Vapor Vertebrae 04-2015 Part B

Vaperror
QBIQ

<Single>

While his aquatic macronutrients Mana Pool (Dream Catalogue, 2014) and System Delight (self-released, 2014) spawned superionic driblets, fluid-processed gradients and lachrymosely lilting lights, luminary Vaperror from Athens, Georgia tries something audaciously ter(r)aclastic in 2015 which comes in the icosahedral-spiny shape of QBIQ, a mercilessly epigenetic, raucously riotous retro Rave rapscallion. Tearing down solid walls via its retrosternal superresonance, the majestic QBIQ ventures from a bustling rain synth-driven velocity over a kaleidoscopic zoetrope of laser arabesques amid centrifugal coruscations to the artist's trademark gauze of bokeh blebs. This takes Vaporwave to a new level, if only for the fact that the genre cannot be pinpointed anymore. The jagged putrefaction annihilates the train of thought, chlorotic synths function as ignis fatuus illuminants, and yet there is utter delight to be found, restorative steelification, hardening plasticizers. A magnificent outing with multitudes of parallax pericarps to process. 

Twitter: @VAPERROR

コンピュータサイバー魂PC'86
Patlabor 機動警察パトレイバー

<Single>

A declaration of love for the anime Mobile Police Patlabor – or derivative country-dependent title variations thereof – comes in the pyroxene-splicing emulation of Patlabor 機動警察パトレイバー by コンピュータサイバー魂PC’86 or in short: PC’86. While the futuristic punctilio of the main melody is left untouched, this new (tunnel)vision from the Cybercity of Japan revs up the glucan shrapnel alright. Apocryphal drums slap like gunpowder-coated whiplashes whose toxic flammability explodes into polyhedric mauve scintillae when the megacity’s polished asphalt becomes tangible. Integrated Italo pianos are encapsulated deep within the surface-driven perapsis. Carefully sped-up and just wonky enough to approximate the grainy-granular hue of a diaphanous reel, PC’86 delivers an ultramafic take that doesn’t even hide its origin, as it is clearly embroidered in the title already. Vaporwave as lacustrine and transparent as can be. Succumb to the euphony!

Twitter: @peazy86

Replica Federation
Date Night

<Single>

At first sight, Replica Federation’s Date Night seems to be on of them cheeky tracks, especially so since it launches with a quasi-combative climax in its infancy stage already, transmutating its aural anacrusis of a girly cop and an abrasive con into a potentially explosive crash. In lieu of a crash, however, the listener shall receive a crush. The track’s nexus is loaded with delicately slowed-down piano perianths and orthochromatic Funk guitars. Yes, we have heard this before and ever since, but Replica Federation knows how to channel the nucleic estuary and mucoid dampness into the right tributaries: careful post-processing alterations add stumbling blocks, sticking points and juvenile jitters to the flume, disturbing its flow but not the benignant polyphony. Warmth and amicability are the eventual driving factors. Coupled with the reverberated reflections, the artist creates a comparatively large ventricle whose repercussion interpolates the Mallsoft subgenre and superimposes it onto a crimson sunset. Not that bad of a U-turn considering the principal thuggish gateway!

Twitter: @ReplicaFed

Glxy
3am

<Single>

Oscillating between the umbrageous-recondite fallacy of Vaportrap and a curiously seraphic set of contemplative palinopsia, 3 am by Glxy closely follows the steelification – or metallicity – of a futuristic industrial cesspool. It is as if the orthogonal diorama of Birmingham is transformed into music, and indeed, this wouldn’t be the first time. Bass diggers will adore the low frequency landmarks that are distributed throughout the chirality of the silvery hi-hats or handclaps whose afterglow serves as a tawny illuminant in this aural solanum. However, Glxy’s track is no apopleptic polymer as its almost pastoral diffraction annihilates all traces of weight and perturbation in its endemic dungeons. The synth pads are admittedly caustic, true that, and the faint echo of police sirens emblazons the metropolitan urgency, but the blurry bokeh of the backing aorta feels tastefully aeriform yet nutritiously plasmatic. Bubbling vesicle beats round off the track’s homeostasis. Not necessarily 100% Vaporwave, 3 am amplifies its cyberpunk atmosphere and offers a vivid alternative draft to the V-genre’s superpolished marble floors. 

Twitter: @vaporwavy

OSCOB
Pinche Japonesa

<Single>

One of the most versatile Vaporwave artists out there, the artist currently known as OSCOB seems to peregrinate toward his 2015 moniker Virtual Plaza Max, so it is anyone’s guess how long such wonderfully mesozoic material à la Pinche Japonesa is going to be available on SoundCloud. That the artist won’t take his heritage off the interwebs altogether is wonderfully foreshadowed – fingers crossed – by the utmost affirmatory aura of a recent tweet where OSCOB proclaims: "Vaporwave makes me happy, making it, discussing it, and promoting it brings me more joy than I can express." With this genuinely amniotic positivism in mind, Pinche Japonesa guides – and guards – the traveling subject to a panpipes-infested Ambient-centric thermal suntrap made of stokehold avulsions, percolating harbor gusts, gamelan/sitar complexions and pluvial vermillion superstructures. Exotic drums and cherubic synths lead the way to the exit soon enough. Pinche Japonesa is a superb example of the genre’s ever-diverse array of stylistic wideness, but even more important is the omission of catchy melodies that are open to scrutiny. Instead, OSCOB’s gem pays homage to faux-field recordings, to the exoticism of travelogs that can almost be smelled. The neon-colored incandescence and histrionic helixes of Vaporwave are farther away than ever, supplanted by a gorgeous arrangement of pentatonic puissance.

