☒ – 2612

Recommendation: ☀☁☁


2612 by ☒1 begins with lo-fi computer music that perfectly aligns with the weirdness that is Swamp Circle. The Chicago label came about in 2012 toward the close of the “first wave” of vaporwave – after Macintosh Plus, 骨架的, and Daniel Lopatin had released their genre-defining works and Midnight Television, Mason Guerrero, and 18 Carat Affair had released their subgenre-defining works. Swamp Circle is one of the first “vapornoise” labels, and most of its releases fall into a spectrum between classic-style vaporwave and the furthest reaches of noise music that could still be called “music” by the majority of non-postmodernists. 2612 hits the former side, featuring instrumental muzak and lo-fi electronic music without the abrasive chaos of albums from Apk ♀ ᴎᴇᴛ ☯ Ltd℻ or Toad Computers.

Several tracks are pretty damn short, and several tracks are pretty damn long. “Street Lights”, “Psilocybin Ghost”, and “Lost” are your standard classic-style vaporwave microsongs, whereas “Synthetic White” and “Deep Souls” stretch to seven and ten minutes (respectively) of sleepy new age music. “Deep Souls” has a progressive electronica bent like early Oneohtrix Point Never, e.g. “Woe is the Transgression II” from Betrayed in the Octagon, and it’s immediately followed by the glitch-hop of “Arteries” to wake up the listener. (Good job on the sequencing there!) 2612 is a decent classic-style album, similar to the work of Universitat de Barcelona if they didn’t use noise music.

 

Tracklist


1. New Timeline – (2:14)
2. Street Lights – (1:26)
3. Waiting Room – (2:39)
4. Synthetic White – (7:23)
5. Psilocybin Ghost – (1:08)
6. Neo Ghetto Sunrise – (2:25)
7. Android Flowers – (5:28)
8. Deep Souls – (10:20)
9. Arteries – (2:12)
10. Purple Tears – (4:24)
11. Lost – (2:13)


 

1The name is “Quadratox”, if the bandcamp link is any guide. I pronounce it as “x”, as it’s supposedly a reference to the “x” button of a Windows tab to close a program.

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