不朽空間 – 深夜、テレビに照らさ暗い部屋。

Recommendation: ☀☁☁


At the risk of gross oversimplification, Cyber Dream Records may be described as inhabiting an alternate universe in which Dream Catalogue never dropped the “-wave” suffix in vaporwave and completely bypassed the trends of hardvapor and IDM-dreampunk in continued pursuit of the label’s early interest in hypnagogic drift, broken transmission, and ambient vaporwave. Many of Cyber Dreams’ albums utilize late-night Japanese media, surreal aesthetics, and nigh-total disfigurement of sample sources; often with a listening appeal that just barely borders on amusicality. They also have a similar presentation of vagueness where, except for a few names like ΣƶɦĂk and ℍUM♥ℕIGHTM♥RE, the projects and artists are frequently one-offs where you’re not quite sure where the album turned up or who made it. But Cyber Dream Records is very much their own label, and 深夜、テレビに照らさ暗い部屋。1 is a great example of so.

Released by 不朽空間,2 this album utilizes multiple loops of microsamples with significant degradation of the source material, akin to a mix between the signalwave of Infinity Frequencies and the slushwave of telepath. The production is simple: samples are pasted several times in a row as if a CD is skipping, then pitch/tempo-shifted, and finally sped back up to the original edit. It’s a style that was codified by early signalwave producers such as Infinity Frequencies (again) and Vektroid on fuji grid tv, taken to a polarizing extreme by INTERNET CLUB on ▣世界から解放され▣. It’s like leaving the TV on at night in a strange hotel room in an even stranger city – a concept to which the very album title alludes – where the music, shows, and ads melt into an indecipherable flow.

The songs are pretty short: only two out of sixteen pass the three-minute mark, and the median run-time barely hits the 100-second mark. “欠落” is kind of similar to “CD Player pt III” by death’s dynamic shroud.wmv off of I’ll Try Living Like This. “翼の” jars the listener through using English vocal samples; so many of these kinds of albums either go entirely for East Asian samples or entirely for English samples, and it’s relatively rare to hear a signalwave album that attempts to combine both language sources. At five-and-a-half minutes, “煉獄” is one of the longest songs on the album but also one of the best; it evokes the feeling of walking through an empty supermarket parking lot at night as a by a phonograph plays a record that’s so worn down with time that the needle is doing all it can to stay in the groove.

深夜、テレビに照らさ暗い部屋。 is a collection of straightforwardly presented samples of Japanese and English media as heard by the glazed mind of an international traveler on a red-eye flight. Check it out if something like Y. 2089 by テレビ体験 is too anarchic for your tastes. This album is relatively structured and appeals to the ears without resorting to either masochism or ghoulishness. It’s decrepit, but retains enough standard musicality to give a glimpse into whatever world that such a work inhabits. 深夜、テレビに照らさ暗い部屋。 is a signalwave/slushwave album to which you’d listen because it’s engaging from the perspective of a producer and it’s pleasant from the perspective of a listener, concepts that are difficult to balance at the same time.

 

Tracklist


1. 入る – (0:37)3
2. 階段 – (1:11)4
3. 欠落 – (2:50)5
4. 歯車 – (2:15)6
5. 赤光 – (1:33)7
6. 翼の – (3:03)8
7. 閉眼 – (1:52)9
8. 海岸 – (2:54)10
9. 自由 – (1:05)11
10. 間奏 – (1:49)12
11. 買物 – (1:11)13
12. 高校 – (2:30)14
13. 伝授 – (1:31)15
14. 劇道 – (1:14)16
15. 電話 – (2:57)17
16. 煉獄 – (5:30)18


 

1Japanese translation: “Late night, the dark room illuminated by the TV.”
2Japanese translation: “Immortal Space”
3Japanese translation: “Enter”
4Japanese translation: “Stairs”
5Japanese translation: “Missing”
6Japanese translation: “Gear”
7Japanese translation: “Red light”
8Japanese translation: “Wings”
9Japanese translation: “Eye Closure”
10Japanese translation: “Coast”
11Japanese translation: “Freedom”
12Japanese translation: “Interlude”
13Japanese translation: “Shopping”
14Japanese translation: “High school”
15Japanese translation: “Professor”
16Japanese translation: “Theatre path”
17Japanese translation: “Telephone”
18Japanese translation: “Purgatory”

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