Florida Rains has been quite prolific in 2024, releasing 17 albums in eleven months. I'm slowly catching up on checking out their discography, but between Downtown Tampa and the album I'm discussing in today's post, I'm really enjoying what I've heard of their output. Named after a Rainfall Amounts segment on The Weather Channel, Florida Rains is another artist I've found whose Weather Channel-inspired releases have not been the same ol' formula that many other meteorologically themed vaporwave albums have followed in the last decade, choosing to go more into a late night lo-fi territory and using some really lovely lo-fi jazz samples. There's some excellent curation on Trop, and if you don't come out of hearing this album feeling extremely cozy, idk what to tell you. It was hard to choose a single track to upload to YouTube, but the track Joyce is just...SO FUCKING CUTE. I didn't realize until just now that the titles are the names of baseball players from their local team. Another reason why this album is so damn charming! I'm excited to hear more of what Florida Rains puts out in the future.
You can find this album digitally at the link below:
Blogspot removed everything I typed up after the links, what the hell! My apologies that not everybody in the New Releases section are in the tags due to the character limit. And an additional apology if my writing in this post is coming off clunky; I slept like pure garbo and I don't think this caffeine will ever kick in.
A quick shoutout to another music blog out there posting about vaporwave and other cool underground music, listencorp. Make sure to subscribe to their emails, as they go very in-depth in them in a way that I find to be super cool. Check them out!
This post is gonna be a bit different than some of the others you've seen! It's part album highlight post, part cool albums post. Let's do this.
DJ VIOLENCE - VAPORMEMPHIS FORECAST 2
This release gave me flashbacks to Video 2000's Midnight Ride and to this incredible Kodak Cameo x Clipse mashup by Reverb Lite, two absolute masterclasses of mashing up rap and hip hop elements with vaporwave, as well as strip_silence's killer marty_memphis mashups (that hopefully he'll release officially sometime soon). DJ VIOLENCE really fucking elevates it here in a way that is fresh, fun, and truly exciting. Though some of the samples he used on the vaporwave side have been used repeatedly throughout the years, the way he uses them is just...chef's kiss. Magnificent. This 18 year old kid from Russia who wears his love of Memphis rap and phonk on his sleeve (I mean, look at these Pen & Pixel-stylized album covers) really blew it out of the water here, and I am really looking forward to checking out more from his discography and hearing his future output. It was hard picking a favorite here, so so so hard. But here's a goodie:
Find the album in full digitally and physically at the link below:
Though this is another album from The Expanding Earth, this one veers into familiar and lovely signalwave territories, with its tracks sounding like rips from nature and meditational VHS tapes with an occasional clip or two from a commercial break. All of these tracks are pleasant, borderline classical at times, borderline medieval/dungeon sounding in others (and despite the sonic differences, overall it sounds cohesive). I also have to give a quick shoutout to how Video Interface effectively changes and slows the pitch in some of these tracks, much like in ways that ショッピングワールドjp/shopping world jp used to do. I've heard some folks do pitch changes mid-beat that...some can do it right, many don't. Wanderer in Time and Ancient Inscription are two tracks that really do it correctly. This album really hit during a drive around town on a gray day, but I'm sure it's peak beauty if heard in the middle of a walk through a strolling garden.
You can find the album digitally and physically at the link below:
This album just turned ten years old this year, and still remains a underrated hypnagogic pop classic. Torn Hawk's output was always a bit polarizing for me, but Through Force of Will is a powerhouse of an album, and it still remains as one of my favorites of all-time. When this album came out, I was in the middle of reliving my 90s video rental/Sneak Prevue nostalgia in full force, and this visual teaser of the album consisting of datamoshed movie clips spoke to me (along with what is still one of my favorite track titles, Damaged With Jeremy Irons, too fucking good). This was also during what I consider to be Not Not Fun's peak, where the label was releasing banger after banger album, and once again they knocked it out of the park with this one. I'll probably eventually talk about another NNF release here pretty soon, since I actually also affiliate my 90s video rental nostalgia return with another one of their releases and I kind of think of the album as Through Force of Will's second cousin. Through Force of Will is part pop, part shoegaze, part psychedelic, part "this sounds like a riff from a Billy Idol track", it's everything.
You can find this album digitally at the link below:
Life has been busy lately, with IRL things going on while trying to work on multiple URL sets and Neon Nights to boot. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of posting a bit more frequently again, but bear with me!
