Los Angeles-based electronic duo Tonoso — Jacob Grabb and Paul Salerno — met in high school jazz band and started working together in earnest back in 2018. Since their formation, the duo have developed and honed a unique take on contemporary electronic music centered around a cinematic and compositional sensibility.
The duo’s full-length debut Artificial Dreams is slated for release later this year. And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of this year, you might recall that I’ve written about two of the Los Angeles-based duo’s previously released singles:
- “Hide,” a lush and breezy single that paired organic instrumentation with atmospheric electronic production paired with Grabb’s yearning and plaintive vocals. But underneath the breezy infectiousness was a brooding quality.
- “Friction” a woozy and wistful single featuring glistening and oscillating synths, skittering beats and Grabb’s plaintive vocals that reminded 7 a bit of Seoul‘s I Became A Shade and Beacon and others to mind.
“Hyperstimulated,” Tonoso’s third single of the year is a hook-driven club banger featuring enormous bass drops, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, glistening synth arpeggios, samples of shimmering strings and alarm clocks paired with Grabb’s plaintive vocals and a distorted vocal sample to create a dense feeling of sensory overload. While sonically bearing a resemblance to 90s house and In Ghost Colours era Cut Copy, the song as the duo explains is informed by our instant gratification-fueled, social media world: “We live in a world on constant dopamine hits, never ending phone notifications, endless amount of streaming content, all while trying not to lose yourself to the infinite,” the duo explain.
