.gif have earned critical comparison to the likes of Bjork, Yukimi Nagano, The xx and Portishead, but the illustrious pair have managed to retain a fresh and unique dynamic to their chimerical sound, one that proved so compelling that the pair began filling a void of their own making within the Singaporean music scene.
Following the acclaim of their past releases, .gif's sophomore LP HAIL NOTHING still showcases the haunting vocals, deft lyricism and obsidian production that has become their distinctive sound. The album is named after a line in Ernest Hemingway’s A Clean Well Lighted Place –– “Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”
Heavily informed by postmodern literature, film and theatre, .gif’s work has always grappled with themes of alienation, displacement, loneliness; the impossibility of forming any real human connection.
In HAIL NOTHING, however, .gif “imagine Sisyphus happy”, as Albert Camus famously wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus. Where their previous work––saudade EP and soma LP––had been defined by a rainy–day despair and a longing for purpose, their new album is an aggressive attempt to break free from melancholy. A more joyful approach to existential dread, HAIL NOTHING embraces the absence––or inscrutability of–– meaning as something not cruel or suffocating, but liberating.
Darker, grittier and bolder than ever before, .gif now treads a unique balance between trip–hop, post punk and slow driving techno. The album confronts the listener with raw, dirty synthesisers and vigorous arpeggiation, the nuance of Din's sonorous beats enhanced and brought to life by Jason Tan's savvy production work. Their robust instrumentation plays magnificently into Weish’s spellbinding vocal melodies, her voice evocatively alternating between tautness and ache, reckless abandon, and sombre poetry.
