Vapor Vertebrae 08-2015 Part B

Bonus Fruit feat. Pepsiman
Pepsiland

<Single>

Pepsiland might be a joke. At the same time, it could be the most genuine thing that has surfaced from the beverage barycenter Atlanta for a long time. California's Deiter Hetrick aka Bonus Fruit aka Gオーブ meets the advertising juggernaut Pepsiman who is permanently stuck in the 90's. Let's hope he survives in that decade, for in the future, there have been Vaporwave producers who needed to drop their Pepsi-related moniker due to some non-bicarbonate pressure called copyright infringement or something. Anyway, back to the salubrious megafauna of Pepsiland: running for a bit over three minutes, both artists – or entities – place brass-infused jingles of yesteryear over an artsie-fartsy rhythm aorta which is mercilessly altered, pestered and harrassed by their arhythmic counterparts: barbershop wisdoms, bit-crushed sirens, laser interferometry, fibrillar fireworks and roaring applause become enmeshed in a phosphorous philology. The simultaneity of all ingredients make this a cesspool in lieu of a relaxing bubblebath. All hands on deck, plunderphonics ahoy, Bonus Fruit and Pepsiman to the rescue! 

Twitter: @modernsqueeze  @PepsimanForever

Faint Waves feat. Carl Ellement
Midnight Love

<Summer Singles>

Just because Los Angeles-based artist Faint Waves is primarily known for his reciprocation between lagoons and oases on the one hand and high-rise megacities filled with exciting architecture on the other doesn't translate into a self-fulfilling prophecy. He breaks the spell with the aid of synthesist Carl Ellement on a track called Midnight Love, a first teaser of the upcoming Summer Singles EP. I am not one to spoil anyone's fun, let alone a full summer, but Midnight Love is an alkalophilic, recondite affair, and that shouldn't surprise anyone: the track title gives this aesthetic adage away. Pressure and remoteness go hand in hand in this track, molybdenized bass guitar twangs twirl in close proximity to cryovolcanic wisps and a Capcom-esque melody that could have certainly appeared in a certain fighting game. Even though this is a collaboration, it is about a fight that has to be fought independently and alone. Devotion is infinitesimally emanated, few and far between the glittering punctilio. And that's worth a lot if you're otherwise swallowed by hatched entities!

Twitter: @FaintWavesMusic

Tilvera
終わり c r e d i t s

<Single>

Luis from Germany, also known as Woolokologie and Tilvera, has willfully placed himself as the newbie in the vapor community, but this is only due to the year 2015 being the origin of his journey. All poetic lachrymosity aside, you you won't notice the implied inaptitude. Luis doesn't even try to fool anyone: Tilvera is a promising project, with the single 終わりc r e d i t s being admittedly closer to a safe bet, and you know what that means: slowed-down vocals and plasticized hi-hats whose once-piercing clarity becomes a whitewashed haze. However, what this tune lacks in conceptual adventures, it more than gains in a cleverly stitched loop which is run ad infinitum. The formerly translucent MIDI brass fanfares are now suffering from sarcopenia and efflorescence, but this toned-down state still magnificently protrudes the semi-mournful mirage of nostalgia and memories. As the loop slowly fades away, a cautious layer of echoes augments the blackness of the background which cannot be caulked anymore. And so Tilvera gets me again, this time with a seemingly standardized Vaporwave track which captures the heart due to its catchy overtones and scintillating fermion flumes.

