Barometric - Patterns in Static (2014)

I learnt of this album from the guys in Locals Only, as he helped put that album together under what I believe is his real name, Justin Ford. Hope I recalled that correctly, my brain has been remembering things about as well as a damp sponge can put out a house fire. However, using the moniker of Barometric he's an electronic musician that's making some rather far out tunes. Like a good deal of electronic musicians that aren't targeting the club scene, sub-genres are not anything to worry about very much and the albums kinda shifts through various styles with features of IDM, glitch and plunderphonics but does have a core tone of psychedelic exploration and transcendent release.

As with any good new song created from reclaimed sound it has a degree of whimsical remembrance in it even if you've never heard any of it before, like a memory is bubbling to the surface for the first time in years. Its all about the framing I suppose, and Barometric is a masterful craftsman with these sounds. A wonderful way to have broken what has been too long of a drought of delightfully done electronic music in my listening routine and I highly recommend it to you all.

To be had here:
Barometric - Patterns in Static

マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - A Million Miles Away

The new Macross album is fantastic, it's as simple as that. I imagine some readers of this blog have been following macross for a while now, so you already know what to expect from macross--he does not disappoint. The quality is on point as per usual, samples are phenomenally arranged and manipulated, and the mood Macross evokes with his music brings to mind the renderings of 90s anime--cities full of neon lights, people dancing and sweating, futurist motorcycle gangs cruising through a techno-dystopia, that oh so fashionable dystopian chic pervasive to much cyberpunk anime. These phenomena culminate into a nostalgic fever pitch which interpellates and fetishizes japanese culture through an unabashedly glossy musical lens.

Clearly this hauntological approach interpellates the musical listener as a nostalgic subject, and thus solicits more perverse and extreme nostalgic longings for cultures and time periods that hold no memory within the subject. But instead of condemning the current state of music for being 'stuck in the past', 'musical pastiche' or 'manufacturing nostalgia'; suspension of time (atemporality) should be seen as a positive creative force of the present. If we conceptualize time as a linear sequence of events (ie the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, etc etc etc.) we allow ourselves to dissect the present into a 'present past' and a 'present future' that both meet at a 'present now' which is more or less the quilting point between the two. We need to expand our 'present now' beyond this particular moment--allow it to be seen as still alive and at work within some sort of "zeitgeist." There have been no revivals, there is no surf or garage or synth pop revival, just mining the musical terrain and language which is in a constant state of becoming, something that doesn't end every 10 years. Using musical genres (punk being but one example) as a form of human identity facilities the discourse of subjectivity that plauges and transforms creativity as discreet scenes that have a time and place, a memory which is the private possession of those who "were there." These are some things to ponder and maybe flesh out. Either way, the new Macross achieves something far greater than contemplating about it, it is music of the now age, it is pop, it will make you want to dance, it will make you want to watch cartoons, it will allow you to "be there." This post suffers from no actual musical criticism//this dude likes 7th chords//better

Favorite songs: Horsey, Night In Tokyo Pt.II, 82.99 FM (first sample is Marlene - ESP), and Lovers

for free here, but missing 82.99

bandcamp for $1


KEATS//COLLECTIVE Vol. 5 released today and free as of right now

esprit 空想 - virtua.zip (2014)

This is my first post on this blog, so allow me to introduce myself: my name is Evan. Okay, so this past week esprit 空想 released his last installment for this particular moniker. esprit 空想 has been making some of my favorite plunderphonic synth funk music, and I certainly consider his music to be on par with similarly funky contemporaries in the "vaporwave" "future funk" scene (lux, macross, reverb lite (b), ultra, yung bae (yumi?)). Honestly, esprit 空想 does something most of these other bands don't/perhaps can't do; he actually composes the music and uses samples as "a brushstroke rather than a canvas." Not that there isn't anything to be said about utilizing samples as a canvas, but the fact that these songs are built from scratch is something that gives esprit 空想 a sort of authenticity that can't be diluted by recognizing a song in a sample and thinking, "my gaht, the original was so much better, is this abomination trying to ruin the song?" example of such https://soundcloud.com/therealyungbae/waves-bansheebeat-yung-bae the original song is entitled Mermaid by Tatsuro Yamashita--you may like it, but I can't help but cringe at yung bae's interpretation. The point being, esprit 空想's music speaks for itself rather than through something else, which makes his music particuallarly compelling. Would it be pertinent to talk about the aesthetic dimensions at work within this particular scene and esprit空想's music? Probably not, there has been so much "critical theory" done to this genre so far, I figure the best approach is to just listen. Go take a gander and immerse yourself in some funky synth music reminiscent of John Maus, Roland Young, Dwight Sykes, and VHS warble. Reminiscent may be the wrong word/// to be had hear