Good evening, friends. As I promised, here are plenty of cool albums that I've found in the last little bit that deserve a nice little shoutout! As always, links will open in a new window.
unconscious observer - 2 a.m. - A gorgeous release sampling lots of jazz noir. Think Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks soundtracks, or Bohren & der Club of Gore's discography. In my previous post about International Telecom, I'd mentioned the late night drives and how much I desired experiencing my already sleepy town at night. This album fits that sonic fantasy for me, of walking through a very empty downtown area, nobody on the road, just you and the buildings and alleys around you.
radiant memory - new dawn - This album and the unconscious observer album almost feel like sisters to me, in that where 2 a.m. is the commentary of walking through downtown at night, new dawn is like walking during the day in a very empty downtown setting, but I imagine it less like the album cover and more in a "what the city looks like after the events of Night of the Comet transpire". The album is a very lovely listen and feels extremely lonely. I believe that this is a video forum side project, so it is definitely no surprise that they've delivered once again on an excellent release.
monument XIII - windy I/O - I was thrilled to receive a copy of this album on CD when I met Robin at FlamingoFest last year (!!!), but I finally got around to checking this out a few weeks ago. Wowowowowowwow. This album is more abstract than other things I've heard in IC's discography, but I absolutely adored it. Golf Swingers was one of the artists who came to mind as I checked this out, but more like "if Golf Swingers went hella maximalist" sort of way. Some of the tracks can be quite jarring and intense. Some, like the track digipaint, feel soothing, like you're in the eye of the chaos. Idk, I loved it.
Dreamweather - WeatherView - Admittedly, I've been feeling like Weather Channel-related albums have been played out in the last few years, as somebody who sampled Weather Channel things very early on and as somebody who has seen a fuckton of Weather Channel-based albums/projects. A lot of them use the same sample material, or do very similar concepts that don't really make each individual album or project stand out in particular. All that to say, though, this Dreamweather album samples some Weather Channel work that I actually haven't heard or didn't recognize off the bat, and not everything included a sample of a meteorologist speaking about the weather conditions or a fast moving storm system. It was a very comforting album to listen to, and definitely one of the better Weather Channel-themed releases I've heard in the last little bit.
Doomsday Video - Hypnopedia - Goddamn, I really enjoyed this one. I saw the name of the artist and expected the album to sound more like a "music for preppers"-type of signalwave album, but some of it sounded like the more traditional late night lo-fi sound (see: Spiral dream), and some of it went into a goooooorgeous Pure Moods-sampled territory, like my standout track, Blue horizon. This one is most certainly worth a listen.
vintage intimate - digital ocean - This Nyoka Shoje side project taps more into the experimental side of vaporwave and broken transmission, which absolutely tracks and also, absolutely hits. This album in particular is really interesting to me, as the tracks were ripped from a VHS tape, put into reverse, and sampled and looped from there. It's quite charming, really.
karaoke vhs - sympathetic vhs - One of the first things I learned about Thor was their love of Orchid Tapes and of Ricky Eat Acid (and his 34547578378 side projects). Listening to this, his love of early 2010s internet music, of the days where everything was lumped in together as chillwave or as witch house and nothing else, really shone through. Some tracks sounded like things I would have heard on an early Teen Suicide album, some things made me think of early Oneohtrix Point Never or Emeralds (which, on that note, listen to Dan Lopatin/Mark McGuire's lone Skyramps album if you've not already)...it all feels like a love letter in a way that really took me back to scrolling through some of my favorite old Blogspots. If Dayvan Zombear still existed, he would have loved this album.
GUILD MERCHANT - Morning Meditation - I'd been meaning to check out this side project from Bounty Ballad for a minute, but finally got around to checking out this album in particular while waiting in line for early voting. I really enjoyed all of the numbered 明呪 tracks, but all of them really flowed well together and created a very lovely and cohesive barber beats album.
modest by default - South Cougars Jazz Ensemble - On the topic of barber beats: modest by default is once again appearing on a Cool Albums list, and I think he's one of the best curators in the genre from what I've heard of his work. This album really resonated with me after a series of bad days and gloomy skies, and it gave me some much needed tranquility.
All right, I think that about covers it for now. A special shoutout to Alyx of Vaporwave News Network and Pacific Plaza Records, who gave Brief Commercial Break a very sweet shoutout in his October 2024 Round-Up post. Thank you thank you thank you! One day, I'll figure out how to do a blog ring type of thing on this blog, linking to the various folks promoting artists and posting about the scene.
It's been a long past few days, friends, and links are very overdue. I'll do a Cool Albums post in the next coming days, but for now, LOTS AND LOTS OF NEW RELEASES. Links will open up in a new window, as always!
👁🗨📲 - 👁点击と👁 - Originally released on December 1, 2023 via Kats Kill Records, but received a cassette release on November 1, 2024 via First Class Collective.
Also: I will be vanishing from Discord for a few months starting tomorrow night. That said, if you have something you'd like to send my way Bandcamp-wise that you think deserves attention, or some sort of self-promotion, feel free to send it over to briefcommercialbreak at gmail dot com. I'll try to check it frequently so I don't miss out on anything. Talk again soon!
