The Pop Corporation

From Singapore, named after a Final Fantasy character, and making the kind of music that feels like it was artificially created by grafting the echoes of the literal internet to a young person’s DNA in some experiment that we haven’t worked out if it’s cruel or not, there’s no-one quite like Yeule.

Is it tech cosplay? Is it pop music? We’re not sure, but it’s engaging stuff, and Yeule has done their best to dissolve almost entirely into some kind of digital alt-pop entity, becoming almost cyborg-ish. In fact, scratch that – it’s like looking at a moving image, rather than something in the real world. There’s a wrestling with identity as we know it, and it’s hard to look away, even if you do get the good-creeps.

They were a ‘Glitch Princess’, and serving up menacing-realness, and providing a soundtrack to the hellscape currently being run ragged by Silicone Valley and billionaires who need to stop microdosing ketamine.

It’s avant-garde pop music, and wildly futuristic, all cut with an unsettling ethereal quality that makes this whole project beguiling. But it’s also fashion, baby. And modern angst. You imagine the hyper-pop crew liking this just as much as the depressed slacker kids do.

There’s a new LP due called ‘Softscars’ and a new single to listen to. Ninja Tune have a superstar on their hands if the world does the right thing and gives Yeule their flowers.

If you listened to Leila Arab, then you’ll love this. Maybe Björk at her more experiment pop moments? Shoegaze? Emo? There’s a lot going on and a myriad of feelings to ingest with Yeule’s music, but it’s great stuff and the chaos that surrounds the vulnerability and stillness is a thing well worth sticking your neck out for. It’s adventurous electronic music, but also, accessible pop.

If you know what it’s like to endlessly scroll on social media, making yourself feel insane, then this music could well be a perfect salve for that. Fury, resignation, the various stages of grief, but wrapped up in a dreamlike, fragile noise.

With track titles like ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Your Own Beauty’, ‘Friendly Machine’, ‘Sulky Baby’, you know you’re not getting your run-of-the-mill artist, and that’s worth celebrating. How often to do get someone so willing to expose their feelings via the portal of high concept futurism?

She said to Pitchfork: “Post-humanism and cyborg theory came from a deep hatred for my body. A lot of my struggles came from gender dysphoria and eating disorders, which very much have to do with the physical form. Now I want to feel human sometimes. I want to feel like I have bearings. I want to feel like I’m real.”

“It’s like I turned into an AI and my soul left my body, and now I’m an AI trying to find out what it means to feel like a human being. I was obsessed with total digital simulation because it was my only form of escape.”

Whatever it is, this is thrilling and fascinating stuff.

Lean in and listen. There’ll be shows and they’re going to be intensely interesting. Log-in, drop out, Yeule isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and we might just be witnessing the flowering of a genuine underground superstar.