Gesaffelstein and the Tragedy of the Pop Producer’s Solo Album

It should go without saying at this point that 2024 has been a wild year for music. We’ve seen artists like Chappell Roan go from sleeper hitmaker to megastar almost overnight. We’ve seen albums like BRAT absolutely dominate pop culture to the point where its aesthetic has been used in American political campaigns (to varying levels of success). We’ve seen diss tracks like “Not Like Us” top the charts for record amounts of time with lyrics focused almost entirely on allegations that I probably shouldn’t discuss in my first-ever article. 2024 has seen just an immense amount of crazy good music. 

But unfortunately, not every 10/10 album gets their moment in the spotlight. I’ve made peace with the idea that not everyone thinks that my opinion on music is completely objective, and that I can’t just summon a Grammy into existence for all my favorite artists. Even so, I still can’t help but be incredibly dismayed at the reception (or lack thereof) of the new Gesaffelstein album, GAMMA. 

You may be thinking that you’ve never heard of Gesaffelstein and, by extension, his music. Right off the bat, you’re probably wrong. While he is an incredibly accomplished artist, he is mostly known for his work as a producer for others rather than his own solo work. In fact, the main reason I bothered to listen to BRAT when it came out is because Gesaffelstein, aka Mike Levy of Lyon, France, produced two tracks on that album (“B2b” and “I Might Say Something Stupid”). He’s also worked with Kanye West on his album Yeezus, credited as a producer on the tracks “Black Skinhead” and “Send It Up”. However, his biggest collaboration was with The Weeknd, with whom he worked on the songs “Hurt You” and “I Was Never There” off the album My Dear Melancholy in 2018. Following the release of Melancholy, The Weeknd would once again lend his vocals for Gesaffelstein’s album Hyperion with a mildly homophobic feature on the song “Lost in the Fire” (Gesaffelstein would later make up for this by producing the song “J CHRIST” by Lil Nas X, though). 

These songs have all gained massive success, with the collaborations with The Weeknd alone netting around 2.5 billion streams on Spotify. It’s no secret that Gesaffelstein has a crazy resume, having worked with producers like Mike Dean and Daft Punk on top of the star-studded list of vocal collaborators. But despite all of that, his new album GAMMA is probably his worst-performing project sitting around 7.5 million total streams on Spotify. Sure, it was only released this past March, but I’ve seen basically zero conversations about this album outside of Gesaffelstein’s own fanbase. Despite being a producer with songs like “B2b” and “I Was Never There” under his belt, there’s a remarkable lack of fanfare or anything for this album. So, what gives? Why isn’t GAMMA reaching anywhere close to the same reception as his previous work? 

While GAMMA is a fantastic album, there isn’t really a whole lot for fans of his more mainstream hits to latch onto. It’s very much the antithesis of Gesaffelstein’s previous album Hyperion. Hyperion is… an okay album. It was released the year following Gesaffelstein’s work on My Dear Melancholy, and very much follows the same production style. It’s very poppy, and while it does have some elements from Gesaffelstein’s electronic background, it definitely feels like he’s trying to capitalize on his pop production chops. It’s not bad, but it’s a major step down from his early EPs and his debut album Aleph which plunge the listener into dystopian industrial techno fever dreams that make you wonder if Hyperion was even made by the same guy. That said, in terms of streaming numbers, Hyperion absolutely dwarfs all of Gesaffelstein’s other projects with upwards of 950 million streams on Spotify. While most of those streams are from Lost in the Fire, it’s the only Gesaffelstein album to get super mainstream success and has many of his more recognizable songs from a mainstream standpoint. GAMMA, on the other hand, is a near-total opposite of Hyperion.