Twitter: @VirtualPlazaMax

Vincent Remember
美的ファック

<Our Vacation EP>

You can count on Japan’s Vincent Remember to dish up the perfect loop, one which can be listened to ad infinitum, a most crucial task in the wake of entering an elevator/lift that leads you to a better life. The artist’s five-track EP Our Vacation is a memory-filled peritoneum of glaucous halides and viridian phylogenetic Vaporwave veils alright, but the opener 美的ファック (roughly translating into aesthetic as fuck) takes the cake, grabs the supernutritious rhizomes and makes a perennial Moebius loop out of dem nostalgic tentacles. Running for over four minutes, the basic premise is presented in the fade-in phase already: a pristine-dulcet flute melody is embedded in a nutrimental haze of piano prongs and limewashed hi-hat flowerage. Everything feels cyan and benthic, the reverberation is once more the key to the intensification. All is well with the world, but in lieu of an over-the-top hydrazine, Vincent Remember’s caproic crystal is autochthonous, its fibers strikingly cajoling. While the flute melody is the actual star of the song, the chord-related circumambience empowers this languorous lavabo quite successfully as well. A hypnotic Ambient artifact for sure.

Twitter: @VincentRemember

Shini
Comatose

<Single>

Ottawa, Canada’s Shini attaches the hashtag #limbo to his potentially crestfallen track Comatose, but the actual result is fortunately much more clandestine than nihilistic. Co-produced with Seymour, the track is situated in-between the stylistic demeanor of Vaportrap – envisioned here via arhythmic beat percolations as well as low-freq superfluids – and the chromaticity of an Ambient-based nexus. The result is less of a quandary than one might think: the track’s grim title may be addressed via angelic choirs and wordless sermons which both leave an ecclesiastic multiplex throughout the runtime of two minutes, but the fragilely playful elements add a frilly atmosphere to the densely solemn epithelium after all. Two of these ornaments spring to mind in particular: the glacial galactosamine-fueled plinks during the opening phase on the one hand, and the galloping half-ligneous bubbles on the other. It is undeniable that the two basic aortas – mephitic trapware vs. chlorotic ambience – are conflictive devices in Comatose, but the endpoint caulks most of the acidic interstices and offers a ruminative recalcitrance, itself a semi-oxymoronic description, but a fitting aphorism in view to the track’s secular/earthbound concurrency.

Twitter: @shniigvmi

Ambient Review 425: Vapor Vertebrae 04/2015 [Part B]. Originally published on Apr. 8, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.

Vapor Vertebrae 04-2015 Part A

Nyetscape
Haze

<Single>

Annealed hi-hats, cylonic perturbations of toasting/burping throat-singing robots and a wonderfully lacustrine square syrinx melody amidst the fluid-processed chemotaxis: that’s the first sequence embroidered into Haze, one of Nyetscape’s latest singles. The duo doesn’t leave its dark-purple gem in this state though. Once the semi-mournful contemplation fades out, its magnetotail leads to a completely new barycenter. Now linking back to an umbrageous 80’s melancholia with histrionic synth choirs, Rhodes rhizomes and accordion polymers hued in a fittingly nebulous amalgamation of pink noise hiss, Haze has come full circle with its scintillating obliquity. Neither crestfallen nor superionic, both the remoteness and isolation feel strikingly mucoid and heavy, and whether that heaviness translates into a burden or redemption is anyone’s guess. Since the Vaporwave spirit is strongly detectable, the latter emotion is ipso facto the appropriate one. A vermillion locale.

Twitter: @Nyetscape

Phelix
Back In Time

<Memories EP>

The Hip-Hop-oriented superresonance of Phelix’s Back In Time functions as yet another instance that spawns multitudes of nostalgic macronutrients. A prominent part of the seven-track Memories EP released on Cory Zaradur’s Inner Ocean Records, Phelix lets the epigenetically hustling beats simmer and sizzle softly. In lieu of a pyroxene-cracking acidity, the soothing rhythm is actually the all-important boon and underlines the perianth-like bokeh of the gelid piano melody exquisitely. Laid-back and strangely distant, with its already reverberated afterglow echoing ever-further through the parallax peritoneum right into the cochlea of the bystander, the piano’s nomological asset is cautiously augmented by sunset-colored double bass interstices and seemingly synthetic leptons. Despite the retrogressive touch that is implied by the title, Back In Time is a decidedly earthbound affair, as Phelix plays with the concepts of frequency-related polarimetry and vespertine quiescence, making it a potentially unintended but undoubtedly competent Vaporwave vertebra after all.

