Incorporeal Visions Deluxe
Network Entities

2014

 

 

 

 

Supposedly hailing from Japan, presumably a one-man show, most likely a bedroom artist with an admiration for replaced textures and magnanimous globs of euphony right out of the can, Incorporeal Visions Deluxe is a tweaking vaporwaver, even though the extrinsic surroundings of his LP Network Entities do suggest otherwise. Released in May 2014 on the Dream Catalogue label which is a well-known source for all kinds of dreamy music and Vaporwave-related artifacts, be they deliberately saccharified or cheesier than a Frenchman’s mustache, it is available to stream and fetch at Bandcamp. The album harbors 16 tracks (14 of them streamable) of approximately 30 minutes in total and gyres in-between blue moods of remoteness, tropical verdure and technocratic dioramas. These are Vaporwave’s usual themes and topics, so what makes Network Entities so great in my book? First, this is not one of Vaporwave’s hastily produced albums. If it were, it probably wouldn’t have appeared on AmbientExotica in the first place, but it is important to stress the synergetic energies that float between the aural particles, or to be less prosaic and more technical: I don’t know how many of these 16 songs or vignettes are unique and specifically created for this album, i.e. whether it’s one, three or ten tunes, but even if all of them were based on vintage 80’s or posh 90’s material, Incorporeal Visions Deluxe is more than able to spice the original timbres, sometimes going so far as to replace them with different sound textures. Futurism is nothing to be afraid of in this work, everything is polished and clean, albeit not clinically sterile. The opener, meanwhile, is opposed to an otherwise paradisiac sanctuary, but more about this and all other tracks in the following paragraphs.

 

One man’s utopia is another man’s wrath, and so it shouldn’t be too worrisome for the Vaporwave guttersnipe to feast on Dystopian Mall, an opener hued in crepuscular colors full of hatched hues, aggressively reverberated hi-hat galores and withdrawn electric piano vesiculations. Muffled public service announcements round off this fleeting visit of 60 seconds to a sorrowful state of consumerism. Heather Mason, where are you? The following Tropical Somnium, meanwhile, soothes the soul and is already the longest piece of the whole album spanning 164 seconds of elysian e(tio)lation, oneiric synth pads and aquatic marimba droplets. But there is more to it than that; even though the term has lost most of its meaning, this aural rain forest is anything but progressive as Incorporeal Visions Deluxe gets rid of most looped states and increases the layers bit by bit. A superb tidbit of dichotomy shuttling between contemplation and bliss.

 

Whereas ｅｓｓｅｎｔｉａｌ STUDiO 2.0 places the infamous cowbell amid vitreous clangs, ligneous claves and a wondrously raspy backdrop whose pearly prowler insouciance enchants in its latter half, shorty MarbleArch is a steamy mirage of fuchsia vestibules, high-rise saxophones and Casio faux pianos. Despite its slowness, euphony and mutual understanding are in the air. For lovers only! Up next comes a treat in the shape of a superdreamy Pilotwings 64 BGM sparkler called 詩 Desktop, but it is no mere slowed down facsimile but a polyhedron cloudlet of insouciance with new textures and surfaces. The hi-hats sound fresh, the melody remains intact, a dream comes true. It's more of a rework than a remix. The following Ｉｎｎｏｖａｔｉｏｎ is equally impressive due to its cymbal cascades and rectilineal crystal coruscation, with DreamFast.corp ending the first half of the album with spatially warped music box reels, staccato break beat tendrils and somnolently spheroidal superstructures.

 

NightChatter may be the one letdown of the album in terms of the ebullient beguilement factor, as the scenery is fragile, hued in a glacial turquoise, with only a nocturnal synth aorta floating amid birdcalls. However, don’t let this cauterized interstice fool you: what it lacks in colors and oomph, it only gains in majesty! Casual Work Attire then returns to the frilly gestalt with a hilarious intermission of a senior parade moving their bodies to a blurry Samba tropicana reminiscing the concupiscence of yesteryear. Ventilation オフィス follows and is the counterpoint with bone-crushing drum patterns and snare beats, dark matter protrusions and incandescent capsules of synth euphoria hovering over the polished chessboard floor, with お待ちください Your Call is Important to Us worshipping the bad side of customer care – please hold the line – with this unofficial call center hymn; loaded with cheerful Japanese girls surrounded by aeriform brass epitomes and green meadows before the inner eye, it is a life-affirming ode on the one hand… and willfully over the top on the other, testing the caller's patience.

 

Telepathic Ｂｌｉｓｓ then comes along with a strikingly languorous aquascape supercharged with dolphinoid syrinxes, lovestoned synth panoramas and stupefyingly laid-back maraca shakers whose marimba helixes serve as tropical wisps in this gigablue New Age habitat. The diaphanous InfoDesk spawns a granuloma of transistor radio brass fanfares which are curiously enough able to add plasticity to their hi-hats before the follow-up V I R T U A L Sunlight almost crosses the boundaries to good manners by injecting audacious amounts of Pandean pipes into the victim’s veins. Luckily, the artificial piano accompaniment is enriched with positive overtones and leaves a great afterglow to a superb Vaporwave cataract. Two bonus tracks are appended that are not available to stream at Bandcamp: コンパ クトディスクの明晰夢 (translating to compact discs lucid dream) enthralls qua its distant dripstone patterns, overblown synth aureoles and airy atmosphere, with the finale 木’s (woods) venturing into the jungle for a last time: a spiraling waterfall falls down near a pointillistic marimba convulsion.

 

All in all, its short-lived dualities notwithstanding, Network Entities is a superb short release that is as stringent as it breathes the focus of the producer. There is not one single dull moment in sight, an adage that can be allotted to bazillions of music-related works. Here, in terms of Vaporwave’s already overfoaming cauldron, it translates to a streamlined focus on the moods and tonalities that really matter. With the exception of a few outstandingly dreamy pieces such as NightChatter and Telepathic Ｂｌｉｓｓ which are devoid of any cheekiness or third-wall breaking wink – a most refreshing approach, I might add –, Network Entities as a whole wears the Vaporwave medal (or stigma?) with pride and replaces the ubiquitous nucleus of slowed down R’n’B structures with video game memorabilia and new textures. And true enough, you won’t hear one single pitched vocalist that sounds like a traumatic survivor of a gigantomachy, there are only sparse brass fanfaronades in place, making Network Entities more of a pipe dream (with, well, pipes and flutes) than a saxophonic workshop. The songs are more often than not way too short, and their shortness becomes all the more pitiful once the checkered variety is realized by the listening subject. Sure, Incorporeal Visions Deluxe relies on loops and recurrent patterns, fair and square, but they are not as mercilessly stupid as in the Big Beat era of the late 90’s. Once a sample or snippet is chopped and repeated, the artist makes sure to make it a scything statement on its own, simply because this trick is used so irregularly. Network Entities is a great synth flume, a riverbed whose good mood, dulcet moments and cavalcades of rapture are almost riotous. At the same time, it is not cheesy or abhorrently apocryphal. Vaporwave is not supposed to be consumed for a longer time. Egad, call the cops, for I’m doing just that with this gemstone.

 

Further listening and reading:

 

Ambient Review 344: Incorporeal Visions Deluxe – Network Entities (2014). Originally published on May 21, 2014 at AmbientExotica.com.