The latest track between MADANII & LLUCID (Dena Zarrin and Lucas Herweg respectively), the German duo teases their next EP with their record's first single with track "Dandelion". Gently flowing to the glow of its playful chimes, "Dandelion" shifts to the incongruent shapes of its fluctuating vocal scale. Titled "Dandelion" to capture the light and billowy nature of its ephemeral namesake, the single was inspired by a visit to Lucas’ hometown. Reflecting on the settings of his small town upbringing in rural Germany, the track was written in bittersweet nostalgia. Written about the conflict of leaving behind his beloved home among the birds and the trees, the song is about letting going of something you love in order to grow, hence its name "Dandelion": a flower that spreads by blowing in the wind.
You can check out “Dandelion” alongside LLUCID’s recent hip-hop inspired solo work including his solo debut on “Sweater” and the pitch-bent snap of its rummaging bass on “Chemicals”:
Llucid is possibly one of the most infuriating comics I’ve read in some time, made only more infuriating by the fact it’s been hosted on the Tapastic spotlight multiple times, despite, objectively, being absolute trash.
The comic claims to be a comedy/horror/drama, and while I guess it technically tries to be those things, it ultimately fails to be any of them. It’s such a clusterfuck of tone, and so heavy handed in every conceivable way it ultimately ends up without a tone at all. “Comedy” scenes weren’t funny, “drama” scenes were obnoxious, and “horror” scenes failed to have any actual impact being surrounded by stupid shitty meme faces and seemingly pointless bitchy whining.
Let’s start off with the “comedy”. Llucid relies entirely on ridiculous expressions for humor. They’re the joke, the punchline, and the constant driving force of every single scene not meant to be creepy or dramatic, and sometimes those as well. There are several problems with this, the first being simply that it isn’t funny. It’s not. Comedic expressions rely on surprise, or buildup, and the comic offers neither of these things. They’re so constant, so out of place, and so random they completely fail to convey any humor at all. It’s the comic equivalent of a two hour movie that consists of nothing but a clown throwing a pie at a guys face over, and over, and over again. It wasn’t all that humorous the first time, and it sure as fuck isn’t funny the 5786th. Not only are they repetitive, but sometimes the author drags a single stupid expression joke on for multiple updates. There’s a point where two entire updates are spent on the mom making a stupid face and slowly closing a door. I’m not fucking with you, that’s something that was apparently actually worthy of two separate updates. There’s a pretty heavy scene where the characters being tormented by a demon and the demon randomly sticks a finger up his nose so he makes a face, because you apparently can’t go one scene without this stupid gag. Even beyond that the mere existence of these faces is bizarre and distracting. The style is, for the most part, rendered fairly realistically, (if horrifically inconsistently) with realistic coloring, lighting, and a semi-realistic lineart style when it isn’t intentionally being stupid. It isn’t a style that lends itself to being stretched to extreme levels of absurdism, and this is especially the case when you’re expected to take parts of the comic seriously enough to gain a feeling of actual horror from them.
(This scene is what directly follows a pretty heavy “horror” page that happens exclusively in the main characters head. His response is so out of tonal context it’s unreal, and there is literally zero logical reason for his mom to be crying. It’s “random humor” at it’s most obnoxious. Congratulations fucktard, you not only completely destroyed any and all suspense, but reinforced that this comic is stupid bullshit that makes no sense, and has no artistic consistency to speak of!)
The drama scenes are shitty and forced, and the few horror sequences in this are pretty heavy handed, and not particularly horrific, typically relying on generic random horror imagery like eyes, and static to get the point across. The few times it does manage to start setting up a mood it’s immediately destroyed by stupid random humor, and shit like Sasuke.
Oh, did I mention that this kids demon, or whatever the fuck it is literally looks like a shitty Sasuke rip-off?
Do you think this is a motherfucking game???
He has two different colored eyes, spiky hair, and fingerless gloves. He’s also consistently drawn sketchy on lined paper. Because talent. I mean, you could try to argue it’s “artistic”, but you’re wrong, it’s just lazy. Throwing a million instagram filters on top of a lined paper sketch doesn’t make it art. It’s especially obnoxious to me because he actually doesn’t look bad when he’s in his more “demonic” form, and while it’s heavy-handed as shit, it’s decently creepy. Why the fuck is he drawn 99% of the time like a shitty Sasuke OC bishie?? It makes zero fucking sense, and, again, contributes heavily to this comic failing to have any tone or sense of coherency.
While I’m talking about characters, as much as these things can be called characters, the main character’s an unlikable bastard. He’s rude for no discernible reason, he’s whiny, and he’s stupid. He’s incredibly, incredibly stupid. In the most recent updates as of this review being written he’s agreeing to a shady deal with a demon that’s literally been torturing him for God knows how long. He thinks this is a good idea with no draw-backs. Amazing.
The art is incredibly inconsistent, jumping wildly in style and quality, and generally comes across as half-assed despite decent coloring. It goes from a sketchy mess of lines, to fully rendered painting, back to a colorless sketch, all in one scene, and it’s insanely distracting.
The comics pacing, and actual “page” building is also very weird. There are quite a few updates that are random single panels of skies that seemingly have nothing to do with the current scene, including a sunny sky in the middle of a scene where it’s clearly overcast and rainy. You also get random one panel updates of nothing but text on a black background. Contrast that with weirdly long updates of nothing happening, like the neverending dream sequence full of random pretty pictures that mean absolutely nothing, and you get a pacing disaster.
I’d comment on how it affects the story, but there isn’t much of any story here. Kid drives in car with mom. Arrives at house. Long dream sequence. Weird talk with Not-Sasuke with a bunch of unexplained implied bullshit. Congrats you now understand the entire “story” as it’s been presented thus far. It’s stupid, it’s slow, it’s boring, and it doesn’t really make much of a plot to speak of.
The most infuriating part of this comic by far, though, is the fact that I know the artist can do better. It’s painful to me seeing an occasional spot of gold, a good update, a good panel, a good stretch of art, only to be thrust back into horrible writing and inconsistently shitty art. It makes this comic inexcusable to me, because it isn’t inexperience that makes it bad. It isn’t a lack of ability. It’s just a complete lack of effort that makes this comic so terrible, and that’s the worst way a comic can possibly fail.
Overall this comic’s a lazy piece of shit, and I recommend it to nobody. Boring and lazy/10. Fuck tapastic for having god awful tastes, and putting this thing on enough of a pedestal I was tricked into reading it.
Our second ep released through Llucid! You can download below on Bandcamp. Please follow them on twitter and soundcloud and check their website and facebook for future projects from us and other dope artists:
@llucid
www.facebook.com/LlucidRecords
twitter.com/_llucid
llucid.bandcamp.com
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