AOTW | 24 October – 30 October: Mason Guerrero – The Chernobyl Tape Decks
The Chernobyl Tape Decks is the only album by Mason Guerrero under his own name. Whereas many early vaporwave pioneers stayed on the fringes of the genre following its brief and exciting first-wave heyday in the early 2010s only to reinvent themselves (e.g. Internet Club) or come back later to nigh-universal excitement (Vektroid), Mason Guerrero’s sole release in the relatively obscure area of vapornoise led The Chernobyl Tapes to almost be lost to the sands of time.
The Chernobyl Tape Decks is a simple four-track extended play, but with some of the most legitimately unsettling music to come out of first-wave vaporwave (firstwave?). Opening track “Melted Plastics” sounds like a single from some post-apocalyptic dance floor that revels in its degeneracy, and that stark album artwork certainly doesn’t make The Chernobyl Tape Decks appear any less uninviting. “Life Is Okay” is noisier, and the redux of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” is ECCOJAMS as interpreted by a ghoul. It’s a great album with which to celebrate your Halloween season. Read Sunbleach‘s review here, and check out the music below.