Vapor Vertebrae 07-2015 Part C

King Quartz featuring
悲しい ANDROID - APARTMENT¶
Distant Passion

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Detroit meets Cagliari, the mephitic haze of the West now flickers in an ever-closer proximity to sun-dappled Rimini rhizomes: enter King Quartz and 悲しい ANDROID - APARTMENT¶ aka 悲しい ANDROID.chan who team up in an alkaloidal halide called Distant Passion which seems to be one of those deliciously yearning vapor-fueled Ambient corkers at first, but oh boy, no! After the beatless anacrusis, the stylistic range widens, featuring elasticized laser interferometry and resemblant swooshes, high-rise saxophone lariats and bubbling handclaps. In the epicenter of it all: a downwards-spiraling steelpan helix taken from Trinidad & Tobago which brings panchromatic sunbeams into the shawm-accentuated scenery. Watch out for the arpeggiated breakbeat gridlock during the track’s apex and the final decelerated serenade that kisses the listener goodbye. It is only then that the track title comes into play; in every other instance, an aliphatic sequence of complete immersions takes place. A successful rally!

Twitter: @kingquartzzz  @SadAndroid_chan

Nyetscape
Suspended Animation

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Now presumably residing near – or in – the Congo River, Nyetscape emerges with the cheekily titled corker Suspended Animation, an archetypal Vaporwave ventiduct of rhenium-alloyed smoke and mirrors, prolonged temple bells and an overall metalization that favors technocracy over nomological perianths. The TV is running in the background, ethereal-incidental synth washes flow through the lacustrine-orthorhombic hallway, and let’s not forget about the electric guitar in tandem with the classic drum kit that both protrude the superimposition of blurred tone sequences. Nyetscape goes all-in on the chirality or obliquity factor: the former term describes the asymmetry between an original and its mirrored image which can also be applied to the aural existence of Suspended Animation, whereas the latter term elucidates that within the soundscape itself, no point is made, neither directly nor in a hidden way. Suspended Animation just floats and oozes along, and while its lanthanum physiognomy is clearly loop-based, it still manages to enshrine its barycenter.

Twitter: @Nyetscape

Lancaster.
The 213

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Shuttling between Philadelphia and Los Angeles, Luis Lancaster aka ランカスター gets to know the desiccate, arid side of Future Funk and finds the very source of it in The 213, incidentally a postal code of the very area that is depicted in the attached artwork, its saffron-sepia duality already encapsulating an oneiric phantasmagoria right from the get-go, without having even sent one single note to the cochleae of the listener. Once the track is rolling in midtempo though, complete with the midtempo tropopause and dreamy tenor saxophone amid Rhodes piano fermions, a gravitational microlensing takes place. In lieu of advertising the umpteenth party, Lancaster focuses on a lilting immersion, allowing his track to rotoscope around summer breezes, cenobitism and the laid-back view onto hills, pools and other orographic landmarks. The weight and energy of the city are far away, but the setting also shies away from becoming overly moony or paradisiacal. Dissipative and debonair: The 213 feels like a haçienda or peninsula, what with its salubrious architecture that is awash with light.

Twitter: @Luis_Lancaster

J Λ V Λ . E X E
C r y s t a l 遊び場

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J Λ V Λ . E X E remains a force to reckon with, not that our guy from Neo-Japanistan has to prove anything to anyone. It’s nonetheless great that he develops his synth-focused style further, presumably relying on material from the infamous place called somewhere else, but skillfully curating the sampled bits regardless, with the aid of frequency-bending constructions and software. This is also applicable in terms of C r y s t a l 遊び場, the first track off his album 未解放2. The approach is noticeably different here: no ubiquitous histrionic synth slides of the 80’s await the listener. Here and now, J Λ V Λ . E X E pours the bucolic rusticity of a rural hamlet into each and every note, slowing its telomeres down so that the afterglow of the synthetic harmonica-resembling square punctilio can float through the dry air, only pushed forward by the fluvial aura of the washed-out cymbals. The laissez-faire melody has a certain comic relief in it, a pinch that translates into shrugged shoulders. I cannot for the life of me find an audible cross-linkage between the track title and attached soundscape, since the glint factor is so low. But still: iconoclasm is part of the V-genre, so just watch J Λ V Λ . E X E’s aural cornfields roll by and let them be crystals.

Twitter: @JAVAEXE

Wizard's Treats
Morning Sequence

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From Washington, DC hails the matutinal-mature Morning Sequence as envisioned by Wizard’s Treats, and considering the artwork of the less than 90 seconds long cerulean vignette, chances are that this is one of those potentially petrifying bits of municipal melancholy. Rise and shine is good and fine, but others have to do it first. And indeed, car horns and traffic noise are part of this here anthocyanin-hued song, but there's nothing paralyzing in this diaphanous diorama. Right from the get-go, the mood is uplifting and benignant, a fusillade of aqueous-ligneous pearls and blebs vesiculate through the concrete jungle, sun-harboring centrioles flutter through the molybdenized air, one’s personal assistant adds a human touch. 86 degrees aren’t too cold either. The oomph of the drums is lessened, and that’s a very good thing: it allows the reticulation of multitude marimbas and vitreous wind chimes to become entangled, to let their helicoidal pollination unfold freely. The result is longitudinal, adaxial and pectiniform, spawning liquedous constituents, bosky magnetotails and amicable aureoles aplenty. I’ve had far less energetic mornings.

Twitter: @wizardstreats

Ambient Review 444: Vapor Vertebrae 07/2015 [Part C]. Originally published on Jul. 29, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.

