How far can you break down a video game, into its bare essence? To the point that it can be reassembled and played inside your mind with nothing more than your own imagination? That’s the concept of Equip’s 2016 debut, I Dreamed Of A Palace In The Sky. As mystical as a phantasmagorical lucid dream, Equip delivers us a serene, yet at times deeply ominous concept album of an RPG played within one’s mind. A mix of the halcyon, early-polygonal games of the PlayStation, and the golden age of high-quality pixel art role-playing games of the Super Nintendo, along with a playful approach to mixing and harmonies that lead us intrepid explorers down fascinating, lichen-infested groves or dark, moldy dungeons. Druids and danger lurking behind every corner.
Debuting in 2016, Equip showed the world their unique RPG-midi fusion style through this album. In that year, modern-style vaporwave was relatively young, yet one of experimentation. Artists were taking chances with heavy hitters like the fascinating and iconic News At 11 or the swirling plunderphonic NEW GAIA by the artist of the same name. Equip was not an exception to the heavy releases that year and struck with one of vaporwave’s most recognisable albums since Palm Mall, by virtue of its exceptional atmosphere and fusions of plunderphonic sound effects and original melodies.
The album starts with a track composed entirely of Final Fantasy menu sound effects. Where on a lesser album this could seem gimmicky and rote of vaporwave’s ‘unique-for-the-sake-of-it’ trappings at the time, these effects are all used with meticulous certainty, especially in setting up the album. We aren’t just hearing these sounds, these are noises of the album’s menu itself, that we navigate through simply by listening. And, for instance, notice that the next track “I Dreamed Of A Palace In The Sky ~Opening Credits~” uses none of the sounds? You wouldn’t hear them in an example of the track’s name; they are absent. An example of the particular use of the samples.
These effects are a cornerstone of the album and truly enhance the experience. For the listener to truly believe this game is being played in their minds, that the titular palace truly has a hold, these effects bolster that aural landscape by showing us not as passive listeners, but as players of the album, through which every crispy footstep is our own in this lonely castle.
But these are flourishes. Low-poly icing on the polygonal cake. The album must stand on its own in terms of the composition for it to be worthwhile for future spins, something that it absolutely achieves. What feels so strong about the album is the mixed layering of longer ambient harmonies with the more melodic midi synths. This expands the album’s sound to allow for a deeper listening experience. You can focus anywhere on the music and still be transported away. These sounds, too, are uniquely mixed to create a specific soundscape that shows the skill of Equip in how he understands the world he’s made.
Just the right amount of reverb on footsteps. The ever-so-slight crust on a druid’s dark laughter. These call back to memories of old midnight play sessions of our favourite RPGs. The entire concept of the album is realised in both these mixes and that of the midi instruments. Drums are just so squishy and textured as to allow for a feeling of momentum. They switch to airy synths, giving a wandering or morose sound. As seen on tracks like “Druids (Encounter)”, the lengths to which Equip has gone to master these sounds in a way that are satisfying and additive to the track’s atmosphere is impressive. It pays off wonderfully.
That said, perhaps some tracks outstay their welcome, for instance, “Cloud Generator” doesn’t need to be seven minutes long, and some tracks like “Reunited” could be cut in half. Overall, however, it’s an iconic album. Fitting for either ambient or close listening with its focus on both long harmonies and unique sampling of game sound effects. This album gets a recommended 4 out of 5 for any aspiring adventurer, daring enough to seek out that palace in the sky!
When people think about vaporwave, they often think about neon lights, busy malls, and city streets filled with rushing cars. The sounds of vaporwave often reflect our feelings about industrialism and commercialism, but this album stands polar opposite, bringing you to a secluded place outside the city limits on a small, rural farm. The name prairiewave may suggest it would fit into the somewhat obscure tumblewave genre (a vaporwave subgenre that focuses more heavily on sampling country music,) but this album is much deeper in meaning and quality than typical tumblewave albums.
According to FREECULTR.API’s album notes, the story of prairiewave is based on the artist’s memories of visiting his Ukrainian grandparents in Alberta, Canada. He describes his memories of sitting in their grandparents house with a radio constantly playing in another room as relatives visited during the day. All the songs sampled on the album are Ukrainian folk songs, lending the audio a sense of longing for a simpler farm life. FREECULTURE further stated in the album notes that tracks 1-9 comprise the moments of staying in the small town while track 10 is his reflections on the drive back home.
Most of the early tracks on this album feel like old country songs you’d hear played in a small bar until track 7, “church sunday,” which has a more mellow, almost melancholy sound. From there it returns to the familiar sounds of folk tunes for tracks “дідусевий касетофон” and “cheater” to then make a complete genre shift on the track “cross province // return home”. This track makes the most of stretched samples, thick reverb, and ethereal sound mixing to evoke the feeling of thoughts washing over on the drive back home. While the first few tracks on this album may be more simple than later tracks, they lay down the important groundwork of contrast in complexity and tonality that enrich the listening experience.
