TIFFY – IRB
It was the best of times; it was the most tiring of times. Sure, every enlightened adult, from your school counsellor to your therapist, will advise you to lean heavily on a hobby. They’ll tell you that this is the thing that will balance out your life. And they’ll be giddy when you tell them that you’ve decided to dip your toes into creating art.
But they’ll shiver in pain for your future when you tell them that you’ve, now, opted to take art seriously, perhaps, to make it a profession. Even they must know what kind of effort this entails, the kind of thankless task that promoting your work usually is and the way that you’re very likely to lose your excitement along the way.
TIFFY’s “IRB” is an honest look at the marvellous reality of being an artist, especially being in a rock band, in 2026. It’s all wonderful when it’s not terribly exhausting. It’s all about passion until all the work you put into it doesn’t make you forget about it. Thankfully, hearing TIFFY’s brand of warm, friendly slacker, you can quickly get an idea of why the American group would put themselves through this and work to keep the dream alive.
a-tota-so – Form Of Mass
Things rarely get better nowadays. What tends to happen, instead, is that the people meant to solve the issues, or, at least, report on them, simply give up due to exhaustion. Wars don’t end, but the people who fight them just run out of money. Environmental issues don’t get solved, and it’s just that the chips are allowed to fall at random. And, crazy dictators, eventually, just die off and get replaced by their sidekicks.
Are things any worse? It doesn’t much matter. What does matter is that nearly everyone believes things to be worse, which means they have to become this way. What is clear is that everything feels ugly, cheap and tiring nowadays, and this is the frustration that a-tota-so try to put into music.
a-tota-so is not obsessed with negative ideas. Instead, the band is trying to fight these thought patterns on the powerful, at times confrontational “Form of Mass.” This is the kind of punk-rock made by art students. It’s protest music created for and by people who are just too sensitive for these times. Things may be alright, eventually, but nowadays we’re just fighting against the routine ugliness of this world.