Vapor Vertebrae 07-2015 Part B

私Kyasuto x Phoenix #2772
Mental Strength

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Say what you will, but there are cities and states which spawn and inherit that certain sound: Liverpool. Nashville. And Florida, the Sunshine State. The kaleidoscopic wealth of its Vaporwave veils is awe-inspiring, and Palm Beach’s 私Kyasuto makes sure to deliver the goods in tandem with Miami’s Phoenix #2772. Their single Mental Strength is an auspicious teaser for the things to come, enchanting with medulla-emptying bass droplets of smoke and mirrors and a colchicine-coated bokeh of mellow New Age melodies. But it is the percussion section which lets this phytolith skyrocket into the troposphere: whether it is the wondrously phylogenetic bongo tribalism, the agglutinated ophidian snake shakers or the handclap-infested aqueous clicks, the rhythm is the parallax placenta that fuels the mercurial panorama, making a majestic ecomorph out of a cautiously esoteric centriole.

Twitter: @KyasutoMusic @Phoenix2772_

MARCUS32X
Night Wind  [引きこもり Mix]

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It would be much easier to explain what Ireland-based MARCUS32X doesn’t do in his free time, what with the battery of tasks and opportunities tied to his skills. Marcus is the illustrator and one of the curators for the Artzie AM label, but he’s also part of the collective as a creator, and his 引きこもり Mix of Rah Band’s 1985 sparkler Night Wind is more than able to absorb the characteristic traits of Vaporwave. At least it is now. Launching in medias res with a slowed-down complexion, a physiognomy of hazed hi-hats and thermal guitar phytotelemata amidst recurring Doppler horns, Marcus makes sure to transfigure – even glorify – the nocturnal solanum by means of echoey phragmoplasts, the biomorphic sustain of the Rhodes rhizomes and the overall fuzziness that works so well with the comparatively histrionic oomph of the 80’s flavor. While 引きこもり translates into withdrawal, the remix moves forward instead, embraces the bokeh of city lights and the rain/asphalt confluence. A technocratic but ultimately heartfelt lycopod.

Twitter: @marcus32x

幽霊, TOGETHER!
Sky Island

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The artwork of 幽霊, TOGETHER! may comprise the simultaneity of beautiful orthochromatic vistas and artifact-pestered glitch jitters, but the soundscapes themselves are mercilessly luring and upfront in terms of their raison d’etre: a megafauna or big beach-based playground for the listener to dive into. Sky Island is such a magical locale, humongous in its color gamut, ever-shimmering in regard to its uplifting chord progression. I’m not even sure whether this beach stroll is laid-back or magnanimously elevating. The song may reside in upper midtempo regions, but it is the textures, surfaces and patterns that make this salubrious Funk fusillade a demotic one. Be it the spiraling saxophone, the lanthanum-colored coruscation of the Miami-flavored cowbells or the celestial-orgasmic wordless vocal patterns, everything is aglow in sun-kissed colors, and I haven’t even mentioned the laser-sharp sirens and hatched toasts at the end. That this is more of a curating than a creating effort is no iconoclasm: it’s Vaporwave after all. But 幽霊, TOGETHER corrected the tempo of the original and tweaked the frequency range. The ensuing phantom freq macula, then, is the actual gold.

Twitter: @GhostsTogether

Telozkope
Yume

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Telozkope from Winnipeg, Manitoba holds up the Vaporwave flag for Canada together with his fellow artists, but regardless, this sentence is wrong on one particularly grave level. The artist’s music shouldn’t necessarily be attached to the V-genre at all costs, even though it doesn’t hurt at the end of the day. But no, the above Yume from the pink full-length cotton candy helix Grape Steam showcases the artist’s focus on nomological zoetropes built from scratch. The sensorial apprehension between sound, sustain and silence is celebrated in this particularly rustic-bucolic telomere. Yume inherits traces of Trap basslines, true enough, but the remaining rotoscoping punctilio is much more Mediterranean than tech-affirmative. Rubicund Flamenco guitars, crimson-colored ligneous ancillary aureoles and cytoplasmatic chime vesicles meet, mesh and depart, providing a stop-and-go notion in which the micrometry of silence is as important as the angular momentum of the slapped faux-strings. Telozkope’s music sounds purposely moss-covered; at least for once an artist of the wider V-spectrum neglects chirality in favor of chivalry.

Twitter: @telozkope

STΛQQ ƟVERFLƟ
Always

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One of the attached Hashtags of STΛQQ ƟVERFLƟ’s bosky chaparral serenade Always is as follows: #vaporwave? Indeed, the question mark is willfully included here, and it’s for the artist to know and us to find out whether this short vignette of 63 seconds incorporates V-power, and if so, whether the aurally painted baroclinic boundaries belong to a forest or a megacity. I have revealed my personal sentiment of this situation with the signal term incorporate in the previous sentence, and a sense of corporate endeavors cannot be denied, even though the works of STΛQQ ƟVERFLƟ are so closely tied to the Occidental woods. Here however, the glade flutes and polyphonous purity are encapsulated in the frequency range of transistor radios. Their spiky-incisive hi-hat galore and lilting-adiabatic subzero temperature allow a gravitational microlensing that puts the sylvan effulgence into the well-architected marble syncytium of a mall. The fluctuation in volume as well as the laser interferometry near the end beg for the question whether the best woods are displayed on widescreen television sets… or in the mind of the connoisseur. Don’t tell me you want to opt in for the third possibility and go out into the vaporless world aka reality, do you?

Twitter: @StaqqOverflo

Vaporwave Review 110: Vapor Vertebrae 07/2015 [Part B]. Originally published on Jul. 16, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.