Cool Albums for May 28, 2025

Look at me, accidentally typing April instead of May. Where has the time gone? Before I know it, it'll be another month gone, and I will have stories to tell about seeing (and hopefully meeting) DEVO.

As I promised in my last post, I'm here sooner versus later to link to some cool albums. Admittedly, secretly working on creative zen affected how often I was listening to anything, so my list may be a bit lackluster, BUT goddamnit, I'm going to try my best here. As always, links will open in a new window. Click away!

Slushwave Social Club - SSCC Volume 5: Brief Glimpses of Quicksilver Dreams; or, Slush in a Rush - I gave this compilation a shoutout in the Hot Takes Super Retrospective episode, and I'm shocked I failed to mention it here. Slushwave can be an intimidating listen for some; each track varies in length from five minutes to 30, and it can be a lot to take in at one time. However, on this compilation, these artists were challenged to create tracks that were a maximum length of four minutes. It's a lovely introduction to artists with whom I hadn't been familiarized, and each track brings something different to the table to boot. There are some extremely gorgeous tracks on here that I enjoyed tremendously.
Ghost Enterprise - Vistas - I am so obsessed with how fantastic this album is, and obsessed with the fact that, for how genuinely sampled it sounds, it's not fucking sampled at all. So much of this brought back really wild flashbacks from my late 90s/early 2000s tweenhood/teen hood in ways that I really didn't anticipate. Listen to Teen Zone, and watch the accompanying Zoog Disney looped commercial, and tell me this doesn't work perfectly. I actually fully had a "Love Blooms in a Chat Room" moment with somebody I met through an Incubus AOL chat room in 2002! (Fun fact: we're still cordial to this day.) These songs sounded like things intentionally compressed for shitty dialup connections like mine to play without too many issues, and I already crave a sequel. Long live 96kbps!
Tommy Martini - Cosmic Dawn - There was an online radio station I would listen to at an old job called Smooth Grooves, which played the best of modern smooth jazz, and this album would fit in so well. It's beautiful, it's relaxing, is it sampled? I don't know that answer. I feel like answers are pointing to no here as well, but I feel awkward approaching this guy I've never met to be like "oh this is beautiful, is this sampled?" He may find that to be insulting! But yeah, I love this album. Give it a listen.
Enraile - Delete Yourself - This album is loud and honestly...sounds like the homie channeled a lot of anger into this. Some tracks get quite abstract and experimental in a way that I wouldn't quite expect from Enraile, but combined with his trademark use of 90s and 2000s R&B, it works really well. Prepare for a lot of distortion, and if you're not headbanging to at least one track, I'll be a. shocked b. sad. (p.s. Have a bonus album recommendation from an Enraile project with the artist Xcellents: Millennium Edition - コネ Software)
定常 w a n d e r e r - a f t e r h o u r s [WIP] - Who knew that a slushy house album would work so well? I'm surprised it's a work in progress, because to me, it feels quite finalized. I bet this would go off during a night drive after a fun time with friends. The only flaw, a very minor flaw: some of these tracks could be a liiiiiiittle bit shortened. Outside of that, the vibe is great. 
Cityman Productions - Enter the Metaverse, A Solarpunk Experience - A similar sound to the beautiful S​​​Ξ​​​CR​​​Ξ​​​+ ΞXPLOR​​​Λ​​​+​​​ION PROGR​​​Λ​​​M [Vol. 1] , a compilation I covered in this post. A gorgeous comp created to provide relief to Ukraine, all of these artists really brought their A-game. I regret how late I was to checking this one out. 

