Konichiwa

I keep coming back to Konichiwa. It’s a ridiculous title for a single—Gerard just straight up went with it—and the track is wound so tight you almost can’t tell what’s happening until the third or fourth listen. By which point you’re already committed.

He’s from Vienna, part of a scene you don’t know about unless you’re digging. Over the last decade he’s released increasingly strange, increasingly precise hip-hop, mostly through Futuresfuture, which is now his own label. Before this single there was Blausicht and Neue Welt—both actually charted, which is impressive given how experimental they are. The tours that followed sold out across Germany and Austria. He became one of those artists who’s quietly foundational to an entire underground scene.

The production is the signature: beats assembled from pieces that shouldn’t cohere but do, vocals placed in ways that feel accidental even when they’re precise. The writing is all adolescence and observation—the weight of living in something moving too fast to think about. Just the texture of being aware of how little any of it matters while still showing up anyway.

What I appreciate is the refusal to perform. He doesn’t sound like anything else and doesn’t apologize for it. He just calls his own sound Gerard Musik like it’s obvious. That confidence is rare. Most people spend years trying to sound like something else before they realize they don’t have to.

The album AAA is coming soon on his own label. I’m curious what happens next—not because I expect anything revolutionary, he’s never chased that. Just interested in what he does when nobody’s watching, when the only pressure is whatever he puts on himself.