メディッカル medicalmechanica メチャニッカー – Gradient Sedan

Recommendation: ☀☁☁


Gradient Sedan is the second full-length album by メディッカル medicalmechanica メチャニッカー1 and the artist’s first for the Swamp Circle label. Gradient Sedan follows in the footsteps of many of the Swamp Circle projects (most of which are creative projects of label founder/director Angel Marcloid) in presenting plunderphonics vaporwave music with a noise or drone bent. In comparison to releases from Apk ♀ ᴎᴇᴛ ☯ Ltd℻ or FIRE-TOOLZ, Gradient Sedan is light on the pure noise or sound collage aspects; instead, it is rooted in classic-style vaporwave per Toad Computers or ☒.2

Songs utilize mid-tempo vaporwave samplism techniques. They generally feature some elements of tape hiss or other artificial degradation in addition to that resulting from tempo-/pitch-shifting to emphasize the decrepitude of the music. However, the music does not embody the physical agedness per Trademarks & Copyrights or luxury elite – in which the production sounds like the album is being played on a dusty cassette tape – but instead embodies concepts of pure digital degradation with stutters and digital pops. This is made especially obvious on “rainforest café” and “C L O S I N G S H I F T”. The latter example also has a somewhat hypnagogic vibe to it, which is also utilized on “bubbleyum” and “gemeralds” along with a quieter production aesthetic.

Sample sources are generally from the classic-style vaporwave standards of adult contemporary and similar music. Gradient Sedan also features several moments of video game music, which matches the SNES color palette presented in the album artwork. “Big Blue (Kanki-Ishida)” and “Mute City (Kanki-Ishida)” both sample the soundtracks of the titular levels in the first F-Zero video game. Both of the tracks are pretty much just slowed-down versions of their source material with a little bit of additional static and similar effects.

 

Tracklist


1. rainforest cafe – (2:54)
2. GOLF on the MOON – (7:10)
3. life after facebook – (1:34)
4. Big Blue (Kanki-Ishida) – (4:21)
5. C O N T E N T (s) – (0:58)
6. aquaTV – (5:46)
7. bubbleyum – (8:04)
8. gemeralds – (3:40)
9. dating the chauffeur – (4:21)
10. C L O S I N G S H I F T – (3:39)
11. Mute City (Kanki-Ishida) – (3:46)


 

1Japanese translation: “Medical Mekanicker”
2a.k.a. Quadratox

+1

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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