Vektroid – Starcalc

Recommendation: ✂ (“Interstellar Safari,” “Awakening Parakeet,” “Nova Prophet,” “Dusk at Temple Amiga,” “Interstellar Clusters”)


Starcalc is one of the early releases by Ramona Xavier as Vektroid – even before Macintosh Plus, fuji grid tv, and Laserdisc Visions. This album follows Xavier’s early interest in chillwave sounds, something that would be fully realized on 2012’s Color Ocean Road. Tracks have trap and space music influences, as best documented in the opener “Interstellar Safari.” Several songs feature spoken word ruminations on intelligence, life, and the cosmos – as on “Interstellar Clusters” – and they’re pretty awesome.

This is one of the longest releases in Xavier’s discography, at eighteen tracks and ninety-one minutes. Half of the tracks push or surpass the six-minute mark; many of them are way too long, and few have the surfeit of ideas necessary to keep such a length going for an extended period of time. “Walk with Me Saturn,” “Interstellar Clusters,” and “Untitled” utilize those cliché new age nature sounds, but that’s not Xavier’s fault. Back then,1 these sounds were pretty new in modern electronic music and the retro-synth trend; however, it’s hard to unhear their over-utilization with jaded ears. Some of the beat-oriented tracks play up the heavily processed percussion way too loudly, which is grating and clashes with the chiller downtempo electronics.

Overall, Starcalc betrays Xavier’s youth, and will less likely enthrall full listens of each and every song than it will select tracks for a playlist.

 

Tracklist


1. Interstellar Safari – (2:38)
2. Mindscape – (3:35)
3. Awakening Parakeet – (6:29)
4. VGA Grid – (2:10)
5. Featherskull (feat. Betamaxx) – (3:51)
6. Nova Prophet – (5:07)
7. Infinity Diskette – (2:43)
8. Dusk at Temple Amiga – (8:12)
9. Terrestrial Sands – (7:42)
10. Awakening Starscape – (8:33)
11. Walk with Me Saturn – (6:08)
12. Planetary Zones – (5:42)
13. Amazon Polytrac – (6:09)
14. Interstellar Clusters – (3:22)
15. VGA Coral Reef – (6:02)
16. Orion Megalith – (4:34)
17. Amethyst Martini – (2:28)
18. Untitled – (6:24)


 

1As if it weren’t just five years ago.

0

2 comments

Leave a Reply to weatherman115 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *