Brevin Kim’s ‘I Need Water’ Won’t Make You Feel Better

Brevin Kim‘s music tends to aim for brutality. The two Massachusetts-born brothers love jagged edges, wild distortion, and synths that contort into animalistic screeches. Their latest two-minute assault, “I Need Water,” is no different. The song unloads like a sonic storm that splits the difference between PC music’s nearly random chaos and the melodic inclinations of whatever is popping on Rap Caviar at any given moment.

Nothing in “I Need Water” provides a reprieve. It’s a melodramatic crunch of glitches and beeps, with a hook comprised of a voice yelling, “Woke up feeling way better than I used too.” There’s a futility in the phrase’s repetition, as if the group hopes if they say it enough that they’ll start believing it themselves. “Sometimes, I’ll randomly remember that I’m going to die one day, that it’s inevitable and that I will not be on this earth forever,” Cal, one half of the duo said over email. “It gives me this crippling anxiety that lasts like 20 seconds and then I snap out of it.” Maybe, that’s what makes Brevin Kim’s latest seem so timely. “I Need Water” doesn’t go out of its way to make this moment — or any — feel like it’ll be better. But for now, some glitches and screams into the ether will do just fine.

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