I guess this post wasn't too lackluster. I'm starving, and it's almost time to watch Twin Peaks in the Hot Takes Discord server, so I am going to be like Ben Horne and eat a brie and butter sandwich. Until next time! 

creative zen - touch

 

A loving tribute to mp3 players, which is exactly right up my alley. As many of you know (or maybe have noticed some in my previous blog posts), I have been in full blown mp3 player nostalgia mode for the last few months, reminiscing on how mp3 players have been such an essential part of my music listening history. The same mp3 player I referenced in my Video 2000 post was the same player I was using to fall in love with Vektroid's Telnet Erotika back in early 2011, my go-to album when I was doing everybody's dishes (well, I should revise this: it was either Telnet Erotika or some sort of kindasorta jangly shoegaze album playing), and that same mp3 player was used a year later during my daily walks around the park near my house, listening to things like Seahawks' Tramadol Beach, Outlands' Com Ocean, Whitewoods' Beach Walk, and some of the early pre-coined vaporwave albums. It eventually became flooded with future Fortune 500 releases, and that park was where I first thought of The Music of the Now Age, and I wondered "Will artists even actually send me tracks? I hope so."

But with this album being based in 2005, the year the Creative Zen Touch was brought into the world, let's really go back in time here to my first mp3 player which looked a lot like this (but navy). It was given to me by my bestie's cousin after he'd stolen it from a Big Lots. He had very large Tripp pants, and he had a history of seeing just how much he could successfully smuggle into those pants in one go. My friends and I watched him leave with 50 manga titles from a Books-A-Million once, seeing if he could actually pull it off (still insane that he did, as the bulky pockets of his pants made it stupidly obvious), and we were keeled over laughing in the corner of a cookbook aisle. 

One night, we met a new group of friends at Books-A-Million, and after the store closed, we chose to drive over to the park that was about five or so minutes away. It was a small car, and there were nine of us. The mp3 player-stealing cousin voluntarily chose the trunk, where he and another trunk friend loudly sang Gorillaz' Clint Eastwood to the rest of us up front who were crammed in and sitting in each others' laps, giggling like a bunch of hyenas. One of my friends fell in love with a girl from the group we'd met that night, and they later had a child or two. I always thought that was cute, looking back. 

I'm getting way way way into tangent mode, whoops. All of that to say: the mp3 player that my bestie's cousin grabbed for me has also been linked to many fond memories of my later high school years, finally getting through a very rough depression, developing friendships, and finally ungluing myself from my computer and going out for a change. Cherry Cola by Eagles of Death Metal is forever affiliated with swinging on a swing set behind a Salvation Army gym my class had gone to on a field trip. Alala by Cansei de Ser Sexy will always be linked to me flipping through music trivia books and biographies at Books-A-Million, hoping that music wasn't leaking out through my headphones too badly. Cowbell by Tapes 'n Tapes was never taken out of mp3 player rotation, as that was my go-to cheering up anthem. That will forever be tied to dancing in my bestie's kitchen, the song blaring on her mom's computer. 

Other songs on my mp3 player:

Beck - Scarecrow

Tom Vek - If You Want

Deftones - Knife Prty

The Zutons - Valerie

People in Planes - If You Talk Too Much (My Head Will Explode)

The Thermals - A Stare Like Yours

With only 128MB of storage space on it, I made it work. I think I had 16-18 tracks at most on that thing. It felt like a mixtape I could always have on me, something that didn't require some sort of accompanying player, something I could just immediately fire up and have playing when I needed it. Now, I look at it as a fond time capsule. A 20 year old time capsule. What the fuck.

Enjoy an ode to the impact of mp3 players on many of us in the mid-2000s, and how mp3 players always had an assortment of random songs preloaded upon booting it up for the first time, and think about how these ringtone-y songs have a way of sending someone back in time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going into my Razr's ringtone settings to make cost of comfort my alarm. 

Download the album at the link below:

https://creative-zen.bandcamp.com/album/touch

Also, new post coming sooner versus later with some cool albums to check out. Talk again soon!

Cool Albums for April 28, 2025

Hello hello! I'd meant to post this on Easter, but that day ended up being far busier than I'd anticipated! I have quite a few albums to share that I hope you enjoy as much as I do. Each link opens up in a new window, as always. Also, please pardon the unusual formatting, somehow it got so fucked up in Vivaldi (which uses Chromium, which has been apparently having Blogger-related issues since the summer of last year?) that I chose to briefly reinstall Firefox and see what happens here. It kinda worked? Kinda? Hopefully this somehow fixes itself before my next post because jfc.

