Album title: Reassemblage
Artist: Visible Cloaks
Genre: Neoclassical New Age/Ambient/Vaporwave
Nationality: American
Release date: February 17
Position in Discography: Second
Fear Factor: High
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? No
Average RYM Score: 3.17
The last (and only) Vaporwave album I listened to (something about Flower Shoppe I think) did not impress me, but was that just a bad example? Will this be any better? Will I ever stop asking questions to kick off my notes here? Well, as to the latter, who knows, but as to the other two questions, it certainly starts more promisingly than the other one, with a nice kind of harp-type sound, quite celestial, though the second track is more fragmented, with what sounds like Chinese or Japanese or some Asian language being spoken by a woman. Okay, on further research, it seems that, according to Discogs,
"Valve" contains elements of Miyako Koda's "Sea of Love" from Jupiter, in addition to MIDI data generated by its digital analysis.” I see. Well, I don't like it. Some of this is quite nice, ambient kind of stuff, but the more experimental (and I suppose, Vaporwave) stuff leaves me kind of cold really.
“Circle” is quite good – not sure if that's violin – surely it is? While the xylophone (?) on “Mask” reminds me of Vangelis ... never mind: I've just read that these are all digital samples or some damn thing, so will conclude that I will probably never be able to accurately describe or review vaporwave, if such this is. Overall though there's not much here that's made me want to throw my hat at it, did I possess such an article of clothing, which I do not. Like Tim Bowness's album to an extent, though much moreso, it seems to be more a case of not looking at individual tracks but just appreciating the whole thing as an overall composition, and not trying to deconstruct it, which I think is pretty impossible anyway, certainly for someone like me. There's certainly a heavy Japanese influence on the music here, but then, you probably knew that anyway.
According to the Wiki entry, the final track, “Place”, uses
"software that randomly generates a new set of notes every time the track is recorded to disk." I think, with the full breadth of the English language at my command, and my own not inconsiderable powers of description, the only thing I can truly say about this album is that it's ****ing weird, but (presumably) very clever and innovative. Frownland probably loves it.
Check out more from this artist? I really don't know
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? I really don't know
I'm not rating this as I have no idea how to.
Expectation Index: 7