I suppose after about five entire paragraphs I should probably actually talk about the album that inspired me to write this article in the first place. While Hyperion is a very digestible, marketable project with a whole slew of songs that fit neatly into any popular dance/pop Spotify playlist, GAMMA is not. GAMMA is an eerie, industrial techno/EBM/New Wave fusion with heavy inspiration from bands like Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk, combined with Gesaffelstein’s signature hard-hitting production found in his earlier projects like Aleph and Conspiracy. It has songs like “Hard Dreams” and “Your Share of the Night”, which feature this distorted, grimy, mechanical synthpop style combined with a chilling vocal performance from the only collaborator on this album, Yan Wagner. There are about 6 of these new-wave songs on this 11-track album, with my favorite being “The Urge”. It’s got this quick, addictive chugging rhythm and borrows a lot of influence (and a sample or two) from Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express. “The Urge” also has this super sudden beat switch into a much slower, jazzier segment that kinda shows up out of nowhere but absolutely blew my mind when I heard it for the first time. Overall, this half of the album is spectacular. The lyrics aren’t much to write home about, being rather repetitive and vague, but Wagner’s slick, oily vocal performance makes up for it tenfold. Even with this spectacular yet bizarre collection of synthpop songs though, I feel like GAMMA’s instrumental tracks are really what make this album shine. 

The instrumental tracks on GAMMA, while most likely meant to be secondary to the new-wave elements, are probably some of my favorite songs to release this year. They’re generally placed throughout the album between the synthpop tracks but aren’t incredibly alienating and pack a crazy punch if you’re looking for something a little less Depeche-Modey. These tracks play 100% into Gesaffelstein’s industrial techno roots, with my personal favorites “Psycho” and “Hysteria” having some of the best production on this album. “Psycho” is definitely the weirdest track on this album- it’s a distorted two-minute-long drum solo. Even with limited time and instrument selection, however, Gesaffelstein makes it work. “Psycho” proves that Gesaffelstein is a master at building intensity and rhythm without committing the worst musical sin: being boring. The distorted drums bounce from one ear to the other, slowly climbing over each other and building into this intense, marching rhythm serving as one of GAMMA’s highest points. And yet, Gesaffelstein manages to outdo “Psycho” with probably my favorite track on the entire album.

“Hysteria” is an overdriven, thrashy, and warped techno workout that feels like a shot of adrenaline straight to the jugular. It’s such a crazy, yet simple track with distorted, repeating synth patterns and strangely meticulous drum fills throughout. The fact that this track is only two minutes long and packs this much of a punch is a testament to how effective GAMMA is as an album. Despite the short runtime of about 27 minutes, despite the lack of super complex and groundbreaking sounds from Aleph or star power from Hyperion, GAMMA is an incredibly powerful record and shows that Gesaffelstein doesn’t need to send you to a different dimension and back to get you moving. 

The beauty of GAMMA is that Gesaffelstein is finally breaking out of his pop-producer rut of the past few years. After the release of Hyperion, Gesaffelstein released the EP Novo Sonic System which is incredibly similar to the instrumental tracks on GAMMA and bears many similarities to his work shortly after the release of Aleph back in 2013. It is my personal theory (and I cannot stress enough that this is purely a THEORY) that Gesaffelstein always wanted to continue his work in techno, but the success of his collaborations with The Weeknd may have caused him to sideline this aspect of his career in favor of the more lucrative option. This is why some songs Novo Sonic System, despite being released after Gesaffelstein’s apparent transition to a pop producer, sound very similar to his “Hate or Glory” remix from 2014. I think it’s also worth noting that none of the tracks from Hyperion were played (outside of brief snippets) on Gesaffelstein’s current Enter the Gamma tour while still including two tracks from Novo Sonic System. 

After years of either being the guy who did three songs with The Weeknd, the guy who worked on “B2b”, or the guy who sometimes has his music slowed and reverberated for TikTok edits, Gesaffelstein is making the music he wants to make and clearly has so much passion for it. But it just doesn’t have as much of the superstar backing as Hyperion or the novel eeriness of Aleph. It’s a passion project, but sometimes passion isn’t enough to make a hit. I do hope that someday, either by the grace of the TikTok or YouTube algorithm or some other abstract and mythical force, that this album gets some more ears on it. It’s a fantastic piece of work and despite its flaws, is nothing short of my favorite Gesaffelstein album and my favorite album of 2024.