- The first time I encountered Anklepants was at that really, really weird Boiler Room Berlin in May 2014. The one with the tiger onesies and the horse heads, the pancake-flipping gameboy player, the Superman theme song, and the clown with a penis for a nose. It was total insanity in the best possible way. Naturally, it was a breakcore party (for the most part anyway), and it proved popular on the internet, especially Anklepants' set. Though it wasn't because of the music—jumbled, undanceable dance tracks with silly lyrics like "icky wicky lolly pop" and "my girlfriend has dreams about goats eating ice cream sandwiches"—but because of, well, the penis nose.
Anklepants practically begs you to not take him seriously. But it's a double bluff: his outlandish costumes are highly developed, skillfully made pieces of prosthetics and animatronics (the man behind the mask's day job). This includes the custom-controlled microphone he's built, used to modulate his voice and operate the animatronic face during live shows. It's all part of a larger performance art piece, executed by someone who is deadly earnest and passionate about his work. Reecard Farché is his nom de guerre—a character in itself, and Anklepants is just one of his personas.
There are a number of Anklepants records out already, all self-released through Farché's own Qwerty Records. Social Patching And The Pixel Pageant Facéd Boy, however, is his proper debut album, though the music has been available online since 2012. But the age of the material is of little importance, as it doesn't really sound like anything else out there. Otto Von Schirach might've been stylistically closest (they've toured together in the past), but now the Monkeytown artist has become closer affiliated with a lighter Miami bass sound.
Anklepants is different. There are fun, upbeat tracks on Social Patching, epitomised on "Icky Wicky Lollie Pop (New Fan Dangle)," but these are always underscored by a sense of something dark and deeply disturbing. A foreboding atmosphere clings to the record throughout, but it can be really catchy, too. If you're not in public, it's easy to sing along to junglist album opener "ILIKEYOURFACEHEADSHOESANDDICK." Same goes for "SPEEK YOU LITTLE RE-ƒacéé," the creepy Love Love single that teased Ankleplants' album with snoring samples and lyrics about putting someone in a stroller.
Social Patching is all over the place. There's wobbly, post-Bristol dubstep ("insideyourfacedubstepbeanstalktoheavenfortheatheist"), disjointed technoid-electro mash-ups ("Your Host Is Your Preset"), spacey retro 4/4 ("Mammalian-Baby Falcors Flight To Rejuvenation", "E=facé-C²"), and nods to breakcore in tracks that go on several heavy tangents at once. It could be taken as a bit of a mess, or as an album that's incredibly diverse and as far left-of-center as its mastermind. Either way, it's sure to make you curious about what comes next.
Tracklist01. ILIKEYOURFACEHEADSHOESANDDICK
02. The übergründé
03. Memorising the names of the famous as conversation Ammunition
04. Insideyourfacedubstepbeanstalktoheavenfortheatheist
05. Mönk_Wün
06. Your Host Is Your Preset
07. Fucking The 'Wild'
08. Icky Wicky Lollie Pop (New Fan Dangle)
09. SPEEK YOU LITTLE RE-ƒacéé
10. You never let steve welcome to my repetition
11. Mammalian-Baby Falcors Flight To Rejuvenation
12. E=facé-C²
13. Your Host Is Your Preset (Bintus Remix)
14. Insideyourfacedubstepbeanstalkfortheatheist (Melt Unit Remix)
15. Fucking The 'Wild' (Eomac Remix)
16. Icky Wicky Lollie Pop (The Colonel Rendition)
17. Icky Wicky Lollie Pop (Monster X Remix)
18. Fucking The 'Wild' (FUKNO Remix)
19. SPEEK YOU LITTLE RE-ƒacéé (Lenkemz Remix)
20. Mammalian-Baby Falcors Flight To Rejuvenation (Valance Drakes Remix)
21. Mammalian-Baby Falcors Flight To Rejuvenation (Kraig Grady Remix)
22. Complicated Tupperware (An Unnecessarily Justified With _ dsic remix)