Hello to everyone who reads these! I (Bevibel/Rabid) am on a much-needed hiatus from most Line-Rider-related things. It was originally planned to be for about month and now looks like it needs to be longer - it turns out not really taking more than a few days off at a time for two and a half years will do that to you! Anyway, I wound up not writing any reviews this month, but thankfully my good friend and co-conspirator September Hofmann filled in with a bunch of guest reviews, along with Twig (from the channel Branches) and pocke. Many, many thanks to them for writing such wonderful reviews!!!
Click here for a playlist of all videos in this roundup (in order). Titles also link to videos individually.
I will stop, as I often do, to sit with a single visual that evokes a profoundly nauseating sense of horror:
In this moment, the two childhood besties from UTD’s previous release Unfold Reimagined miserably hug each other between a blank windowless building and a sign displaying the logo of 7-ELEVEN.
Now, let’s say you’re a Visual Artist™, and your job is to make this particular drawing pretty. What might you add to this drawing to give it some life, colour, or depth? Maybe some trees in front of the building or hills in the background, perhaps a street lined with lights and other stores, or other people in the background who aren’t the main focus, just living their lives. I know I personally have an urge to stick a mountain range in the back, snaking behind the sign – wouldn't that be so compositionally pleasing?
I desperately want to insert anything in this scene that might give these characters some semblance of a world – a sense of place or connection to the land they live with. But there is nothing in this moment except for two kids holding each other, and a 7-ELEVEN sign towering above them.
Throughout Hide And Seek, there is a consistent starkness to UTD’s drawing style, which does an excellent job conveying the open spaces where there would otherwise be instruments in the music, as well as creating a geographically-reflective suburban barrenness.
Hide And Seek is an upsettingly North American track about how having severed connections with family is intertwined with having severed connections with the land and the place you grew up. UTD and Bevibel write and re-emphasize the lyric “they were here first”, to which I ask: “who was here first?” Obviously, on Turtle Island, Indigenous people were here first and are the most knowledgeable caretakers of this land, but for any white baby born into American suburbia, they are raised with the understanding that their parents know this place best – they were here first. They should be listened to and obeyed – after all, it’s their ancestors who helped assimilate this place into something civilized and functional, and you should be grateful.
What do you do when that line of thinking shatters in on itself – when the atrocities of colonialism and genocide become apparent in every aspect of the way you live your life – in everything you see in your surroundings, from the sight of a Confederate flag to a nuclear family outside a department store, from a skyscraping McDonalds sign to an excavator devouring a cliffside? Through the spatial weaving of a few carefully-chosen iconographic vignettes, UTD gently invites us to question the real world of abusive people and circumstances they were raised with. A subtle detail I love is how the oil staining the environment of the track slowly begins to drool out of the very words used by authorities to impose and permit exploitation.
This track is an honest, personalized reflection of how as North Americans, we are all living in the blast zone of a many centuries-long genocidal disaster that still isn’t over, and that we’re all just going to have to process and talk about that. None of us are exempt from dealing with the effects of colonialism – it harms all of us living here, especially future generations, because it structures an entire society upon systems designed to harm and abuse. This also means that creating and perpetuating systems like this is a form of self-harming. To be thoughtless towards your natural surroundings, the land, the children you raise, and the people you share space with is to choose apathy towards your own life and wellbeing, to “not care a bit”.
In municipalities established in the interest of profit rather than the wellbeing of future generations, please cherish whatever connections an abused and gentrified place still allows you to make. It isn’t easy to know how to practice the care for each other that the adults in your life couldn’t be bothered to give, but I think art like Hide And Seek can be a helpful resource for emotional processing, from which that care can hopefully be accessed and extended to others. I want the world to be safe to you, and for you to be safe to the world.
Guest review by September Hofmann:
Suddenly, after years and years of being a child, after over a decade and a half of believing what the adults and institutions around you said about the world, you wake up. The pain you’re feeling in your heart, the sense that something is deeply wrong—that’s not sin, or the liberal agenda, or just a bad mood. You’ve been lied to about how the world is by people who have lied to themselves. Look around you—what do you see? Why is it that the moments that meant most to you took place in front of a 7-Eleven? Why is that Sam’s Club more familiar to you than your own backyard?
