The Youth is Starting To Change

It’s interesting to think that indie musicians are getting younger and younger as recording and programming software becoming more accessible to anyone in the world. Artists like King Krule and Lorde recently took over our lives in 2013, and they’re not old enough to buy a Smirnoff Ice in LA. Dylan Iuliano is an 18-year-old musician living in Italy and goes by The Delay in the Universal Loop. His music is a little bit Reznor, a little Mars Volta and completely well produced (and self produced). Iuliano employs IDM-style blips and bloops over reverby vocals and hard-hitting percussion. His first solo record, Disarmonia, is trippy, fun and shockingly mature, all at the same time. Is there something in Italy’s water?

The album opens up with “Flumen,” a taste of the kind of vibey, semi-psychedelic mischief peppered throughout this album. It definitely sets the tone for the rest of the record. “Eternauta” sounds like it could’ve been on the last two MGMT records. The heady swirling of space bloops and phat drums carries over to the next track, “In ogni mio futuro.” “Pythagoras” is a proggy, almost math-like approach to glitch music. Iuliano doesn’t actually use any glitchy sounds, but the precision programming and percussion translate to somewhat of an organic fluctuation of sounds.

The rest of the album somewhat carries on the same way. It’s very much the mind of an 18-year-old musician with a trained and educated ear. He comes from a country filled with some of the most influential prog and electronic artists; it’s sure to have affected him at an early age. Disarmonia is still incredible, coming from a musician who’s still young enough to figure himself out and emulate anyone he wants. The Delay in the Universal Loop exudes such a scary amount of talent and potential that it’s hard to imagine what kind of damage he can make once he’s experienced the woes and wonders of being a 20-something.