The last track is the most unique one on the album in both length and style. It is the only song to have lyrics, sung by the Ukrainian duo Mickey and Bunny, which slowly transitions into the somber sounds of crickets chirping in a grassy field under the starlit sky. FREECULTURE commented that this last song was made to show the feelings of the people who lived in the small town he visited, a much more serious reality not clouded by nostalgia. For me, this album has a special place in my personal collection due to its vastly different approach to vaporwave. I still remember finding the album the day it came out because of its odd title and cover art. At first, I shrugged it off as some gimmick album, but after I began listening to it I realized how much love and creativity was infused into it. By the end of the day, I had probably listened through 3 times, finding more enjoyment with each listen. My favorite track would have to be the final track, “voices of the land”, because of its intense atmospheric shift to natural sounds of the land. This album is certainly worth a listen for anyone looking for something fresh or unique within the realm of vaporwave music.
Carpenter Brut mentioned in an interview with Synthspiria that his music doesn’t have an insane number of fans, and the reason he gave for this was:
“People need to be ‘in on the prank’ to enjoy what [he does]”.
At first glance, this could be chalked up to a common behavior with some music fans, where the listener is expected to “dig deeper” about the artist in question, and enjoy the works more often for their background than for the work itself. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Leather Teeth is an fascinating album because, when compared to the artist’s previous work, some might feel it’s Brut’s worst so far. Too far departed from the last albums, too cynical, too different. And that impression could remain.. until the listener sees the videos that go along with each song. The videos present the audience with a unique story in a format very seldom seen in synthwave. The classic story of the bullied nerd, turned to darkness and out for revenge.. Presented through the lens of everything and everyone else,a complete outsider perspective. It created context for the album. And then it all makes sense. It’s what brings it all together.
Up until that moment, if the listener had disliked the album, it’s because he was the butt of the “prank”; The previous albums had already been setting us up, in a sense, with a characteristic influence of 80’s imagery and musical tropes. One is led to believe, in a way, that music back then was exactly like his current music. But in reality, it has a thick padding of modern sounds, cadences, and generally different tropes. This album completes the “joke” by making the 80’s influence much clearer and removing a good bit of the padding, thus making the listener question himself “Oh yeah? You like 80’s stuff? Then you like this, right?”
A confrontation like this would normally turn people away, but here’s the genius of it: it makes sure to invite you to be in on it. By adapting what remains from the aforementioned padding, it demonstrates the merit of the material that inspired it, so as to say “You DO like it, you just didn’t know”. And thus, you are now in on it. Much in the same way one can become a fan of Rawhead Rex, or Child’s Play past the 2nd movie, one can become a fan of Leather Teeth through the same equilibrium of sarcasm and earnest appreciation that is present in so much current media.
Anyway, on to the album!
As mentioned before, Leather Teeth marks a departure from “pure” darksynth for Carpenter Brut. This album has a genius mixture of era-appropriate genres, ranging from hair metal to schmoozy, slow synth jams, so as to show a number of different “inputs” about the story we’re shown in the videos. The videos themselves also cover a wide range of styles, from infomercials to a crowning moment at a MTV-Esque music award show.
(Note: We’ve presented these NOT in the order presented in the album, but as they make more sense chronologically speaking. We’ve also taken care to put the videos in, as the experience simply isn’t complete without them!)
First up, the slowest song in the album. “Leather Teeth” is very grandiose, very over the top, and is the closest to CB’s older work. The inclusion of the choir is especially notable as it establishes a leitmotif of sorts. It’s as if the song was heralding the coming of a great calamity, and the video shows this perfectly. It serves you different pieces of footage of different dead jocks and cheerleaders, paired with flashes of newspapers reporting on these mysterious killings. And then at the very end, just to completely drive the point home, the video lays it very clearly for you: No one is safe from the Midwich Monster.
Here, the beat picks up the pace slightly; “Cheerleader Effect” shows the “descent to hell” of our main character, Bret Halford. The song itself has this rock ballad feel to it, as if to try to show Bret’s sensitivity, or loss thereof. The video shows parts of Bret’s life, how he gets beat up by bullies, how he’s in love with Kendra McCornish, the cheerleader, who, in keeping with genre tradition, wouldn’t even fart in his general direction. But here’s the interesting spin, the video makes a point of showing Kendra being slutty and all, partly to show what hurt Bret so much, and partly to show, with some moderation so as to not blow its load too early, the excess of the era, a common theme throughout the album.
The next song, “Monday Hunt,” picks up the pace again. The galloping beat, super common in metal and rock, suits the theme perfectly — as if to put you in Bret’s place, charging a horde of enemies and mowing them down. Regarding the video: Suffice it to say that YT had a choice between the original and a version in which brand logos and dismembered limbs crudely cover everything, and it chose the latter (Be sure to read the apology letter at the beginning, written with utmost sincerity and regret.) It shows how Bret kills, one by one, all the jocks that tormented him, including Kendra herself. The interesting thing here is, Bret kills everyone in his list here. The crux of his story isn’t his revenge; that gets dealt with as fast as possible. By the end, we see Bret fully embracing his persona, by completely tearing off his burnt skin (warning: Utopia District does not endorse removing scar tissue or damaged skin for dramatic purposes or otherwise. Seriously, don’t.)
