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.
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