Why do your parents talk to you like that. Why don’t they listen to what matters to you. Why do your politicians speak that way about queer people. Why do they speak that way about your friends. Why do both of them speak that way about you. Why would anyone vote for a man who says and does these things.
Why did your parents vote for him.
You feel betrayed. Disgusted. You learn what it feels like to realize that your parents don’t actually love you for who you are. You learn that your people, your culture, is predicated on violence. You realize you live under a tyranny which crushes the spirit of any of the people it isn’t able to crush physically.
Slowly, you realize you need to leave this place. You cannot stay in the place you once called home. The particular scent of the air, the sounds of the animals at night, the familiar shape and texture of the plants here—they must all be taken from you. You cannot stay with your parents, these people who don’t really love you. Who… abused you. Slowly but surely, you figure it out. You make the preparations. And you leave. You get far away. To find people who love you, maybe. Somewhere that makes more sense to you. Somewhere a little nicer—although, really, not all that nice—to you and your friends. You will leave, and with the disassembled images of that childhood, you will reconstruct yourself. These are the years that were here first.
This is Hide And Seek, by UTD and Bevibel Harvey. That’s what it means to me, at least. If you want me to talk about the drawings, technical elements, music sync, sure—they're all excellent. The style and coloring of the illustrations is unmatched anywhere else in Line Rider. The camera work is evocative and terrifying. UTD and Bevibel somehow managed to make what is kind of a meme song haunting and beautiful.
But what is that in the service of? It is in the service of reminding me—and people who had childhoods like mine—what it meant for us to grow up, to realize the ways we were being harmed. To give us permission to remember that somehow, we escaped, and assembled a little life for ourselves. It is to affirm to ourselves that yes, we were abused, and those years of pain and betrayal give us every right to abandon that home, to not forget all the hurt that was here first, before we could really make decisions for ourselves.
Most importantly, it reminds us of the pain—and the solace—in leaving home.
For years, now, Xavi has been developing their own unique approach to track making, one geared towards their own particular artistic preoccupations and thematic touchstones—zero-gravity movement, the extensive use of color and video editing, and the incorporation of real-world elements into Line Rider tracks, all tied together in a lighthearted and chaotic style. And the day goes on, set to Bill Wurtz’s song of the same name, was perhaps previously the best and clearest example of their unique style of track. outside, however, takes these elements and pushes them even further, and grounds them in a playful sincerity which pushes Xavi’s trackmaking to new heights. Packed to the brim with visual jokes and surprise twists, there is barely ever a moment where Xavi’s track doesn’t surprise or delight—culminating in an absolutely astounding sequence where Xavi creates a cardboard cutout of Bosh to actually travel around and go outside in various places in the real world. Sometimes, I have been less excited about some of Xavi’s works because they seemed a tad irony-poisoned, like they were afraid to say or be anything beyond a funny meme. Nothing against funny memes, though, of course—but outside uses its humor and its memes to communicate something that feels honest and thoughtful: the outside world is a confusing, and strange, but also deeply joyful and funny place to be, and that our desire to be in this world around us is itself a natural and exciting experience. I have social anxiety, and that means sometimes I have some real difficulties actually going out into the world sometimes—sometimes it can feel impossible to leave my little apartment and exist out there in public space. outside offers me a warm invitation to this strange space we all find ourselves in—and asks me, too, to fill it with silliness and joy and hope. And yeah, there were a few parts in Xavi’s track that felt like they could have done even more with the track—Bill Wurtz’s line about being “pregnant with aliens” or the bit where Bosh kind of just floats there while Wurtz sing about “changing [his] ways” come to mind—but honestly, who cares? I wanna go outside, and share that exterior world with all of you.