Cool Albums

溶けた壁 - collected signalwave improvisations 1968-2092 - Have you ever listened to a radio station that starts changing as you get closer to another city or town? There's a local radio station here that, as I get closer to the border of my neighboring town, the station begins to get scrambled and I'm hearing half college rock, half religious sermons. It's like they're fighting each other to see what will successfully take over. This victory over death side project reminds me of that experience, but instead of radio stations, it's miscellaneous commercials (including Right Now by Van Halen, a Crystal Pepsi CLASSIC) and it's all compiled together in a way that could be classified as noise, but to me, I found the release to be amusing and very soothing.
Kratzwerk - Ｖｉｄｅｏｔｅｘｔ ｆüｒ ａｎｄｅｒｅ - I walked around the park to this album on Easter Sunday and got to witness a group of kiddos in peak church Easter dress attire run around looking for eggs, which I found to be absolutely adorable. This album has been seen and described as melancholic, but there's something about the music used that reminds me of the 70s syndicated television I gravitated to as a child, and so I find it to be happy and cozy!
Claude Lavender - After Lunch - This sounds like the type of music one would hear in a TV sign-off, and for that alone, I love it. I can't remember for the life of me how I found this one, but godDAMN is it good.
CAPE CORAL - BLU NOTTE - An album that straight up reminds me of Video 2000's Midnight Ride in the best way. CAPE CORAL chooses to go into a mixtape-type of vibe instead of his usual bordering-on-future-funk, kinda instrumental kinda not thing, and it's really fun and the samples used against the acapella hip hop and rap tracks are hella creative. I was pleasantly surprised!
love affair - mood intense - Not trying to sound like an egotistical asshole here, but this sounds like a Lux album that was also inspired by 蜃気楼MIRAGE, 死夢VANITY, and a bit of waterfront dining. I just think it sounds really cool and done in a way that reminds me of Rose Quartz-era me and I liked it a lot. Late night lo-fi awaits you if you click this link. 
desert sand feels warm at night & days of blue skies - Perli tal-Passat - MY GOODNESS. THIS ALBUM IS STUNNING. Beautifully curated, great samples, absolutely perfect. Frammenti alone is a chef's kiss moment. I love love love this album.
INTERNET CLUB - DREAMS 3D - I remember a time where WWW CRUISE autoplayed after every vaporwave track for a while. I'd say that lasted for nearly a year. Admittedly, I've had this on my external harddrive for so long, but I never listened to the album in full. I know, I am shocked at myself for it. Though my favorite is and will forever be UNDERWATER MIRAGE, DREAMS 3D is a gem in Robin's discography.
HYDROPLANED INTO A FALSE REALITY! - boardwalk - This album is a hell of a chaotic banger. Elements of breakcore, elements of Jersey club, an insane moment where I realize at the end of the track that I'm hearing an insanely sped up Thriller sample, it's a very fun album to listen to.
national network - night-time television service - This signalwave album by TV2 made me emotional listening to it; it's so lovely and cozy and there's just something about it that just brings a lump to my throat. I can't quite pinpoint it.
International Telecom - ＩｎｔｅｌｓａｔＫ - I'm unsure why it's no longer on IT's page, I fear it may have been due to copyright, but I've linked to the Archive page. If I need to take it down, IT, let me know. This one is another International Telecom release filled with cozy signal-y gems that goes by way too fast. I really loved this one! 

I tried to make my descriptions not too long to ensure that this post of 83242499 links wouldn't look too overwhelming to search through. I think I've given up on trying to keep up with new releases to post, but know that I download as much as I can! 

