PZA – CAPITAL CUSTOMER
Recommendation: ☹
PZA is slightly-famous within vaporwave for putting out what seems like a new album per week for the past year – at least. That’s pretty cool: an artist who is so interested and active within the scene that he or she feels the need to constantly release new material and push their artistic expression to an almost absurd extent. But that also calls into question of when is it a lot of material and when is it just a lot of material. The editing process is an important one within music, and releasing a whole bunch of music just to release a bunch of music isn’t necessarily a good thing. If the artist is at the point in their career where they are able to put out album after album after album and stay in a hyper-productive flow, then it would be better to severely cut down the released material to one’s absolute best tracks, otherwise it’s just too much. Their work runs the risk of being interpreted as a grab for listens rather than a release of one’s finest.1
CAPITAL CUSTOMER has this issue. It’s only a nine-track album in twenty-five minutes, but even then, there are obvious choice cuts among a majority of filler. The flow is the same: pseudo-ambient synths/samples against vaportrap beats; it’s a formula at which PZA is actually quite good,2 but a monotonous formula nonetheless. Even if some of the songs topically sound pleasant to the ear, the blatant lack of variation becomes too difficult to ignore. This is compounded by the song titles: “NOTICE ME SENPAI,” “SAVAGE AF,” and “WEIRD FACEBOOK” are cringe-inducing, and they represent how fickle the line is between clever irony and jaded unintentional self-mockery.3
Check out the marked cuts; otherwise, CAPITAL CUSTOMER is just another release in a discography that’s edging on “bloated.”
Tracklist
1. AESTHETIC SKULL WITH FERN – (3:25)
2. ARABIC ALIEN (feat. ΣƶɦĂk) – (2:15)
3. WEIRD FACEBOOK – (3:17)
4. NOTICE ME SENPAI – (3:20)
5. INTRO TO PIZZAWAVE – (2:33)
6. SAVAGE AF – (2:49)
7. INFINITY RING – (1:47)
8. PIZZA PLANET – (2:43)
9. CAPITAL CUSTOMER – (3:46)
1This paragraph also applies to Ty Segall.
2Just listen to the artist’s self-titled album out on Business Casual.
3This is a hard aesthetic (word choice on purpose) to do well, like gore in death metal. Some people are enamored with the ridiculousness of it – and that’s totally valid! – but I find it simply annoying if it’s there for no purpose other than in-jokes.