被遗忘的时光 – forgotten time
Recommendation: ☀☀☁
Like a ship’s outline in the turbid sea, forgotten time looms out of the cloudy fishvapor of Tetra Systems. Coined by label owner saki the fish, fishvapor describes music that mixes classic-style vaporwave with an “underwater” production style to sound especially hypnagogic and floaty – like a really drunken night where you happen to fall overboard but are cool with it anyway. Songs use resonant synthesized tones, hazy reverb, and enveloping production to sound eerie yet welcoming. Combine Oneohtrix Point Never’s breathy “Submersible” from Replica with Vektroid’s new dreams ltd initiation tape: part one and you’ve kinda got an idea of what this album from Sangam1 is about.
Five long tracks take up over half of the run-time of forgotten time; the other seventeen run for thirty seconds to two minutes. Those long ones – especially “森林ミスト” – are gorgeous aquatic ambiance that elicit those old virtual reality headsets one could plug in and pretend they were SCUBA diving off Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys. These tracks languidly drift along, like one would imagine the fish to do on the album’s cover artwork – or like one would imagine a drowning victim would hear upon their last few seconds of consciousness as thoughts fade away into the blue abyss. This latter description fits the case of “ための場所”, which recalls – now bear with me here – the keyboard ambiance played by black metal artist Burzum on Det Som Engang Var, as well as the mournful melody of “森林ミスト”.
The shorter songs present little vignettes of aquatic life. They’re evenly split between classic-style vaporwave that sound as if they’re being played from a recently-sunken ship’s deck speakers and murky hypnagogic drift that bring stillness to Sangam’s world. The latter songs are gloomy and evocative, painting the unforgiving reality of life in the ocean. “门厅” is dissonant, and one imagines shadows darting out from the shipwreck depicted on the album artwork. The classic-style songs such as “忘记他们” and “步骤吧” almost do as well at the whole “undersea love-adventure” thing as DARKPYRAMID’s debut; others such as “热度” and “拿你的” are almost too kitschy to really hit the mark. “洪水” is the best of the vignettes, opening with a strange crackle and carpentry sound that gives way to hollow synthesizers and capricious laughter, as if Sangam’s ship has been set free from its watery grave.
Diving into forgotten time is an excellent decision for the intrepid listener. The whole concept of “fishvapor” may come across as too memetic at first glance, what with the preponderance of “-vapor” and “-wave” microgenres, but it’s an excellent description for this alluring work and the rest of Tetra System’s extant discography. forgotten time captures the sea’s beautiful world, but it also captures the lurking fear that comes with floating in the ocean and looking down at one’s feet into miles of absolute darkness, unsure of what lies below. Gorgeous and inspiring, the fear grows as one swims deeper.3
Tracklist
1. 内从R – (1:20)4
2. 忘记他们 – (1:22)5
3. 跟我到未知 – (4:34)6
4. 反射川の隣に座っていました – (7:29)7
5. 森林ミスト – (6:40)8
6. 耀斑 – (1:02)9
7. 步骤吧 – (1:06)10
8. 冰封的湖面 – (1:40)11
9. 酒店电话 – (0:32)12
10. 热度 – (1:00)13
11. 门厅 – (1:04)14
12. 計画 – (1:22)15
13. 量ります – (1:30)16
14. ゴーン – (1:36)17
15. 辈 – (1:36)18
16. 洪水 – (1:54)19
17. 离开我的身边 – (0:58)20
18. 离开方式 – (0:40)21
19. ための場所 – (3:08)22
20. 拿你的 – (0:38)23
21. _热带 – (0:36)24
22. 知ってください – (3:12)25
1 (operating here as 被遗忘的时光2)
2Chinese translation: “Forgotten times”
3Ever gone swimming around a shipwreck? It’s kinda like that. Simultaneously super cool and super creepy.
4Chinese translation: “From R”
5Chinese translation: “Forget them”
6Chinese translation: “Follow me to the unknown”
7Japanese translation: “Sitting next to the reflection river”
8Japanese translation: “Forest mist”
9Chinese translation: “Flares”
10Japanese translation: “Yellow spot”
11Chinese translation: “Frozen lake”
12Chinese translation: “Hotel phone”
13Chinese translation: “Heat”
14Chinese translation: “Foyer”
15Japanese translation: “Plan”; Chinese translation: “Project”
16Japanese translation: “I will weigh”
17Japanese translation: “Gone”
18Chinese translation: “Generation”
19Chinese translation: “Floods”
20Chinese translation: “Leave my side”
21Japanese translation: “Release method”; Chinese translation: “Leave mode”
22Japanese translation: “Place for”
23Chinese translation: “Take your”
24Chinese translation: “_ Tropical”
25Japanesetranslation: “Please know”