Cool Albums for March 22, 2025

Hello, I know it's been nearly two months since I've posted around these parts, but I felt inspired after a walk with mp3 player number three this evening and felt like I should post about some cool albums I've been listening to lately. As always, all links will open in a new tab. 

days of blue skies - As The Days Go By.... - Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous album. As I said in a previous post, slushwave can be hit or miss for me, but when this album hits, it hits. If Only Today Lasted Forever, Night Drive, West to East, Soft Moonlight...all of them are pure gems. Please check this one out.
TCR-4 - ｄａｉｌｙ　ｍｅｄｉａ - I've listened to so much Mom and Dad's Computer lately, half because I truly enjoy it but half because MDC is so prolific that I have countless albums of theirs to check out. I'm a sucker for the MDC-related albums that thrive in a 2000s frutiger-nostalgic world and I feel like they curate that vibe for their releases in a way that itches my brain. For this one, just imagine if somebody stumbled upon a WebTV music playlist that's nothing but dance-y bangers, and there you go.
Afterdeath Television - Mater Natura - This release is stunning. Another new age-y nature-filled release in a similar realm as the FM Forest album I'd previously mentioned on this blog, apparently inspired by Overgrowth. The sample choices are lovely, and it was a comforting album to listen to in the midst of grieving. Really glad I gave this one a listen after I admittedly listened to another ADTV album that didn't fully gel with me.
OnlineSculpture - 美しい都会の女の子! - I forget how I stumbled onto this artist, but this five track EP goes into some unexpected and very fun sampling directions. It reminds me of something I would have heard back in the early early days of vaporwave, where chillwavers and other electronic artists were sampling and the lines of "is it vaporwave or is it not" were very blurred. Track two has this killer post-punk sounding bassline that I absolutely live for, and I hope this artist chooses to make a full album in the future.
Faint Waves - Paradiso: The Alternate Paradise - It's crazy as fuck to listen to an alternate version of a release before hearing the original, but I'll listen to it in the future. For now, I will say that the Paradiso versions seem to put a Balearic spin on the original tracks in a way that gives me full-on Pure Moods. This actually played on my mp3 player right after Mater Natura, and may I say I think they compliment each other well. 

There are definitely others I've liked in the last few months and I could go way way back and link those, but maybe I'll get to doing that eventually. I hope this post finds you well, and we'll talk again next time, whenever that will be. xoxo

Video 2000 - Midnight Ride & Remixes

A Trip Down Memory Lane, starring luxury elite:

Video 2000, if I recall correctly, was recommended to me through the SoundCloud algorithm, and seeing comments from Liz of SPF420 and Reverb Lite on one of his tracks basically resulted in an insta-click on the play button. I forget which track it was, maybe Waiting For You? But I knew I had to get him on Fortune 500. 

When he sent me Midnight Ride, I was floored. It was different from much of the albums I'd heard in the scene at the time, and looking back, was an early adopter in the VHS Pop territory. I used to go on daily walks during the spring and summer with my mp3 player in one hand and a water bottle in the other, and though I had plenty of albums I listened to, Midnight Ride was one of my three hype up go-tos. I do not like ranking any Fortune 500 albums, we saw what happened when another label chose to do that with terrible results, plus I think that is mean! But I will say that Midnight Ride holds a special place in my heart, and I'm so thrilled to have given it the platform it deserved. 

Arctic Contact gave me a heads up that Midnight Ride was getting a tape release, and my first reaction was "FUCKING FINALLY." Video 2000's only cassette release had a terribly poor rollout on a label I refuse to name, and I remember coming back online and wondering why Midnight Ride never got a chance to shine in a cassette setting. Arctic Contact did a stellar job in giving Eternal its well-deserved flowers, and I knew that Midnight Ride would be treated just as wonderfully. But THE REMIXES? BABY.

BABY.

The remix side is a who's who of modern VHS Pop, sprinkled with cool vaporhomies, even a Mabisyo feature! And everybody killed it. I felt such pride, like I was watching my baby grow up and it's not even my damn child. I love when Fortune 500 alumni get their flowers, and I consider Fortune 500 artists to be family. 

If you've not checked Midnight Ride out, I highly recommend you do! And if you've heard the album already, have you at least checked out the remixes? Because they're absolute bops. 

