ElyOtto

Last spring, Elliott Platt was cleaning fish tanks at his local pet store when he received the luckiest news of his young life. He’d been laid off. COVID cutbacks: a tale as old as 2020 itself.  With extra time on his hands, the Canadian teen holed up in his bedroom after school, poring over his piles of half-finished hyperpop projects. A glitchy beat here, a speedfreak keyboard melody there, clips of cartoonish vocal samples he’d recorded when no one was home (too embarrassed to sing in front of his parents). The 17-year-old huddled over his laptop, propped up on an old piano bench wedged between his pet geckos and spiders, self-producing every bit of his saccharine, mind-splitting songs and releasing them to a handful of listeners on SoundCloud, under the name ElyOtto.  One of ...