Hey guys, I'm Christopher Hopkins and welcome to The Scour, where I look for new music in every possible region to give you guys hidden gems that could rival the big releases this year. Today, we've got a heavily sampled album out of Argentina that is part of a recent art movement called vaporwave.
I've listened to my fair share of experimental music, but when a friend introduced me to this genre about a year ago, I was a bit skeptical at first. I thought it was a ripoff of all the classics from my childhood that I held dear to me. The samples from Sade and Art of Noise slowed down to make this odd soul vacuum of misplaced nostalgia was rubbish at first, but then, the more I listened, the more I explored. This intriguing area is full of dedicated musicians whose main ideal is based off of their golden age of music, the late 80s and early 90s, and their manipulation of the media is one to be admired.
Combining the chilled out elevator music of smooth jazz and sometimes the sensual stylings of R&B, vaporwave is in its own niche of slowed-down dreams and memories of a bygone era. One such musician I've found and grown a fondness for is bbrainz, a teen from Argentina who uses these old recordings in their original masters, constructs some distortion and, voila! this release has a dissonant but relaxing feel of neon lights and dark city streets (rendered just about as well as a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet).
internet lust is a relatively short album, with each song ending around the 2 minute mark, but these constant, airy grooves only make you want more, to loop indefinitely while working on some big project (or a music review, perhaps). “online”, “atlantico”, and “reflections” all hold some pretty solid samples while the big show-stopper in the beginning of the album has to be “home design” with collaborative work from .casting. If you do enjoy this music, you've already got someone else to look out for. “私の魂のデータ” (which translates to “my soul of data” seems like a funky jungle groove and slows down at just to right moment to fade you out. “vice city shopping mall” will seem like exactly that, an old shopping mall that you used to frequent before it was upgraded with the aesthetic of the 2000s. If it wasn't weird enough, you've got the noisy “hotline” with its distorted and fuzzed out moans and subtle melodies. Nonetheless, it puts you in a nighttime trance.
If you're a bit more daring when it comes to your musical ventures, take a look at internet lust by bbrainz. I would say it's for fans of ambient music, but also psychedelic rock, lo-fi music like Blank Dogs and Ariel Pink. Fans of the original samples will also have fun in trying to remember that song from their childhood and probably can't wait to Google it. Take a listen, and hopefully I've turned you on to something you like. I'm going back to scouring the endless sea of music and bringing it to you.
Check out bbarainz over on bandcamp!
Hey everyone! I'm Christopher Hopkins, friends call me Oatmeal, and I'm a music reviewer, graphic designer, gamer, and artist. Can't wait to start posting up on here!