Twitter: @Woolookologie

ヒキガエル toadofsky
バーチャルロビー

<Single>

Philadelphia's ヒキガエル toadofsky brings us a dualistic diamond of diametrally opposite dioramas in his single called バーチャルロビー//Virtual Lobby 1996 which could have shaved off five decades or six due to its mercilessly retrogressive/antediluvian simultaneity. At first, one notices the adiabatic Occidental guitar whose Arizona-flavored porch romanticism evokes the sunset-colored wideness of the steppe, naturally in an elasticized, decelerated state, mind you. It is only later that the second stratum amid the self-schlepping hi-hats comes to fruition and attention of the listener, and that is the amethystine adaxial plateau of benignant synths whose thermal heat is an oneiric force to reckon with, somehow adding a pompous cinematography to the desiccated photometry. This is not to say that バーチャルロビー//Virtual Lobby 1996 is a sparsely-inhabited wasteland; now the opposite is the case, with the prolonged simmering heatwave becoming a nutritious elixir of life. One can almost feel the crimson skies…

Twitter: @_toadofsky

DEZMO
Quam Serena

<Single>

Tennessee's favorite vaporwaver Corporatemodel aka F R X N I aka DEZMO returns with a pastoral-sermonic offering of utter devotion, or so it seems. Called Quam Serena for a good reason or two, this tune invokes a stokehold dungeon of medulla-emptying low-freq runlets and spectral apparitions based on clandestine echoes and metallic projections. The later omnipresence of the Angkor Wat bells – whose ill-colored tawny radiation only extrapolates the already humongous mystery – is coupled with evening strings, dark matter chorals and a sudden rift at the end of the locale when fresh air meets the yearning of alto sirens. The whispering male choir makes this seem like a curssd ritual. Curiously enough, Quam Serena is a surprisingly synthetic, artificial affair. This is caused by the chirality or superimposition: the various frequencies are reflected, boosted, enlarged, with their original sources hiding in the background… or is it another dimension of Lovecraftian horror that overlaps with reality as we know it? 

Twitter: @corporatemodel

Vaporwave Review 119: Vapor Vertebrae 08/2015 [Part B]. Originally published on Aug. 20, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.

Vapor Vertebrae 08-2015 Part A

コンシャスTHOUGHTS
Far Out

<Single>

As always, our Glaswegian gentleman コンシャスTHOUGHTS doesn’t hide any sample, source or, well, thought from the listener’s attention, and it is the lattermost one that reveals whom this track is dedicated to, if only for reasons of inspiration: the famous duo of the Sandison Bros. called Boards of Canada, hailing from the very city Chris is a part of as well. Due to the vast discography – of both acts, I might add – I’m not sure whether this is the very first instance where コンシャスTHOUGHTS makes us aware of the inspiration, but Far Out would have been a great single without any given piece of information regardless. And it is made from scratch! Gorgeous synth halides during the anacrusis, a clave-accompanied beat that even comes close to a classic drum kit rhythm and a cautiously shimmy glitter lyco-pad make this anthocyanin-hued surface a mesmerizing affair. The percussion is more eclectic than one might think, only revealing its tawny clangs and bongo-driven underbrushes near the end when the main aorta fades out. This is no outgoing Funk critter, another one of Chris’ fortes, no: this is an introverted immersion circulator, lively enough to not become petrifying, but celestial due to the aquatic aura of every constituent.

Twitter: @ChrissyCray1

Brzywave feat. フレッドYOLO
Under The Moonlight

<Single>

Although released in 2014 already, it is getting artsy now, and in a good way: Brzywave takes her boyfriend フレッドYOLO into the studio in order to envision a Portlandian night with clear skies above the megacity. Now busy with featuring other artists and creating exotic anime-centered music videos for their Artzie empire, there is the occasional angular momentum to be found amid the various curation tasks that covers the creative skills as well. Under The Moonlight is a short vignette of less than two minutes, intertwining a bubbliciously drip-dropping beat of apprehension with granular Rhodes rhizomes spreading all over the arrangement. Their principal texture is crystalline, the surface slightly grainy. This premise makes it possible for the half-tone steps and infinitesimal pitch shifts to occur which altogether boost and amplify the dreamy diorama of the night. Echoes and hall provide the orographic adjuvants to this plasticity. Under The Moonlight is certainly not created out of nowhere, but the original vision that serves as its placenta remains in the spotlight, is even sped-up despite the old Vaporwave trope of slowing everything down, or else it isn’t Vaporwave, you know that meme. Diaphanous magic and moony encounters even in slightly accelerated form: a perspicacious diamond.