“Inferno Galore” is also very much like CB’s former work, very fast, very heavy on the synth. Again, picking up the pace, as if to show everything coming to a boil, slowly but surely. The video hits the nail millimetrically on the head. Now we see a much bigger interest in showing the environment in which Bret and everyone else was in. And, once more, the decadence of the era, now much more intensely. There is a hard shift from kinda light-hearted to full dark near the end of the song. This is, again, so you don’t forget the looming threat of Leather Teeth who, even if he already has embraced being a rockstar, still engages in being able to do whatever he wants and will just kill for pleasure.
Songs keep getting faster still, we’re coming close to an end. We now see the second time vocals are used. Pure 80’s hair metal tropes here, as expected from Bret’s band, “Leather Patrol.” Everything from the lyrics to the beat of the song and the instrumentation screams hair metal. Except, perhaps, for the drums in certain parts, where they sound decidedly synthesized, so as to stay “in-genre” and not just make a hair metal song. We’re treated to some insight into the life of excess that Leather Patrol lives, from crowded concerts to steamy exchanges with fans.
A well-deserved break, a much more calm and much more cynically comical song. We’re fully on keytar territory here, and the beat is casual like a month’s end Friday at the office. It oozes of sleaze, like a Cocaine Cowboy. Pure 80’s sound tropes all around. The song is a shameless tribute to synthpop and the video keeps up by being a full tribute to 80s commercials. We have scantily clad girls with guns, mascots, and a nice news report on Rev. Godshyne’s fall from grace and eventual grisly death. It’s not very clear whether Leather Teeth killed him or if he just drunkenly stumbled into the plane’s turbine, but it doesn’t matter, as the idea here is to show how he was punished for his excesses and scams.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time. Time to open this pit up.
The climax of the album. Everything reaches a boil as we’re treated to the peak of the high. The fastest song, where we see the logical conclusion to the whole album’s overstatement of things. The guitar delves almost into power metal, with its hard but energetic sound. The synth’s arpeggios make the song sound almost like a classical piece; The whole song has an intense vibe of not-so-faux sophistication the artist is known for. It shows us how Leather Patrol, which is Leather Teeth’s band, wins every award at the HTV awards, and we’re treated to all the “music videos” of the award-winning hits (Once again, YT chooses crude censorship of nudity, and not violent murder. How admirable!). Almost as if to show you Bret is pretty much invincible now, he interrupts the video and shows his face, taunting people, daring them to stop him. The ending is very much the climax of the album, punctuated by lightning and all.
The album ends with a song that goes into Miami Vice territory of synths, initially trying to ease the audience. Like it was trying to say “Relax, man, it’s just a tv show, not real!”. After the album reaches its highest point speed-wise, coming down to almost the same speed as the first song is a logical step. But then, almost at the end, the song reiterates the album’s overstatements, to finish with a choir reminiscent of the first song. The album finishes with a threat/promise that Bret Halford will return for the movie’s sequel, which, when presented simultaneously with the song’s ominous ending, continues the statement presented before with a “…or is it?”, like it was trying to tell the audience it may escape Bret, but not for long. He’s too powerful now. So now, all that is left is to await the punishment, the real scourge that is Bret in Leather Terror.
Leather Terror, the follow-up album, is scheduled to release in early 2022. Be sure to stay tuned!
As the days get cool and the nights get longer, the spooky season is upon us. What better way to enjoy the season than with a Halloween vaporwave tape. The third offering in the Satanic Panic series by Vacation Bible School is just the tape to scratch that Autumnal itch. The story continues where Revenge of the Satanic Panic! left off. Things are not what they seem at the haunted house your church is putting on. Evil lurks among the decorations and haunted displays. I feel this album creates a wonderful atmosphere to convey its tale. The album plays out like an 80’s horror movie. The first track is a mix of calming tunes with sinister undertones that come in and out and intensify as the story unfolds. The use of stereo effects really puts the listener in the story. I listened to this album start to finish in a dark room with headphones, and felt like this amplified the listening experience.
The masterful use of real samples from christian Anti-Halloween/satanist televangelists from the Satanic Panic period of US history sends the creep factor through the roof. The first track “welcome_to_hell_house ” sets the tone, expressing that evil is afoot. This leads into the same campy 80’s horror movie intro that was featured on the first album in the song “p a g a n _ i n v a s i o n”. This song sets the stage of a happy-go-lucky town that has no clue of what evil is around the corner. Track two, “satan_is_real ” reminds us that if good exists, so too does evil. As the season changes the vale becomes thinner, the witching hour upon us. The mounting tension of the album kicks off with the battle cry “steal_halloween_for_the_church ”. Those pesky pagans can’t hoard all the holidays, we are taking back Halloween for the church. This hubris is the turning point for the album.
