Two weeks. That’s how long it took quilium to write their third album. can of whoopbass, the second record, arrived with twenty-three tracks and a sprawling, unhurried quality that felt like someone with all the time in the world. human void CRASS JUNKIE arrives on its heels with thirteen tracks in thirty-three minutes, and the speed of its creation is audible not as sloppiness but as a different kind of commitment. Where the previous record wandered, this one has somewhere to be.
The Seattle-based bedroom producer has described the album as a celebration of rapid-fire darkwave production, and the shift from can of whoopbass is real. The lo-fi sensibility that has run through all three records remains intact, but the sonic palette here is darker and more compressed. The bedroom is the same bedroom, but the lights are different. Darkwave as a genre pulls from post-punk’s rhythmic drive and cold wave’s atmospheric cool, and quilium filters both through the same imperfect, handmade production approach that has defined the project from the start. The combination produces something that feels both claustrophobic and alive.
The tracklist carries quilium’s signature capitalization pattern, titles split into lowercase context and uppercase emphasis: “rough DRAFTING,” “i don’t know WHY,” “art is DEAD,” “everyday is REVOLUTION.” It reads like a visual argument about where the weight falls in any given phrase, and the consistency across thirteen titles suggests an intentionality that the album’s speed of creation might otherwise obscure. quilium is not just moving fast. They’re moving fast with a system.
The collaborations scattered across the record fit the project’s communal, low-stakes aesthetic. “rough DRAFTING” opens the album with Froggy Z and Swift ONE, establishing from the first track that this is music made with friends rather than for industry. “everyday is REVOLUTION” reunites quilium with Froggy Z, and “art is DEAD” is produced by CHAD., who appeared on can of whoopbass. The recurring names suggest a loose creative orbit rather than a formal band structure, people returning because the work is worth returning to.
“argoNAUT” sits at the center of the first half and carries a title that does real thematic work. The Argonauts sailed toward something unknown with no guarantee of return, and the word dropped into a quilium tracklist suggests an album willing to push into unfamiliar territory even at pace. “uncertain FIGURES” and “enclosed TRANSCRIPT” continue the darkwave lean, the titles carrying a clinical distance that contrasts with the warmth of the production underneath them.
The second half loosens slightly. “jelly SOMETIMES” and “ants in the CAVE” have a different energy from the more austere material surrounding them, the capitalized halves landing with a dry humor that quilium has always kept in the toolkit. “sweep the KEYS” and “do the dROP” push into more explicitly rhythmic territory, the lowercase intrusion in “dROP” breaking the pattern in a way that feels deliberate rather than accidental. “vapor TRAILS” carries the kind of title that fits the album’s atmospheric concerns, something dispersing, something left behind.
Closer “play the part WITH ME” ends the record on an invitation, the WITH ME landing with more weight than the rest of the phrase. Across thirteen tracks the album has been largely interior, and the closing turn toward another person gives the whole thing a context it might not have seemed to need until it arrives.
The album’s stated goal of reaching for more cohesive lyrical context, compared to the more free-associative approach of earlier records, is visible in the tracklist architecture even without diving into individual lines. There’s a throughline in the titles that holy shit and can of whoopbass didn’t always maintain. The capitalization system, the darkwave framing, the collaborators returning in a pattern: human void CRASS JUNKIE feels like an album that knows what it is, which is a different achievement from knowing what you want to say.
quilium is still keeping their day job and still making music without pretense toward commercial standards. The third album in what is becoming a genuinely productive run doesn’t change that equation. What it does is demonstrate that speed and intention are not opposites, that you can write something in two weeks that holds together, that the bedroom can produce darkness as convincingly as it produces warmth. Not everything needs more time. Some records need exactly as much time as they take.
human void CRASS JUNKIE is available now.
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