Twitter: @brzwave  @freddyolo  @ArtzieMusic  @ArtzieExtras

OSCOB x General Translator
Confessions

<Single>

What kind of confession would you expect from Bedlam Tapes head honcho and frequent collaborator OSCOB aka Virtual Plaza Max in a V-powered song, given that he freely admits past mistakes he made during his lifetime by warning others to not adhere to these personal mishaps? If the US-denizen in Germany has anything to confess, it’s a few of his hidden monikers… if there are any, of course. In Confessions, he teams up with General Translator from Youngstown, Ohio, and both DREAM_100 artists make sure to create a shifty heatwave with this track. Not necessarily entirely Vaporwave-based, Confessions is quite fond of – but not limited to – two particular sentiments. The first one is the physiognomy of Ambient, clarifying ever-further that A and V shouldn’t be divided anymore. This immediately leads to the second sentiment: the perseverance of the hatched synths and colors. Confessions is an amethystine apocalypse, its paths bewildering. The synths themselves are solacing and provide thermal heat, but what use does this warmth have if the arpeggiated tone sequences and droning harmonies themselves are supercharged with portent and premonition? The second half becomes especially sinister as the duo adds ship horn-esque bone-crushing drones and steampunk-compatible notes to the mephitic stasis. Anthem or anathema?

Twitter: @Amoroticae  @VirtualPlazaMax

Digital Sex
Across An Ocean

<Insert Disc 2>

Lo-Fi lozenges, a molybdenized salt-encrusted yearning and a circumambience that oozes along without the aid of bubbly vesicles: enter Across An Ocean by Hudson, Wisconsin-based Digital Sex, probably best known for his collaboration with OSCOB on the bosky Ambient/Vapor blueprint OVERGROWTH. Being the seventh track from his album Insert Disc 2, Across The Ocean doesn’t mandatorily work as a standalone track one might think, for the endemic arc of the album is obviously amiss in isolated form. However, this extrinsic factor doesn't deny the song its enchantment, as it is here within said ocean where oneiric visions and laid-back insouciance reach their purest form, with the omnipresence of consumerism completely amiss. It is only consequential that Digital Sex enmeshes a field recording of whitewashed billows with slowed-down and slightly warped twang of sun-kissed aureate nylon guitars. The feeling of Hawaiiana is in the air, but this is not one’s archetypal steel guitar, nor is it an equally chintzy ukulele. The slapped strings encapsulate hammock-friendly interstices, but some of their drumstick-accentuated chords emanate a curiously portentous ancillary meaning, making Across An Ocean an ultimately heterodyned grid.

Twitter: @DigitalSexual

コンピュータサイバー魂PC'86
サイバーSECRET 『VHS蒸気波』

<Single>

The speleogenesis of Future Funk: コンピュータサイバー魂PC’86 – or PC’86 as a more eye-friendly abbreviation – lets us in on a hopefully amorous tryst with his single サイバーSECRET 『VHS蒸気波』which translates approximately into cyber secret (vhs steam wave). What the Occidental translation lacks in transparency and fine-tuning, the dualistic track delivers with an amalgamation of fibroblasts, letting this midtempo mica reciprocate between lift lounges, Mallsoft marbles and Funk fusillades. Launching with distant AM radio frequencies whose blurry existence is already protruded by MIDIlicious brass blebs, cascading electric piano helixes and a Mellotron chromaticity, サイバーSECRET 『VHS蒸気波』ventures on to severely enchant by graciously widening the frequency spectrum. Now everything bursts at the seams, with the tropical rainforest and carefree texture-and-melody compound being united in an atmosphere that is both fresh and dense, far and wide, enormously uplifting. Devotion, admiration and a sense of wondrous movement make this one a coruscating emerald that refreshes in summer and consoles during winter. With melodies this strong and textures so gleamy, who fears their enemy anymore?

Twitter: @peazy86

Ambient Review 445: Vapor Vertebrae 08/2015 [Part A]. Originally published on Aug. 5, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.