Space Candy
IRL Alien EP

2015

 

 

 

 

If I had to choose between a microbial magnetotail and a chromogenic tropopause, I’d go all-in on the centrifugal force that is Space Candy’s digital EP IRL Alien, as it features every fermion and preon of the galaxy, rightfully embroidered in this perihelic five-track perianth. Released on Fright House Records and available to fetch and stream on Bandcamp, Space Candy limelight hog Alex enchants with a quintet of compositions that draws from so many styles and genres that it cannot be anything else but the famous mixed bag, right? I mean, the aliphatic-convulsive cannelure of Jungle, Hip-Hop, Rave and whatnot leaves superficial fissures that threaten to destroy the intrinsic balance of Space Candy’s universe, creating an avulsion that ought to destroy the amethystine-babyblue atmosphere as depicted in the front artwork. It won’t happen. There’s a magnificent Ambient core embroidered within each and every aural halide, and to top things off, the darkness of the universe is constantly caulked by the most histrionic – and thereby beautiful – melodies that the genre cocktail permits. I have observed the music of Space Candy on a per-track basis in recent Vapor Vertebrae editions, for example here and there. Now it’s time to fully dive into the rhombohedric quilting… and a winner is the listener.

 

The universe is wide, majestic, expanding. Meanwhile, somewhere on a planetesimal of your choice, Space Candy decides to create an audaciously uplifting Rave ditty called Believe In You whose punctilio-infested nods to – or nodes of – Happy Hardcore, Dutch chord progressions and other high-chroma hypanthia bring anything but a big smile onto one’s face. Hopelessly retrogressive, with antediluvian sirens firmly in place, the atmosphere becomes more ethereal and longitudinal as apocrine cytoplasms ooze into the cochleae. Even a vitreously bubbly Dubstep intermission is part of the fun, stomping and pumping in order to reach the opener’s crystalline phase which succumbs to saltatory bleeps, lariats and lozenges. And in the epicenter of these constituents: magnanimous hooks and euphonious melodies. The adjacent Undiscovered Reality resides in the same moss-covered antrum of ancient times, its spiky nepetalactone arpeggio being revved up amidst medulla-emptying breakbeat patterns, early 90’s shouts and incidentally pentatonic pericarps. As usual, there is a lycopod of solemn backing pads included, and Alex makes sure to get them noticed in a beatless phase or two before the frantic aposematism sets in yet again.

 

Meanwhile, the supramafic aquascape Ultra Ocean is a laid-back, enormously warped downtempo sporophyte complete with washed-out droning reels, verglas vesicles, calcareous cristae and, yep, tone sequences that ecomorph their way into 8-bit concestors, pectiniform woodpecker fusillades and adaxial ground loop hogs. Don’t miss the koto-driven ribcage at the end of the song which ends the formerly orthochromatic tune with a Glitch-oriented suprematism. In close proximity to this corker resides the frilly (Heart Emoji), and while I always prefer the green heart emoji, Space Candy’s purple pyrethrin is enchanting to the max as well, surprising with a lullaby in 3/4 time, gathering orbital vibraphones, admixing molybdenized square lead patterns to the aural scientificity and thus ultimately creating a paraphyletic cutesy-peachy shanty which is as diaphanous as it is salubrious. The finale Eternal Extra Terrestrial is the endpoint to the zoetropic EP, just a few seconds shy of the six minute mark. Jungular rain pads, viscid droplets and electric cowbells float, scatter and jitter over warm amniotic slides, analogue kaleidoscopes and an increasingly Drum’n’Bass/Jungle fibroblast surfactant which takes the liquidity out of the megafauna by augmenting the metalization. Now Space Candy succumbs to industrialism, styrchine-alloyed steel erections and neutraceutical jaws that lead to a Chinese gong-accompanied rubicund sunset apoptosis.

 

IRL Alien is a hyperventilating treasure trove of colorful coils, nomological nematodes, dissipative density and baroclinic boundaries. This is not necessarily so much a Vaporwave album as Space Candy takes the principal aesthetics – to use the mandatory signal term – of this genre and places them in a wildly orographic flare whose angular momentum is the shimmering melody. Open to scrutiny, comprehensible and both volatile and violent, the five track-shaped cornerstones of Alex’s universe are enormously catchy, with the gravitational, increasingly abrasive redshift taking place only in the final minutes of this construction, leaving a tiny fovea in the dense focus and clarity of the EP. The melodies are but one important force to reckon with… the other agglutination is the vast, endless wealth of textures, patterns and surfaces, creating ogival gridlocks, leeway torpedoes and thermal immersion superconductivities whenever these pulsatile oxidants are needed. Alex wanted to give up the moniker of Space Candy at some point, and indeed, the harder edge of this EP doesn’t seem to carry the macronutritious theme of the artistic name, but with IRL Alien, I can wholeheartedly assure everyone that the occasionally sweet and gentle rhizomes of fragility and mutual understanding are revved up time and again, and properly so. This is a cryovolcanic EP whose polished pyroxene smashes and shatters, is built anew, bursting the polarimetry while adhering to a tastefully plethoric proteostasis. I’ve been placed in the right universe after all!

 

Further listening and reading:

 

Vaporwave Review 103: Space Candy – IRL Alien (2015). Originally published on Jul. 1, 2015 at AmbientExotica.com.