Have a track from the original album:

And have a track from the remix side:

The cassettes have long sold out, but you can still check this album out at the link below:

https://arcticcontact.bandcamp.com/album/midnight-ride-remixes

Sorry I've been so quiet; January was a busy busy busy month for me, between releasing a new 1-800-TONIGHT album, working on two URL sets, doing visuals for a Twin Peaks-related show in the IRL realm, and admittedly...a bit of a crisis. The burnout has been real, and this post has been long overdue. Hopefully I'll be returning to a more frequent posting schedule again soon! xoxo

New Releases for December 25, 2024

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! I may update this if more Christmas-themed releases appear in my inbox today. 

New Releases

TCR-4 - F e s t i v e - Released December 25, 2024

Various Artists - Low Jolly Depression - Released December 25, 2024

Various Artists - Vaporwave Is Coming To Town! - Released December 25, 2024

Paco Moreno - Paco Moreno's Kmart Christmas - Originally released December 6, 2024, but released physically via Disklab on December 21, 2024.

And if you missed the last post, I'll link these one more time:

Various Artists - The Signalwave Christmas Special 2024 - Released December 21, 2024

FOTOshoppeツ - Christmas Forecast - Released December 23, 2024

And one more that I forgot about posting a week or two ago:

Various Artists - Holiday Countdown - Released December 1, 2024

xoxo, and ho ho ho! 

Cool Albums for December 23, 2024: Roadtrip Edition (and a few other links)

As I mentioned in the last post, I went out of town for a few days, visiting family and seeing high school homies. The trip had some good and bad moments, but could have been worse overall. I took two of my mp3 players with me; the FiiO X3 Mark III (with its not great battery) was used for the three hour trip to and from my hometown, and my Dodocool DA106 was used as I was driving around town and exploring. I have different albums loaded on each player, so I had a ton of new things to check out (and some to revisit). As always, links will open in a new window!

Cool Albums

Various Artists - DE PROFUNDIS - This dungeon vaporwave/synth/dark ambient release curated by The Expanding Earth brings various sounds and vibes together to create a really interesting and cohesive album. I'm actually on this one as 1-800-TONIGHT with a track that will appear on an album that will hopefully eventually be finished soon, and I feared that it would not work too well with the rest of what would be on the album, but consider me pleasantly surprised. One of my favorite moments of my trip happened as I was on the bypass, facing the sunset, listening to Aus der Tiefe, and it was the perfect combination. I actually ended up recording it on my camera, and I need to move it and the rest of my photos over to the computer to see how they all turned out. 

ＡＬＩＡＳ ４０４ - Ｓ​ｅ​ａ​ｓ​ｉ​ｄ​ｅ Ｒ​ｅ​ｓ​ｏ​ｒ​ｔ - I love a good summer-themed album, and it seems that this artist released quite a few of them that I'm going to have to check out soon! I really loved the sample choices and the loops and chops that enhanced some of these tracks. I was driving in bitter cold temperatures, and listening to this left me longing for a visit to the ocean. This album is super cute, check it out!

ｇｈ０ｓｔ - 喚起 - Unreal that this album is four years old now. I've loved this album since its release, but it'd admittedly been a bit since I'd checked it out. What a reunion! I found myself with additional favorites on the album (𝓮𝓷𝓾𝓯𝓯 𝓵𝓾𝓿 is hypnotic, and I had forgotten that 前回 is a sample twin with one of my favorite Topaz Gang tracks, so chills galore with that one once the sax came in), and I am still convinced that 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝒾𝓃' is one of the best late night lo-fi tracks to come out in the last few years, just perfection. I've really enjoyed ｇｈ０ｓｔ's albums, but this one is my favorite. Perfect use of verses, perfect chop use, perfect everything. 

ｍｏｄｅｒｎ dream - FLYING HOME EXPERIENCE - I know that the album where it was released had some controversies a few years back (catfishing/fake identities, doxxing me as a humblebrag to somebody else), but I try to look past it and enjoy the releases that got caught in the crossfire and had nothing to do with the label owner's decisions. This album sounds like part synthwave album, part dreampunky, part 'tribute to Vangelis', and it's so, so good.

