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Grills, guitars, Auto-Tune, CS:GO gameplay snippets, Wisp, flashing lights, gunfire, skeletons, gritty CCTV footage. In the sensory overload of the music video for “I Heard You,” nu-gaze and SoundCloud rap meld into a torrent of digital clutter, reminiscent of an A24 interpretation of corecore. The genius behind it is Max Epstein, a relentless artist from Los Angeles whose collaborations—live guitar with Jane Remover and quannnic, production for post-emo talents like daine and Blair—often eclipse his own dynamic work. Yet, amid his vast array of partnerships, his spirited solo catalog feels like a hidden gem. His newest and most extensive LP, the 18-track I look at her and light goes all through me, combines aspects of both a guitar album and a producer tape: feature-packed, genre-defying, scattered, and heartfelt. Over approximately 30 exhilarating minutes, Epstein fuses his creative urges, granting his frenetic imagination the freedom it craves. The result is a wonderfully dizzying collage, akin to the “I Heard You” music video: fragments of raw ideas cascading until the noise becomes a release.
Despite Epstein’s busy schedule, I look at her serves as a chronicle of his quiet moments: time spent tinkering with old demos, jamming on tour buses, dreaming on studio floors. He sustains his career by guiding others toward their own voices, but his discography reveals a long-term struggle to discover his. His early work as Photographic Memory, dating back to 2014, is filled with hazy slowcore, echoing a (very) low-budget version of Duster. As his influence grew, so did his sound: Everything Nice, his 2018 mixtape, collected fleeting bedroom demos; while 2021’s self-titled LP boasted a richer sound without losing his early melancholy songcraft. (Arpeggios! Auto-Tune! Abjection!) While it’s generally poor form to judge an album by its cover, his artistic presentation has long hinted at the subtleties of a secondary figure. Consider the album art for the self-titled LP, a dim, out-of-focus homage to Either/Or. Intentional or not, this reference speaks volumes about its content: a young guitarist cloaked in the shadows of his mentors and inspirations.
However, I look at her is not the triumphant comeback album in which the reclusive unsung hero finally boasts his greatness. And that’s not a negative thing. Epstein successfully distills his defining characteristics—production mastery, a desire to remain out of the spotlight, and frenzied collaboration—into a vivid representation of digital music in 2025, where producer tags, power chords, live instruments, and Ableton plugins exist in chaotic unity. Perhaps the most compelling voice for Photographic Memory is that of the auteur, the semi-visible nucleus of an immersive experience. Appropriately, the standout moment on this project isn’t a solo piece, but “Heartsyle,” an enchanting single featuring Wisp gliding over an Epstein-produced plugg beat. It’s wonderfully unconventional; like much of I look at her, it revels in the peculiar collisions born from an amorphous, overstimulated age. The first time I heard “Recently,” where Gucci Mane raps “Woppenheimer” over what feels like a discarded Tired of Tomorrow demo, I laughed. The second time, I recognized its undeniable beauty.
Equally beautiful is Epstein’s voice, which comes across stronger here than ever before. While his vocal tone—reminiscent of a solitary, androgynous android—has stayed relatively stable over the past few years, the textures on I look at her afford it greater space to resonate. The digi-rock anthem “Clearly” is a loud-quiet-loud excursion, brimming with sparkling synth stabs, gentle acoustic strumming, and sporadic pulsating kicks. At times, it risks sounding like a Snow Strippers remix of “Fireflies.” However, the dynamics between Epstein’s voice and his production—navigating a complex soundscape with a careful, almost childlike protagonist—rescues the song from potential redundancy and fatigue. Regardless of how one defines “nu-gaze” (“new shoegaze” or “shoegaze infused with nu-metal”), this record offers something for fans of every subgenre: compare the glitchy emotional depth of “Emo Tour Track” to the aggressive thrash of “Love in My Heart.” Epstein the vocalist is supported by Epstein the producer, who is in turn supported by Epstein the curator. When these various identities converge, their collaborative work stands as the strongest evidence yet of his singular vision.
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