Vapor Vertebrae 05-2015 Part B

Future Girlfriend
crazy Nights 狂気夜

<Single>

Partying like you’re in Asunción, Paraguay, that’s the credo of the faceless – albeit not faithless – collective Future Girlfriend from the very capital that all of a sudden becomes a fortuitous Future Funk fortress. The above crazy Nights 狂気夜 is another emerald of the gemstone-plastered streets, showcasing a stratiform duology of euphonious Italo House pianos and desiccate-calcined electric guitars whose funky punctilio adds an underbrush of baroclinic momentums to the scenery. Add staccatofied House vocals in tandem with flexing basslines to the locale, and you get a multicellular macronutrient. Why the “c“ in the title is no capital letter is probably of no importance whatsoever. However, the Funk critic nonetheless notices this stylistic oddity and sees it as an attempt to tone down the lunatic conniption via this little trick (the night isn’t CRAZY-Crazy, just crazy-Crazy, if that makes any sense). Augment the title with hiragana of the same meaning and you receive a thermal immersion of a party that isn’t as kooky as it could be, but still manages to establish a retrosternal redshift. Future Girlfriend succeeds anyhow.

Twitter: @futuregfmusic

Vantage
Give Me

<Single>

While we’re doing Funk-related business, why not visit the blazing panchromatic world of Frenchman Vantage? His latest single Give Me is another polyvalent epitome of Far Eastern flavors and Occidental spherification. Here, however, the producer decidedly decreases the magnanimous glitz in favor of hatched pastel colors of the less incandescent kind. No harm done, as Give Me emits many tricks and remains a holistic integral of the advantageous epistemology. Launching with a synthetic harp-fueled fairy tale anacrusis, Vantage’s aural lanthanide soon gains focus and macula and puts a clavichord into the center. The clavichord is one of Funk’s best known instruments next to the Rhodes piano and the guitar, but it is still great to fathom its bone-dry aridity in this context. It works as an anhydride, detracting viscoelasticity and scrimshaw artifacts. Vantage balances things out via shapeshifting complexions: the track’s last third is slowed down, pitch-shifted, tetragonally tilted until it becomes a cervical puddle. What I haven’t mentioned so far is the vocal epicenter which drizzles along in the shape of J-Pop bubblegum blebs. Lolita lyrics, filial excitement and childlike characteristics radiate a Vaporwave-worthy diorama and change the context of Give Me from a mere volatile oxidant into an immersive perianth. Tally ho, no need to be "s-sorry"!

Twitter: @VantageNoise

Faint Waves
Sun Kissed

<On The Coast EP>

Los Angeles-based producer Faint Waves is an admirer of the 80’s, and writing this very sentence in the context of Vaporwave is as redundant as the evidence that he’s also inhaling oxygen… what a surprise, eh? Turns out, however, that this vestibule into the long-lost and newly found decade is not just an important marker, but the very nucleus of every tone sequence and positron the artist spawns. Sun Kissed from the artist’s On The Coast EP is a perihelic instrumental that encapsulates one of the two primary artistic directions that are tied to Faint Waves: lagoons and megacities. Here the former is aurally painted via prolonged crimson-red four-note diamond afterglows, fluvio-lacustrine Flamenco guitar granulomas and whitewashed hi-hat knuckles. What makes this self-proclaimed Chillwave epithelium so luring – besides the rubicund sunset – is the admixed saxophone, a mandatory appearance in jazzy Vaporwave tracks. It establishes a more earthbound orthonormality in Sun Kissed and prevents the seraphic-diaphanous panorama from becoming a centrifugal-chromogenic force and transcending into a completely aeriform state. Faint Waves is also one half of Stereo Tropic, and one can easily feel the semi-nocturnal vibe in his solo productions, a sentiment which is yet again amplified by the amniotic saxophone. A vermillion sun trap alright.

Twitter: @FaintWavesMusic

Perla Blue
Chlorophyll Shrine

<Single>

From Pasadena, California hails Perla Blue, a Vaporwave luminary whose discography isn’t as vast and well-equipped yet, but versatile enough to demand one’s close attention, especially so since his track Chlorophyll Shrine is a stupefying Ambient corker of the soothingly clandestine kind. Depicting an aerial view of everyone’s favorite Mode 7 landscape as presented in Secret Of Mana, a sample-related connection to the RPG classic is at one’s disposal, but ultimately wrong, for it is actually the cavernous chromaticity of Donkey Kong Country's Dave Wise which oozes within the boundaries of Perla Blue’s mica. It is here where the fun really starts, as the artist augments the viscoelasticity of the original and transmutes the xylophone/marimba and panpipes fissures into aqueous amanitas; a spectral-supernal atmosphere of chlorotic color veils through the cave which ennobles the whole procedure. This is no samplefest, it’s no mere finger exercise or exhibition of Tartarean aesthetics, no, the circumambience fleshes out the sinews and talons, caulks the pith of nonentity and evokes a phylogenetic arcanum that is both divine and alkaloidal. Perla Blue creates a place filled with glucans and life in lieu of an overproduced ventricle that is ultimately hollow. Turn up the volume and/or listen with headphones: this is a shrine you already know, interpolated with chiral compounds give it an edge of an ergosphere.

Twitter: @PRLABLU

Replica Federation
ウィルス

<-V-I-R-U-S>

The ultramafic solanum ウィルス is the title track of Replica Federation’s album -V-I-R-U-S, released on the Illuminated Paths label which specializes in synth-driven songs and Vaporwave ventiducts. Since ウィルス literally translates into virus, chances are that this song depicts a violent-virulent superresonance, but nothing could be farther from the truth! In fact, Replica Federation chooses a very distinct pattern in order to aurally visualize the moving pattern of a virus: two segues are intermingled and emit the characteristics of perturbation and phoresy. The gateway is based on a Japan-flavored synth flute-fueled antrum of polymer-based magnetotails that swoosh through the mephitic air. All of a sudden, Funk guitar pseudotensors and soulful prolonged vocals take over the scenery, before the isolated phototropism of the track’s infancy stage is presented yet again. My explanation doesn’t do the song justice: it seems as if Replica Federation arbitrarily agglutinates various vignettes, but again, this is neither the plan nor the implementation thereof, as the second half of ウィルス remains coherent and stable. High-energy drones scythe through the glaucous-bluish pyroxene, cautiously arpeggiated drum escapades and short stumbling cusps bring energetic vibes to the scenery, but other than that, Replica Federation creates a periglacial matutinal serenade of contemplation and looming danger. It is this simultaneity – coupled with true-fashioned Vaporwave/80’s pairings – that make this one a polyfoil potassium pericarp. All thumbs up (I’ve only got two, but whatever)!

Twitter: @ReplicaFed @pathilluminated

Ambient Review 432: Vapor Vertebrae 05/2015 [Part B]. Originally published on May 13, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.