“This is a message from the twelfth of thirteen, brakence has been successfully eradicated. We came to the conclusion that he would rather make selfish art than serve a higher purpose. So when you hit replay, ask yourself these questions: Who are you really listening to? And where is the line between art and dark magic? Because that man had no idea.” 
Randy Findell, better known by his stage name brakence, is an American singer-songwriter and producer from the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He rose to fame in the anti-pop scene and has since developed his own ambitious sound with hazy melodics that are emphasized with distortions, emotive lyrics and eccentric production.
Strongly self-deprecating highlighted with an agitated edge, brakence’s second album “hypochondriac” was released in December 2022, and it plays like a neurotic self-journal filled to the brim with media-induced anxiety. The album explores themes of ego, fame, mental illness, love and death and rebirth with sounds that capture most Millennial and Gen Z emotions with sample sounds of screaming, gunshots and video game narratives, along with the added “bloom to death” tagline that plays at various points in the album. “hypochondriac” sounds so different emotively from any release in the hyper-pop/glitch-pop scene and has the potential of being a reference point for any future releases in the scene.
“bugging!” opens up the album with a message that announces he is back from his 3-year hiatus. It’s a reminiscent opening to the album that brings back the formulas of his previous album “punk2” with down tempos, trap beats and acoustic guitars that fill the track. This helps introduce listeners to who brakence was before his hiatus, but by the end of the track, the new maximalist instrumentals are introduced to provide insight into who brakence is as an artist and help set the tone for the album as the layering and transitions utilized on the opening track would remain consistent throughout the project.
The finger-plucked ending of “bugging!” sees the project veer into a new direction as the instrumentals explode into the club-esque sound that is “caffeine”. “caffeine” was the fourth single released in the months leading up to this album and was released with an accompanying music video in early September 2022. Building upon the maximalist foundation that “bugging!” made by using formant shifting that makes the baritone vocals of brakence expand, shrink and grow with layers of bass smacks and synth plucks that bombard listeners’ ears. The song is fast and seems to scatter instrumentally but the streamlined lyrics of the track showcase the confidence brakence has in his craft.
The next track is one of my favorites and I’ve most likely ruined it for anyone who has been in the car while I have aux. “venus fly trap” was the third single released with an accompanying music video in July 2022 and was teased weeks before its release. A standout track because the instrumentals replicate a traditional pop song ballad that sonically contrasts the rest of the album. Equipped with a classic pop sound and a catchy chorus, this song plays along sweetly with darker lyrics telling a story of someone falling in love with brakence and then manipulating their way into every aspect of his life that is presented with the lyrics “three chords and she all over me nasty”. The story reaches a semi-resolved as the instrumentals and vocals reach a point of acceptance in the storyline that bleeds into the following track.
“teeth” is the angrier continuation of “venus fly trap” that captures the overwhelming feeling that brakence faces due to how fast his music has gained popularity. A consistent theme of this album is the realization that once you share a vulnerable piece of yourself – through the internet or even a performance – it will always be a parasitic performance that you must keep up. The lyrics of “teeth” work off the singer’s anxieties and use it to build some kind of god complex within the track that can be seen in the stand-out lines like “I hit control-alt-delete/And yet I can’t stop manufacturing heat”.
The fifth track of the album holds a lot of satisfaction in its lyrics and instrumentals. “intellectual greed” lyrically tells how brakence is finally happy in his music career as at the end he repeats “I got everything I wanted, everything, everything I wanted”, but the entirety of the album suggests there was a cost of this success. The album itself talks about the sacrifices and discoveries brakence has made throughout his music career which follows along with the sonic structure of the track. This song’s guitar and drum grooves resemble early 2000s pop-rock chords, highlighting brakence’s journey to reach this point in his career.
The viral success that brakence has had on the internet and in the music industry has caused him a lot of anxiety. The sixth track, “5g” addresses the anxiety-induced internet addiction he uses to curb his feelings. The drill-inspired instrumental of this song is frantic and pairs well with the emo-rap lyrics brakence employs here. There are so many dimensions of this track, from the formant shifting in the vocals to the constant glitching noises in the instrumental, giving this song so much character where it falls in the tracklist.
“preparation exercise no. 7 (trembling)” is a song that explores the mental health theme of the album as it addresses the name hypochondriac as it references his habit of scanning his chronic headaches as they are common symptoms of having brain tumors. The instrumentals and vocals of this song are a lot calmer compared to the previous tracks and have a more streamlined listen. The glitch effects throughout the verses and choruses of the song resolve by the bridge before closing out to segue into the next track.
“cbd” is the shortest track on the album and was released as a single in January 2022, being teased with cryptic posts containing one letter at a time that eventually spelled out the song title. This song adds to the theme of anxiety and trying to find ways to curb symptoms of the feeling, but also acts as a make-shift remedy to listeners. This song starkly contrasts the previous track as it takes up another poppy, mystical video game-sounding instrumental with catchy choruses and tempos like “venus fly trap”. It is a lot lighter in terms of sound than the rest of the album, and I think it was skillfully placed where it is in the tracklist to reach a happier resolve of “preparation exercise no. 7 (trembling)”.  
The story of “cbd” is continued into the next track with “stung” (another song that I’m sure I’ve ruined for everyone around me). This song uses more traditional elements with percussive drums and guitar chords adorning the track alongside jaded lyrics that refer back to the album’s themes. The refrain of this song is what sets the song apart for me, as it is one of the only moments in the album that has such a clear sound, and in a way demands the listeners’ attention by being so clear that he’s going to what he wants to do himself.
The instrumental of “stung” glitches into an emo-pop instrumental with anguished screams in the back of the track. “argyle” is the leading single off of this album as it was the first single to be released from brakence after almost an entire year of releasing no solo material. This track references some of brakence’s previous releases like “boywontcry” as he writes about his desire to make music his living. This song acts as a deep dive into brakence’s artistic history as he makes lyrical references to his 2019 “bhavana” EP, and releases with other artists like Ericdoa and their project “thingsudo2me”.
The segue into “deepfake” has a spiraling sound that resolves into a calming piano instrumental with falsetto-soaked vocals. The opening lines of this track deal with talks of remedies for depression, but brakence describes he is going to need more than what is natural or chemical to get him out of this state. This song is a huge release of emotion for the whole album as it goes back and forth between calm and frustration with builds of intensity in the instrumental and more fervor in the climaxes of the song. This track is the second longest on the album, has a lot of movement within its playtime, and encompasses many qualities that make brakence the artist he is known to be. 
The longest track of the whole album is the twelfth track “introvert”. The sound of this track stands out as brakence himself has said this sound is “cursed country” with finger-plucked western guitar sounds and country-esque drum lines that play throughout the track. This specific track is interesting as it takes a pause to play a monologue that says brakence has been “eradicated” because the music he makes is “selfish” and does not serve “a higher purpose”. 
The monologue of this track references an urgent request that was released on brakence’s SoundCloud called “extraction 003”. This message is made by the Twelfth of Thirteen is the person making the request and this is something only a select few people would’ve caught on to as not everyone would’ve listened to the message on his SoundCloud account. 
“introvert” is one of the last releases of emotion on the album before the closing track of “hypochondriac”. This is a stripped-down closing of the album that is Randall Findell, or the person that is behind brakence, singing and finishing the album in his true form. The adlibs that play through “5g” and “venus fly trap” are sung more flexibly. This is a perfect close to the album and leaves the listeners with a raw message from the artist.