The album places you as the main character in this story. You are working with your local church, an unwitting soldier in the war on Halloween, with the task of creating a haunted house to educate the masses on how souls are tormented in hell. A Devilish spectacle for the season and great propaganda if some care about their immortal soul.
Time to prepare for the big night. “ Shopping_for_decorations ” is the shopping montage of the movie, zooming isle to isle in the store, picking up plastic skeletons, foam pitchforks, and all manner of spooky accoutrements. This song was the one that most benefited from headphones. The panning of the track makes one feel like they are along for the ride, weaving between isles as the lofi background music plays over the cheap speakers in the ceiling. Throughout the song a sinister tune plays over top of the track adding a creepy flavor to a normally innocent task. The sample from the Doctor Dreadful food lab killed me. It lends itself to the lighthearted feeling we have towards the Halloween season. Its goofy ghosts and goblins galore, taken none too seriously. This is the error the characters of the story make to invite evil into their town.
The very next track proposes the question: Is Halloween just a silly candy day or is it the holiday of “the_prince_of_darkness ”? The spiral begins as the tale takes a dark plunge. It is time for “redecorating_the_church ”. The costumed mannequins and Halloween props are arranged with great care. As the day progresses, the church takes on an evil facade, it truly is the “hell_house ”. You did a good job — maybe too good of a job. This place really is starting to look like the hell warned about in sermons. Is it getting hot in here or are you just working too hard? The room spins and the candles burn brighter; “the_portal_to_hell_opens ”. This track’s use of Satanic Panic news broadcasts explains why the war on Halloween was a growing fear: Satanists are real. They are here now. And they want your children!
With the portal open, the plastic “skeletons_come_to_life ”. Dear god! Why did you buy so many?! This song is full on spook-tacular, the kind of music one would picture from Fantasia. It uses the same panning effect to create movement through the horrific scene that is unfolding. In trying to create a realistic looking hellscape you have opened the gates to hell. Demons possessing the Halloween displays carrying out “the_tortures_of_hell ”. This was a hard track to listen to on first pass. Very troubling screams of agony and for help. Very appropriate to the title of the track but took me to a spooky place in the dark. You can distinctly make out a heartbeat, a sample played backwards, and an eerie music box tune playing, before erupting into a full demonic monologue. It is hard to make out exactly what is being said but I assure you it is not something you would want to be said to you. It sounds like a demon making a deal with the typical “all I need you to do” phrase. I really want to know the context of the end of the track — it sounds like running water and someone saying “it’s all good now”. You have had enough, your mind flips to survival mode as you need to escape. Braving the demons around each turn you try to make your way out, “running_from_hell ”. Oh man, SunKist fruit snacks! No time to think about that now. You’re running from this nightmare. The final track of the album builds to a crescendo. You make your escape through flames as the church is consumed in the negation of hallowed ground meeting its polar opposite: the portal to hell. You dive to freedom, sprawled in the church courtyard — back where the world is blissfully unaware of the evil reality of Halloween, and the night is just about candy and costumes.
A wild ride from start to finish, this album was an absolute treat to immerse myself in for the Halloween season. If you are new to the series I suggest starting from the first tape,Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic, and thenRevenge of the Satanic Panic!. And, on Oct 6 2021Satanic Panic 4: Possession was released as the 4th chapter of the series. No word about a physical release as of printing, unfortunately. Also, check out the quick look we did on this albumhere . If you are in the mood for something seasonally appropriate, or a tape that you can listen to like a horror movie, look no further than this series.
Vacation Bible School
Get The Album!
Favorite Track: s h o p p i n g _ f o r _ d e c o r a t i o n s
I don’t mind going on record here and saying that I am a big fan of Satan. You can quote me on this. I’m a huge fan of his work, but the creation of Halloween is by far his magnum opus. A day dedicated to goblins, ghosts, and ritualistic sacrifices? What is not to love? But those pesky televangelists keep on foiling the plans of my cult to convert today’s youth into the service of my dark lord. In an effort to find out how they always remain one step ahead of my plans, I have decided to do a review of Revenge of the Satanic Panic! by Vacation Bible School, the sequel to his 2019 album Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic, the review for which can be found here.
The collective paranoia of America’s televangelists regarding this special time of year is put on full display in this album. A majority of the tracks in this work either begin or end with a sound clip from an interview, commercial, or some other sort of after Sunday School program that exists for the sole purpose of inspiring as much panic as possible into the hearts of parents across the nation. All these samples are somewhat staticy and low in quality (this is Vaporwave after all) and each one seems to be more ridiculous than the last, with one going as far as to suggest that there are werewolf satanists among us. They become fun to play along with and as the album progresses you begin to look forward to these interludes as the black curtain of Satan is once again drawn back before thine very eyes.
