Cool1778%

Jack Owen‑Smith, known artistically as Cool1778%, is a 15‑year‑old independent underground electronic music producer from Wellington, New Zealand. He describes his sound as highly alternative, extremely experimental, and often abrasive – a style he considers difficult to place alongside any particular genre or artist. Jack began making music at around 12 years old, initially treating it as a joke rather than a serious creative pursuit.

At the beginning of 2025, he decided to release his work on all major streaming platforms instead of limiting it to YouTube and SoundCloud. After signing up for DistroKid, he began distributing his music more widely.

Jack’s earliest releases were tracks he created at age 13, originally uploaded to YouTube and SoundCloud. His first official project was a compilation album titled Electro Bootleg, released on January 20th, 2025. The 20‑minute, 10‑track experimental album blended various electronic styles, especially “internet genres,” and served as his personal interpretation of sounds ranging from Krushclub to hardcore techno and industrial‑rooted music.

Because the tracks were produced when he was only 13 and still learning the basics of his DAW, the songs were short, roughly 90 seconds each, and featured rough mixing and production. Despite this, the project felt fresh and exciting to him at the time, functioning as a playground for experimentation. He chose the title Electro Bootleg because the album felt like a raw, unpolished electronic take on the genres he was exploring.

Jack considers Electro Bootleg an important stepping stone in his discography. He keeps it available today because it marks the beginning of what would become the “new and exciting” Cool1778%.

Throughout 2025, Jack released multiple singles each month, steadily improving his musical and production abilities. Each track introduced new ideas, resulting in a catalogue where almost every single had a distinct sound.

Toward the end of the year, he compiled his favourite singles into a 40‑minute, 10‑track self‑titled album, Cool1778%. The record spans a wide range of styles and carries a lonely, obsessive, and psychologically intense atmosphere. Tracks like Melancholic feature harsh textures, distorted layers, and droning manipulated guitars buried beneath angsty noise.

Many songs share similar sound effects – some custom‑made, others heavily altered from various sources – giving the album a cohesive personality despite its stylistic diversity.

Songs such as Madness For U incorporate fast tempos, distorted drums, aggressive synths, and chaotic tempo changes hidden beneath warped sound effects. Compulsive For U?? leans into gliding, droning synth chords with 808s taking the lead.

The album is defined by dark, nightlike atmospheres with few breaks, creating a claustrophobic and immersive listening experience. While it retains the internet/DIY aesthetic of Electro Bootleg, the tracks are longer, more structured, and more refined. Jack intentionally leaves clipping and “underwater” mixing moments to preserve a bedroom‑producer feel rather than a polished commercial EDM sound. Despite the distortion and noise, melodic sections often cut through, emerging from the darkness. Most tracks focus on a single idea rather than long, evolving arrangements.

Jack’s 2026 project, Seraphic Light, released on July 22nd, features 16 tracks with a runtime of just over 1 hour and 30 minutes. It is his first fully intentional, cohesive album – designed from the start to function as a unified body of work. Some tracks act as interludes to reinforce the album’s themes, while others stretch between 7 and 10 minutes.

During production, Jack was heavily inspired by Crystal Castles and Aphex Twin, admiring their aesthetics and sonic identities. He aimed to merge the ambience of Aphex Twin with the intensity and abrasiveness of Crystal Castles, blending these influences with his own established sound to create what he calls Seraphic Light. The title means “Divine Light,” representing something that felt different and uniquely meaningful to him.

The album explores beauty intertwined with collapse – fragile ambient synths and pads crushed under layers of distortion and glitches, creating waves of tension as serene atmospheres are overwhelmed by powerful, thematic synths. The project is intentionally unpredictable, maintaining the DIY edge of his earlier work while presenting a more cohesive and mature sound.

Jack considers Seraphic Light his most cohesive and accomplished record to date. The tracks evolve significantly throughout their long runtimes, resulting in an unconventional and exciting listening experience unlike anything he has made before.