Prolix is the first track from new line rider creator punkband—and, let me tell you, they’ve already left quite the impression with this debut. Combining rough, scribbly movement with a moody color palette, Prolix manages to effectively visualize the heavy, anxious breathing central to the song it syncs—and, in so doing, places us into a psychological terrain of a panic attack in a startlingly personal way. Pieces of text float by Bosh in various states of legibility, building up a collage of fragmented, overwhelmed language—“aware”, “here”, “try”, “ease”, “cry”. This kind of language reminds me of the ways in which I have talked to myself when trying to halt a panic attack—impotent, self-directed commands to try and calm myself down. For me, one of the worst elements of going through a panic attack is what feels like a kind of self-hatred for having a panic attack, a simmering anger at myself for losing self-control. As a result, when the text of Prolix boils over with a similar kind of anger—reading “YOU HAVE TO STOP DOING THIS TO YOURSELF” in barely-legible text—I felt seen and understood. And then Prolix tops it all off with that sudden dismount in the end, perfectly capturing the jarring manner in which the music—this ragged gasping for air—cuts off, as if in the middle of the breath. It leaves me staggering and disoriented, in a good way—the panic attack has left just as quickly as it arrived. Prolix manages to capture this experience in a way that feels like we are let into a glimpse of punkband’s inner life, like punkband is sharing their lived experiences with us. And god, I just love the way in which punkband approached making this track—by using the rough and shaky movements commonly seen in new Line Rider creators (like punkband), Prolix demonstrates the ways in which you do not need to be an expert at movement to create a meaningful and compelling track—you just need to work within your limitations in a reflective and thoughtful way.
There’s something deeply compelling to me about referring to an 8-second giga-quirk explosion as a sort of “kitsch”, a piece of art that feels generationally outdated yet ironically enjoyable, like a laughably sentimental old-timey artifact. I enjoy the way this comparison puts into perspective that there are now several generations of Line Rider artists from different eras of the medium, and that enough time has passed for our current generation of Line Rider indulgers to view these tracks as a part of old-internet culture.
The crossover of Line Rider culture and K-pop dance culture is like whiplash every time I watch KITSCH. K-pop dancing was omnipresent in my high school, with students practicing or entertaining each other in the hallways all the time, and I would often see people sharing the choreographies they’ve studied and practiced to Instagram stories and posts. These videos embodied a shallow playfulness that was instrumental to the school culture. But what was initially born out of excitement for a new genre of movement can grow toxic, becoming an avenue for communal perfectionism and elitism, depending on the social context.
For Instantflare and the quirk community, perfectionism and elitism became so extreme to the point that a sequence of tricks as incomprehensible as KITSCH’s became what quirkers would strive to perform. Instantflare pokes fun at this historical absurdity through their overly-detailed (but seemingly accurate) frame-by-frame analysis, while also being critical and reflective during the Advanced Playback, in which lyrics about copying dance moves to submit to an online algorithm overlay barely-readable credits which arrange harmful text messages alongside walls of text describing how incredibly meaningful and important the track is to the creator, as well as the (hopefully false?) details that the track took 7 years to make and that this video is supposedly just a trailer for the actual track which is “coming soon”. In this way, I think KITSCH has a resentful playfulness — a mourning for the time taken up by an art community that hurt you. Line Rider is old, and giga-quirk is being sent to the forest under the earth to die.
Pocke’s Chocolate Matter pulls from a wide variety of their previous works and combines them together into a medley of music-synced vibes which are deeply enjoyable. As a result, pocke presents a unification of the two poles of their line rider style—in Chocolate Matter, we see the ultra-clean grids and minimalism we see in tracks like New Machines and Compass juxtaposed with their more scribbly and textural work in tracks like Crystal River and useless on repeat, using the transitions between various sections of Sweet Trip’s “Chocolate Matter”to justify the stylistic changes. Unified by pocke’s technical-yet-memotive movement style, Chocolate Matter is quite enjoyable as a music synchronization experience, and there isn’t really a moment where you’ll get too bored by anything happening on-screen. Like Your World is Eternally Complete before it, Chocolate Matter uses minimal, poetic visuals to get at subtle emotional experiences and sensations. While definitely not reaching the same emotional peaks for me as Your World is Eternally Complete or other pocke tracks like Everything Goes On, and despite the emotional and thematic space of this track feeling more muddied and unclear to me than usual, Chocolate Matter is an enjoyable experience through and through.