As for the music itself, there are some interesting sample choices and the distortion and echoing effects applied to them make for an entertaining, though somewhat unsettling listen with a big tip of the hat to the Halloween movie franchise thrown in. Some tracks sample straight-up bangers, like Alice Cooper’s “He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask)” used on the first track of the album, but there are some odd picks later down the line that exist more to disturb than to amuse. An example of this is track 9 on the album, “satanists break into your home,” a toned-down and slowed down edit of The Chordettes’ “Mr Sandman”. It acts as another homage to the Halloween movies as they used the song in a similar way in the films. I should say that the full title of the track is “satanists break into your home (“mr. sandman” mallsoft)” but other than that iconic “mall echo” that can be heard in the song, it does not really feel like mallsoft in the way that the “St. James Infirmary ” track did off the first Satanic Panic. I know it seems silly complaining about a scary and unsettling song on what is a Halloween album, but compared to the rest of the tracks on the work, it seems out of place. With that said, other than a few similar hiccups, most of the tracks are a fun listen with the televangelist samples and music samples being blended together quite well.
After listening to this album, I think I am going to hang up my ceremonial black robe. They are aware of every trick in the satanic playbook. I thought the Satanic messages I hid in Dungeons and Dragons books were really subtle, but they managed to sniff them out all the same! Truly the forces of Satan are no match for holy soldiers like Vacation Bible School. My only solace is that I have a decent vaporwave album to listen to now. And the fact that it does not seem like they have caught on to Pokemon yet.
Ahh, fall. The best time of the year. Autumn foliage, spooky movies, and the…looming threat of Satan taking over the world? That’s right, back in the ‘80s (hell, even today in some parts) there was a growing fear that Satan would engender himself into every house throughout the world thanks to horrifying rituals and depraved sexual acts. Which begs a much more important question: what would the music of a real satanic panic sound like? Well, thanks to Vacation Bible School, we have an answer.
Vacation Bible School is an artist with a definite religious focus –just about single-handedly carving out their own niche of “churchwave” – so who better to use music as an avenue to talk of the temptations of Satan? The opening track, “t h e _ s a t a n i c _ p a n i c” fittingly begins sampling John Carpenter’s classic melody from Halloween mixed underneath a “definition” of Satanism. The provided definition is a rather skewed outlook on the whole movement, which is masterfully demonstrated by the Carpenter sample being horribly scrambled. As the speech carries on, the piano melody begins to reverberate with such ferocity that it loops in upon itself, eventually degrading to such an extent that it destroys the core of the melody. A fitting metaphor for Satanism then? Or perhaps a warning about what permitting Satan into your home could do to your mind?
If the opening track was the thesis, the subsequent tracks provide the supporting evidence. One thing that will get progressively more noticeable as you listen is the reverb. Sure, reverb is present in a lot of vaporwave, but it serves an interesting purpose here. While in most instances, the goal is to distort or mask something hidden below the surface, the echoing actually brings forth added clarity to the whole affair. There’s something inherently ominous about reverberation, especially through a large, abandoned space. But what if that’s it? What if your goal is to disturb? This album affords the opportunity to be ill at ease for fifty glorious minutes.
But perhaps the most interesting thing with Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic is that there’s not really much to talk about musically. Now that’s not to say there isn’t music. There are tons of samples and vapor influences present. For example, “p a g a n _ i n v a s i o n” has some slushwave underpinnings, and “z o m b i e _ m a l l” unsurprisingly incorporates mallsoft elements (and a sample from Halloween III: Season of the Witch, as it shall henceforth be known, the best Halloween.) There are a number of other vapor subgenres that make cameo appearances along the way too. On a traditional album, this scattered approach might ordinarily make everything feel a little unfocused. But it works for two reasons.
The first is that the album evokes the feeling of channel surfing one late Halloween night in the ‘90s. Everything should feel different as you jump around. Movies give way to commercials, which give way to more movies, including a fun little moment where the 1990 and 2017 It’s get sampled one after the other. There’s even room for the channels at the end of the cycle that solely play music, as shown off on “St. James Infirmary (mallsoft version).” The signal doesn’t seem to be coming in too great though, so make sure you mess around with the antennas if you’re dissatisfied with the sound quality. Many of the track titles are written in such a way where it should be pretty easy to jump around too. A track with a name like “g o o s e b u m p s” makes it fairly obvious what you’re in store for should you flip over to that tune.
The other driving force behind the album’s success is the degree with which it captures a mood. While the musical melodies remain present, they never really drive the ship. The biggest factors are, rather oddly, the sound effects. The ethereal whisperings, the wind rustling through the trees, the screams, these are the elements that really drive home the frightful visage of what this album wants to be. Dropping a plethora of musical tracks over top of that, and the end result is a thematically focused release as well as a personal seasonal favorite, even if it’d be a reach to call ourselves big fans of Satan.