Ｓｐｏｒｔ３０００ - Ｃ​ｌ​ｅ​ａ​ｒ​ａ​ｎ​ｃ​ｅ Ｓ​ａ​ｌ​ｅ - The first tracks sound like a love letter to the Kmart tapes that took the internet by storm many years ago, but as the album continues, you hear some songs experiencing the result of tape wear, or sounding like a skipping CD (something that ended up stressing me out mid-drive home, hahaha), and the last tracks go into eerie hums and noises, which I just discovered was an intentional choice meant to signify the death of a department store. I really liked this one! 

//𝙡𝙮_ - /​/​just_ - This three track EP with titles that say "just the other ____" samples popular jazz artists but incorporates a funk/hip hop vibe to all of them. My favorite //𝙡𝙮_ album still is a view down the valley, released on Dark Web Recordings and goes into insane looping that makes the original source sound totally unrecognizable for the most part, but I do love these quick //𝙡𝙮_ EPs that go into VHS pop territories. Hoping that Ally comes back soon!

👁‍🗨📲 - 👁​点​击​と​👁 - Though this album came out in December of last year, many quickly put it at the top of their "Best of 2023" lists, and for good reason. I have plenty of unsolicited hot takes about vaporwave, but one of my biggest pet peeves about some vaporwave is how I feel like people use full verses and choruses of original tracks way too heavily, almost like a crutch. Just recently, I heard an album that literally slowed down the entirety of Saturday Love by Cherelle and Alexander O'Neal and called it a day, and I was super pissy about it. I think that using large amounts of the original sample in a song can open up the possibility of vaporwave artists getting targeted by labels regarding copyright infringement/takedown notices, but in a creative sense, can also hinder the potential of what a song can transform into as a vaporwave song. Take Nobody Here as an example: he turned a love song about dancing with a lady in red and transformed it into an anthem of isolation and loneliness. I feel like, the less people use of vocals and verses, the more creative the transformation can be. All of that to say, and going back to actually talking about Eyeclick here, I feel like Will and Nathan do a great job of using vocal heavy songs, but they use them more as a component rather than a crutch. They chop the fuck out of the vocals, they paulstretch the hell out of them, they turn them into bizarre eccojammy sorts of things. It doesn't feel like the vocal is the forefront of the song, it feels more like the vocal is just a part of an overall theme they're going for with each album, more of a compliment or a cherry on top of what they're going for instrumentally. Do I sound snobby yet? Anyway, all of that to say, listen to this album, it's fantastic. I am the number one 台​湾​SWAG​『​Princess​』​外​约​网​（​k 7 7 9 9 . c n​）​遇​到​以​前​同​班​跩​跩​的​校​花 想​干​她​很​久​了 见​面​一​定​要​好​好​教​训​她 stan, just saying!

CyanBlue - Cyanide - Cyan's third album was excellent company as I drove around my hometown, taking photos in the bitter cold. I'd say this one's my favorite of his. He can do insane flips of already great 80s pop tracks and transform them into extravagant bops like it's nothing (click here for the perfect example), but there's something about this album that sounds...a bit more mature, maybe? Definitely elevated. Great sample choices as always, and it grooves and grooves. I will say that I was blown away by the track Over and Over because I really genuinely thought that all of the components of this song were from an original 80s track. It blew my mind when I discovered the verses were being sung by Lavera and Seth Nova. Def check this out.

And a quick shoutout to unknown settlement - autumnal gloam, something I discovered before I went on my trip. It's a short and sweet classical TV signalwave release, the tracks sounding like they were ripped from old late 70s/early 80s sign-offs of some sort. It's gorgeous!

Additionally, some New Releases, of which there's not many. I'm sure folks are waiting to start releasing albums in the new year. But here are a few!

Various Artists - The Signalwave Christmas Special 2024 - Released December 21, 2024

ʍindƨpring ʍeʍorieƨ™ - @_@ - Originally released on Swamp Circle on December 18, 2014, but released physically via GLOBAL PATTERN on December 18, 2024.

FOTOshoppeツ - Christmas Forecast - Released December 23, 2024