Distorted Fate is stylistically reminiscent of the work of DoodleChaos, featuring precisely synced multi-rider movement with several dismounts and remounts, and the track’s visuals are mostly simple shapes and textures to represent changes in music. It deviates from other tracks in a couple notable ways, though — sunnyshi’s music choice of rhythm game music from the game Phigros lends itself to a more intense, fast-paced track than one synced to classical music. Also, this track features heavy use of the camera focuser, with which the camera switches from focusing on one rider to another. The focuser is used in a couple interesting ways throughout this track, but the visually coolest way in my opinion was at the end, where it looks like riders are warping in and out of view, appropriately at the most intense part of the song. In future work, I’d love to see sunnyshi (…and many creators who make relatively derivative work) continue with what makes this track unique and drop the stylistic constraints of the common style. I think people often get so caught up in making a perfectly synced track that they forget that you can draw in Line Rider. Of course it depends what you’re going for and I understand if people don’t want to draw in a track based solely on movement, but one of my favotite moments in Distorted Fate was when the rider passed by drawings of each phase of the moon (and the whole track features a subtle narrative of an escape from the moon), and I’d love to see more moments like it.
I also want to acknowledge that sunnyshi is a Chinese Line Rider creator posting videos on Bilibili. I’m interested in language barriers over the internet (similar situations exist with a couple games I play) and how that can lead to communities developing completely differently. For the most part Line Rider is mostly on YouTube and most of its popular work is made by English speakers, so it’s cool to see Line Rider start to grow on Bilibili, especially with the work and tutorials of xiaozhou233333, the latter of which likely made this track possible and are even the fullest tutorials on YouTube in my opinion.
Jade’s latest track is a piece of light “quirk” which really exists mostly as a set-up to tell a series of small jokes in the form of Line Rider slapstick. In one moment, some accompanying text tells bosh to “get up silly!” as they tumble down a steep incline, while in another Bosh slowly shudders in a temp stall while an accompanying author’s note informs us that she “need break. quirk is hard work” [sic]. While cute enough, The Ultimate Experience doesn’t really strive to be anything more than some silly movement and silly jokes—and that’s fine, honestly. It’s clear to me that this track is more of an intimate, interpersonal affair—made with a collaborator who is clearly Jade’s friend—and as a window into that bonding experience between friends, I think the track succeeds well enough. I deeply enjoy and appreciate everything Jade puts out, even if it's simple and silly like The Ultimate Experience or Line Rider - Tutorial: How to Sing "My Boy" by Car Seat Headrest—but still, I do eagerly await whatever track Jade might go “all-in” on next.
May marked the (non?) return of CatAtKmart, a Line Rider creator who made a few somewhat interesting tracks a couple of years ago, such as Story From North America and misinput. Probably the most interesting of CatAtKmart’s original batch of tracks, however, was drag me with you, which eschewed the abstract-and-minimalist vibe of their other work for the sake of a simple narrative about cave exploring and death—I remember being particularly struck by the way in which CatAtKmart drew Bosh and her sled in their respective graves at the end, and I think it probably in some capacity influenced several moments in Friends In Low Places. Overall, though, the original drag me with you, although enjoyable to watch, didn’t leave much of a lasting impression. And while CatAtKmart’s Drag me with you remake isn’t really breaking any new ground, I enjoyed it significantly more than any of their original batch of tracks. While still focusing on a pretty spare cave environment in a style which resembles Banky’s the forest under the earth, the fluidity of the movement and the approach to music sync gives this remake an overall much more pleasant viewing experience—watching Bosh bounce from floor to ceiling in time to the beat like this is always its own simple delight. And the dismount and death at the end feels much snappier and less of a drawn out affair—giving the ending refreshing punch right at the end that leaves me excited for where CatAtKmart goes next. CatAtKmart keeps saying that they’re not really back, but, deep down, I really kind of hope that they are.
Unfortunately, rattlesnake came out only a few days too late this month to make it onto pocke’s countdown of the top 10 hardest beats in line rider, though it easily would have placed very high. I think rattlesnake is the ideal track. It is rhythmic, motific, and serpentine. The snakes (of which there are an abundance) are visibly varied from one another, but it is clear that producing this rhumba was not a grueling task. Some of them even have teeth, marking the imminent danger of encountering a rattlesnake at the song’s most intense moments. It is clear, however, that though Malizma may be suffering from ophidiophobia (thus the titular content warning for “snakes”), he is also unusually fond of rattlesnakes, which I admire and appreciate his expression of. I always enjoy a track that feels like a kind tribute to a friend of the creator, and in this case, that kindness is being directed towards animals; specifically, the species of rattlesnake which is very dear to Malizma’s heart.