As the name of this “review” might send some into a spiral of rather tiresome and nonconstructive thoughts about popular music (not in any particular genre, but the kinda thing that gets put in the radio and constantly repeated would come to mind first), it shall be prefaced with this: This review has nothing to say about the commercial appeal of one genre or song over the other, or the reasons for it. The discerning listener already knows what those may be, and the vices of the industry that engender that situation to a greater or lesser degree. And a non-discerning listener might find that the topic mentioned before is too big to fit completely here. Furthermore, the same goes for the validity of transformative works. It’s a somewhat outdated debate, too broad for this space.
Some time ago, I was on a train ride with some acquaintances. I had only discovered future funk and some of the genres with similar interests a few months before, and I was completely sold on them. So much that I even tried making a song! (which, sadly, led nowhere but frustration and an unused Fruity Loops .exe). One of those acquaintances was a digital artist like me, but came from a more musical background. His dad was a musician, and his mom was a producer. And he was telling us about a new album that had come out, which reminded me of my most recent discovery, which happened to be Groovy Godzilla’s Godzilla’s Summer Vacation. I started telling him about it, and I played “Beach Vibes” from my phone for him to listen to.
Immediately, my friend took off the headphones and told me “Hey, this is just a remix!” This upset me slightly, and after a bit of arguing, my friend said “How could something that requires no skill be honest?” This was in response to my original “pitch” of the album, which was “I really like how honestly happy it sounds”. As he went on, he said that something produced electronically, that didn’t require using a guitar or really, any instrument, couldn’t possibly hope to be as honest as I said.
I dropped the argument but the question stayed with me, and became more questions. How did he decide this required no skill so quickly? And why did this make the emotions the album tried to convey (at least, as I perceived them) fake? It seemed nonsensical. Later that day, in a book I was reading on the fundamentals of art, I read that one learns the technical aspects of art to accurately represent what one wants to. And I realized that perhaps my friend was confusing accuracy with honesty.
As is well known, there is a conception that digital mediums allow one to “cheat”; to skip over parts of traditional mediums that are seen as essential to them (or at least, essential to achieve a certain level of quality), like mixing paint for oil painting, or developing pictures for photography. And in skipping these essential parts, one is somehow fooling the audience and thus losing the “right” to expression in that medium. For someone in this mindset, digital mediums exist exclusively to cheat.
The more egregious part of this mindset, however, is that it calls into question the sincerity of the emotions the artist tried to convey. It’s the logical conclusion: If one wanted to express themselves accurately (which, again, is a concept easily confused with honesty) would it not be a disservice to “cheat”? Is the intensity or clarity of the emotions one wants to convey muddled by the chosen medium? What if the whole point of the work is to renovate an old emotion, an old mood?
Which brings us to the album in question. I’d like to offer a disclaimer at this point: I know next to nothing about music. I played bass for a bit, and still do, but the technical intricacies and subtleties of music are more often than not lost on me. But I do know a bit more about art, and have encountered some people who’d have the same opinion of art (moreso in a digital medium) as my friend did of “remixes”, which is a term far too reductive and simple to describe this album.
This album’s greatest achievement is, simply put, having captured a perfect snapshot of a summer vacation. And by doing so, it not only renovates the memory, it engenders fondness for something one might not have ever even experienced. For example: One has never had the tradition to go to a certain place every summer. Sure, one may have been on a summer vacation before, but that specific experience might be alien to them. Somewhat familiar, from seeing it in movies and such, but not from direct experience.
And here is where the honesty mentioned earlier comes into play. For someone who has experienced it, the experience holds a special place in their memory. This allows them to create a crisp, perfectly clear image of what those moments were like, which is perceived with the same clarity by the listener even if they’ve never experienced something like it. It’s immersive, in a way. And something so clear, something so genuine, simply can’t be “faked”.
Groovy G’s masterful mixing, honest-to-goodness appreciation for the songs sampled — and of course, funky, modern beats — do a great job of recontextualizing the songs used. They become part of this snapshot: every beach episode in a cartoon, every cannonball into a pool, every memory of a great summer as a kid. That feeling of the innocent, simple joy of a summer vacation on the beach is captured perfectly here.
So, without further ado, and with plenty of sunscreen on our shoulders and faces, this is Groovy Godzilla’s Godzilla’s Summer Vacation:
First Day of Summer
A great opener to a great experience. The song is relentlessly upbeat and has a bombastic brass section. It moves really fast, perfectly capturing that magic moment when the bell rings on the last day of school and everyone rushes to the exit as fast as humanly possible. The pitch-shifted lyrics lend a juvenile taste to the piece, further cementing the feel of an excited, youthful beginning to some truly carefree days.
Jukebox Jams
The logical next step from the frenzied excitement of the previous song. This song aims to capture the day after. Or rather, the morning after. The moment in which one wakes up, perhaps even at the usual time for school, only to realize it’s summer vacation, and one gets to take their time and enjoy their morning to the fullest. The picture of a crisp sunrise light coming in through the kitchen window, with a cup of coffee on hand comes to mind. This is a slightly less juvenile part of the snapshot, but still an essential part of it, as it finishes settling the idea of “vacation” in one’s mind.
