔ͅ𝖍 ρ𝖗𝕚n̶͓͉̣͉͚̂̏͐ƈᵉ𝖘ร is also an intensely violent and brutal album, with frequent allusions to suicide, self-harm, pain and abuse. The point being that it doesn’t matter how much you imagine yourself being hit by a train, you don’t actually exist anymore, your pain and angst is just content. Your anguish simply becomes something to consume, and then responded to by a fat ginger knacker on some blog that nobody reads. A blog that will frequently descend into self hatred and suicidal ideations when that writer starts to feel existential dread at the empty nothingness that he is ‘creating’ for. That writer pictures himself being hit by a train. And the clicks/validation/existence that would bring.

Hungry for amphetamine
60 amitriptyline
Violently crying to the song that you sent me
Laxative, can’t forgive a reason to live
Find myself, lose myself
Be myself, fuck myself

Friendly Machine

And, yes, the name ‘yeule’ is based on a Final Fantasy character. But also Nat Ćmiel actual middle name. If we’re taking about their actual birth name Natasha Yelin Chang. But what makes that they’re ‘actual’ name?? Shit, dude, is any of this real?? How can I be so depressed if I barely exist??

BandCamp

Metacritic: 85