Twitter: @flxgs_ @inner_ocean

Cyberlust
Paradise

<Single>

The sounds of Cyberlust aka Lola from Argentina usually comprise of a particularly perihelic puissance, and rest assured that this is also the case regarding Paradise which emanates the orthochromatic gradient of the genre… we wouldn't want it any other way. Clocking in at approximately two minutes, the track ostensibly targets an audience with a short attention span – aka everyone else but yourself – and good taste, resulting in audible boundaries that are painfully short but stringently crisp. Paradise is a belter whose chemotaxis flows toward luminescent insouciance. Whether it is the supravolcanic Rhodes chords that embody the whole melodic spectrum with a little help from a desiccate synth string streamlet, the insouciant all-male choir whispering enamored sermons à la "being with you" in-between aqua-ligneous beats, or the archetypal ventiduct into Jamaican Lovers Rock epithelia, Cyberlust proves that even such seemingly picayune peninsulas expel every last bit of portentous perturbation. Best of all: the soundscape isn’t promiscuously bedazzling but carefully toned-down, providing an apollonian, even-tempered plastic afternoon in, well, Paradise.

Twitter: @cyberlusttt

Stereo Tropic
This Place

<Corduroy & Silk>

 Hailing from Palm Beach in southeastern California, the project of Stereo Tropic involves the producers Dante Weems and Faint Waves who have chosen quite a few tags to aptly describe the freshly baked inaugural full-length amethyst Corduroy & Silk, calling their nocturnal flavor of the V-genre Late Night Lo-Fi. One of its polyfoil solanums, titled This Place, is a notably benthic-viscoelastic tryst of hoarfrost hi-hats, languorous guitar fermions and gorgeously mafic wind gusts of analog signals which oscillate around the aliphatic core of plasmatic lavabo lights. The duo manages to nurture, maintain and exceed the simultaneity of two distinct forces: velocity and petrification. Both conceptions don’t refer to the BPM rate though. I rather use them in order to fork the entangled aesthetics. On the one hand, the amount of strata and sinews is surprisingly dense for a self-proclaimed Lo-Fi track, comprising effulgent metropolis saxophones, cavernous announcements and frolicking chants, all the while the loftiness remains as prominent a part. On the other hand, one wants to stand still, watch the magenta void and become one with the multicellular phototropism. A sophisticated verglas tributary.

Twitter: @TropicStereo @FaintWavesMusic

Blackleaf黒葉
「Stand」

<Demo>

Demo material is usually de trop on AmbientExotica, but in the coruscating and fast-paced world of the V-genre, unfinished florets manage to exude certain scents and promises that may remain unfulfilled for eternity. The material of Osaka, Japan-based Blackleaf黒葉 does definitely belong to that category, with all its strings and trapdoors attached and firmly in place… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As it turns out,「Stand」radiates the soulful tropopause of the three-headed 70's band Delegation’s You And I. That song is one of them classic Disco-oid glucans that have survived several reincarnations, be they four-to-the-floor Euro House wayside memorabilia or Prog Rock-infested overhauls. Blackleaf黒葉 obviously succumbs to the mighty V, and unapologetically so: the source material is slowed down to rev up the temperature, coming closer to the melting pot. The chirality – or chimera – of 「Stand」comes with the price of missing originality in favor of conformity, for the song is presented "as is," albeit in slower fashion and with short duplex syllables added by the producer. Why is the demo of value regardless? Because the homeostasis of the original becomes aurally visible for the first time in this elasticized state, i.e. the lilac chromophores of the strings and the moxie sleaziness of the electric bass. A pulp reinterpretation – the attached artwork really says it all.

Twitter: @blackleafvapor

◬rtifact
Feelinthis

<Single>

Emerald City’s ◬rtifact is an artist who tends to orbit around the bubblier spheres of Vaporwave, never neglecting euphonious melodies but still reaching out for the synthesis of cordial frenzy and hectic observations. The single Feelinthis is a great epicenter of this vitalic approach, as it showcases an uplifting, easygoing core entrapped in a pulsatile reticulation of punctilio vesicles. Launching in medias res, with all principal ingredients already firmly in place, Feelinthis comprises of gunpowder crackers, whiplash bursts and high-strung low frequency callisthenics on the beat side. This industrial metallicity is then united with a fusillade of ecstatically jittery wordless R’n’B vox and warm convulsions of chlorotic-carbonaceous synth explosions. The result, while distinctly vaporific, is also addressing the adjacent Glitch genre due to the aforementioned edgy-flustered physiognomy and bullwhip relish. However, the glacial abrasiveness of that genre is never even considered and only manifests itself in the stop-and-go complexion of the rotatory profusions. Flanked by cohesion and interpolated via stringency, Feelinthis is a sanguine sunburst whose rubicund aureoles reach beyond the cerebral cortex, shaking the glabella on a subcellular level. 

Twitter: @AM_Artifact

Ambient Review 424: Vapor Vertebrae 04/2015 [Part A]. Originally published on Apr. 1, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.