Beach Vibes
One of Groovy G’s best known works. Personal favourite. Arguably the crown jewel of the album. Perfectly captures the mood of every beach episode on anything, that moment of arrival at the first stop of a vacation. One can almost smell the artificial coconut and plastic smell of every beach store ever. The intro in particular, with that musical phrase that evolves later in the song, captures the mood perfectly. The kirby sound effect almost makes the song cloyingly sweet, were it not for a very strong bassline.
How Romantic
Following the progression of events, we now reach the meetup with that special childhood friend. So far this progression has been almost stereotypical, but once again the sincerity with which it is explored transforms it from a simple stereotype to one of those tales as old as time. The vocals of the song and harmony of the voice bring to mind the way one might find themselves crushing for this friend, suddenly realizing their voice is sweeter somehow or that they have really pretty eyes. The guitar after the DB sample makes sure we stay on track groove-wise, so as to not come off as too sweet.
One for the Kids
This one I struggle slightly to place in the timeline. The mood, while still very laid back and joyful, has a distinctly more retro feel to it thanks to the saturation on the vocal section. I wouldn’t call it bad, as it still fits within the general mood of the album, but I do think it’s the weakest of the tracks. Perhaps this is intentional: The mix of retro and modern sound tropes, with a beat that’s not as upbeat as the album’s opening but not as slow as Beach Vibes, makes one think of riding around with friends with the top down.
When I Fell for You
The party. Definitely the most rhythmic song of the album. The beginning is somewhat reminiscent of Garibaldi. The vocals sound slightly like someone confessing a secret to the audience, fitting the narrative, as perhaps the moment in which one tells a friend about the weird new feelings they experienced in Beach Vibes. The guitar solo at the end does a great job to bring the song and the event to a climax, as well as to bring us back into the party.
Warm Memories
Definitely the album’s classiest song. The title is slightly misleading, as it’s also the least happy song in the album. While not losing the groove the album has maintained so far, the album seems to have reached its peak speed-wise in the last song, and is now settling in as if to signal the coming end of summer. Perhaps the gloominess of the lyrics is meant to signal this as well. In the narrative that’s been built so far, perhaps this is a moment of hesitation on whether the childhood friend would correspond to those feelings, or perhaps an outright rejection.
Till Next Year
And so we reach the end of summer. Where the snapshot of these memories becomes the perfect, crystal clear snapshot of life this album is. By far the most heartfelt song, declaring one’s unbreakable love for the other — but by proxy, declaring one’s fondness for these memories.
And in bringing this review to an end, this song states the whole point of the album: These memories are one’s happy place. The space in one’s mind where problems don’t exist. The space one shares with everyone who was involved with these memories. And so, the album closes by reminding the listener that this space never disappears. One will always have this place to come back to. And so, even if things seem hopeless, even if everything else seems bleak, there’s always that promise of returning. So one’s hope is renewed, and life seems better, and one vows to stay groovy until we meet again. Until next year.
There are a few albums that may come to mind when thinking of future funk “staples”: Yung Bae’s BAE, Desired’s self-titled record and Night Tempo’s Pure Present to name a few. However, if there was a record I’d recommend to someone who asked me “what is future funk?” without a doubt it would be CHAM! by マクロスMACROSS 82-99 (now known as MACROSS 82-99).
The album keeps your attention from start to finish, and manages to take risks while still remaining true to the roots of the genre. Wispy, bubblegum 80s pop melodies, trap beats and even catchy synth leads make it into 14 tracks of vaporwave (and vaporwave adjacent) fun.
Album Art By: Andrew Walker
Those expecting a typical “by the numbers” future funk might be surprised, as house, future bass and even remnants of lofi hip-hop show their face on the album. It was a breath of fresh air during a time where every future funk artist seemed to have another remix of Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love.”
From the very start of the album, it’s obvious MACROSS 82-99 was trying to break out of the future funk cliché. You have to remember, this album came out in 2015, what one might consider a make-or-break point for future funk. Many artists were starting to shift away from the plunderphonics roots of the genre and beginning to form their own sounds. Tracks such as “Rainbow Roads (feat. Timid Soul)”, “Peach (feat. Diana Shroomy)”, and “Whispy Woods/Game Over (feat. Strider Kun)” would fit better on a future bass record rather than future funk. Cutesy melodies and video game samples layered over trap beats capture MACROSS 82-99’s bubbly anime aesthetic very well. Though not the expected sort of stuff, it’s a welcome breath of fresh air.
CHAM! includes plenty of traditional future funk fare for those looking to groove. “Miss Macross” is a fun, bouncy track that’ll have you dancing and singing along for its entirety – lots of feel-good bass, horns and vocals. “I Miss You (w ローマンRoman)” and “Perfect Blue” show a more sentimental, bittersweet and melodic side of future funk, with lots of interesting chops on the latter. “Fun Tonight”, one of the most recognizable songs in the whole of the genre, perfectly encapsulates the essence of future funk: an unforgettable melody, a fantastic singalong, and plenty of retro influence to distinguish it from its french house cousin.
