Randall Findell, professionally known as brakence, is a hyperpop, "glitch pop" and Midwest emo artist and record producer born in 2001, hailing from Columbus, Ohio. Starting his career on Soundcloud with his self-released EP FifthEnigma, the young prodigy gained a following fast and soon released his first commercial EP, Hypnagogia, in 2018. His debut album, Punk2, came out in 2020, and the sophomore album that I'll be speaking of, hypochondriac was released in late 2022.
Hypochondriac is a fascinating, mesmerizing journey through the mind of Randall, and through the ups and downs and complications of bipolar disorder. As someone who struggles with the condition myself, the first time I heard the album, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Never had I ever heard any music that represented or pictured what I was going through so perfectly, so intricately, and so expressively.
Even the album cover, which essentially looks like an impressionist painting, was in faultless harmony with the whole album's sound and content. We don't get "perfect" albums like this- instant classics such as Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory, Bring Me The Horizon's Sempiternal, or Sleep Token's Take Me Back to Eden- very often.
The first song I heard from the album was "deepfake," and I was hooked on the very first listen. The lyricism, the production, the melodies, the vocals—none of it was like anything I'd heard before. It spoke to me in a language I had been waiting to hear my whole life.
The next song I heard was "intellectual greed," which was a flawless depiction of my own, personal experience with mania and psychosis. The vocal performance and production were absolutely fascinating. I was hooked on the song for hours and days, making it end up in my top 5 songs of the whole year back in 2023. To this day, I still have the whole album on repeat despite it being released 2 years ago. It simply doesn't age. It understands me on a level very few pieces of music, very few bands/artists ever have.
Other notable songs that had me in a chokehold include "cbd," "stung," and "argyle," which, interestingly enough, come right after one another on the album. If I'm being perfectly honest, there was only 1 song in the entirety of the album that I hid in my playlists, though I don't care to mention it because even that may grow on me with time, like "teeth" did.
Speaking of "teeth," the track was for sure a late bloomer for me, but once it got a hold of me, I couldn't ignore a single element within the song. I realized how carefully everything was pieced and crafted together, like an intricate tapestry. Essentially, the whole album is like that: a detailed, intricate tapestry.
The official YouTube playlist for hypochondriac by brakence.
Yet another notable song from the album is "introvert," which is like a mini version of the whole album packed into a single mp3. As the song that comes right before the last track on the album, which is the title track, "introvert" is a wonderful representation of the album right before its finale.
And of course, the title track, "hypochondriac," is what glues the whole thing together. As the closing track, it leaves you longing for what comes next and even longing for the album itself, making you want to start the whole thing over and listen to the entire album one more time.
Another interesting point about the album is how different every single song is from the next, despite all being from the same album and having the same sonic landscape. Each song is instantly recognizable, and each song is truly unique.
I could go on for hours and write paragraph after paragraph about how unbelievably exquisite this album is, but you wouldn't truly know unless you listened to it for yourself. So, with that, dear reader, I urge you to go and stream this album on your preferred music platform, and bask in the warmth, insanity, and complexity of brakence's masterpiece, hypochondriac.
Stream hypochondriac on Spotify!
Keep up with brakence on Instagram!