If there was a downside to this album, it would be that CHAM! isn’t exactly cohesive. There are a few outliers on the record: “Dark City”, while good, is a jarringly ominous track considering the rest of the album is so damn upbeat and fun. “Lost Without You”, is an interesting nod to lo-fi hip-hop, but it’s short and seems unfinished. However, while there are a couple duds, the good tracks are great, and more than make up for it. CHAM! is a must-listen for any vaporwave fan. It represents an interesting time for future funk. Producers were learning as they went along, finding out what does and doesn’t work for the genre and CHAM! is a prime example of that in the best way possible.
Taking an old piece of music and reworking it to become something new and exciting again is a beautiful thing – art within art. That’s where much of the appeal for future funk and vaporwave in general lies; Its ability to conjure up nostalgic feelings, thoughts and perhaps even memories that didn’t exist in the first place. While CHAM! might be unpredictable in its overall sound, it’s a testament to this weird and wonderful thing we call internet music — an ode to the producer. If you have even a passing interest in future funk, vaporwave, or french house, give CHAM! from MACROSS 82-99 a spin.
For each of us, there is an album of noticeably lower notoriety within the community which we cherish closely and revisit sparingly, only to find ourselves learning more about how much there is to it each time. From these pieces, we remind ourselves about just what makes vapor special, both in the design of its sound and the ways it evokes emotion from us. On just about every level, both Kevin and 사치CORP (Luxury Corp) strike each note that one could want from such an album in a different way, delivering a strong sense of isolation and loneliness that grows into hope through a minimal set of tools.
Just from the beginning two tracks, it can be very easy for the listener to find themselves questioning whether the album is even truly sampled at all, as the integration of very simple riffs and chords create an environment in which everything seems wholly original. There are clearly sampled vocal sections over top of certain tracks which may break this illusion, though they are mixed into the environment well enough that they end up adding to it in their own way.
The Sound
Sonically, the two sides of 海で孤立した are very distinct from each other, each artist presenting a different vision of an endless ocean within their mind. The texture presented on the first side from Kevin, for example, makes heavier use of rougher sound texture, almost making the instruments being played sound of low, cheap fidelity. From this however, the notes also drawl along perfectly to create a sense of dread, easing the listener along as if they were cast to sea with only the ocean to greet their vision for miles.
Notes also bleed into each other because of these effects, creating a fluid journey in which one can relax despite all the turmoil about them, an odd sense of peace coming from the clash of both chaos and the calmness which isolation brings. The ambience is perfectly mixed into the background to add to this effect, the crashing of waves idle enough that the listener may only hear it once they truly find themselves easing into the environment that is presented.
On the opposite side, 사치CORP presents a much more traditionally composed section of ambient vapor, the notes muddied into each other, but not crushed to bits by the effects being used. From this, the calmness of the ocean is drawn out much more than the previous chaos, a feeling that is only heightened by the general sense of dread presented through some of Kevin’s compositions.
In addition to this, the range of moods presented on this side of the album is much more diverse. While the beginning half is much more somber and reflective, the latter half of the album uses its positioning to create a much more impactful climax by growing in hopefulness towards the end. All of the work put into this slow crawl comes to a climax in “Questions For A Masochist,” in which the music explodes into a percussive, energetic beat before fading out as quickly as it came.
Overall, these artists meshed very well together in creating an album, the tonal consistency of Kevin’s work matched by the more explosive and varied pieces that were brought to the table by 사치CORP. With a shorter runtime and list of songs, there is not one that quite stands out as being of significantly lower quality than the rest, with each of them serving their purpose in building a full mood.
The Expression
While this was touched on somewhat in the previous section, it is important to look at how well this album manages to evoke its scene through using each of its elements. While many artists may have chosen in this situation to create unease within their listener through use of the backing ambience, only the calmer sounds of the ocean are present there; instead, such emotions are created solely through the music that is laid perfectly over top.
Keeping the melody more central in this way allows a much more pleasant listening experience, as the focus is on the music rather than the more directly sampled sounds, with the rolling of ocean waves providing a context rather than a focal point for the creation of a mood. Since these sounds are constant in tone as well, it becomes much less obvious once they disappear, creating a fluid transition into the last two tracks without taking away the focus of the listener once the music itself takes the stage fully.
The choice of mostly classical and piano compositions as sources for building the world around the album was excellent, as well, the simplicity of each tone hammering in the sense of isolation with both punchiness, when the notes are struck, and seamlessness as they fade into the background and their fellow notes.
Conclusion
Listened from front to back, 海で孤立した provides a succinct yet full-bodied experience for any of those who are looking to dive into the more directly expressive side of ambient vapor. Clocking in at only a little over 20 minutes long, meaty yet minimal compositions give the listener an experience comparable to an album three times its length.
If you are a fan of albums with themes that evoke the ocean, isolation, loneliness, dread, or you generally find yourself looking for a more relaxing experience from your vapor, you will certainly enjoy this one.
