Wasn’t – Validations in Discord

Recommendation: ☀☀☁


Validations in Discord1 made its rounds on several labels in 2016 including Question Records, & Options, and Aloe City Records. Produced over a six-month span from 2015 to early 2016, this is a three-track EP from Wasn’t that incorporates acid techno into the vapor aesthetic. It’s billed as the twenty-fifth release on Question Records, and it includes a hyper-realistic album artwork created by D.C.2 metro area resident and author Daniel Euphrat, who also produces music as Timmy Sells His Soul.

This EP opens up with the four-and-a-half minute “Other”, which quickly established the main motif of Validations in Discord with an arpeggiating keyboard melody and a four-on-the-floor housebeat. The arpeggios are similar to those used by Swedish electronic music duo The Knife on Silent Shout, specifically the title track and “We Share Our Mother’s Health”. “Creepy Radiance” follows it up with an immediate and heavy techno/rave atmosphere that wouldn’t sound out of place in a warehouse basement club in northeast D.C. Halfway through that song, the keyboard adopts more distortion and a ton of screw with a controlled-sloppiness that’s even more effective upon a brief downtempo moment at around the five-minute mark. The last third of “Creepy Radiance” features some intermittent and unintelligible vocal samples before ending on another comparatively downtempo note. Final song “Validations in Discord” utilizes the Bolero Effect in opening with a mid-tempo and consistently repeated measure that is overlayed with discordant (pun intended) legato chords. The last half of that track adopts some more downtempo parts sans percussion.

Give this a listen if you want some straightforward and not-so-straightforward techno in your vapor(-wave) experience.3

 

Tracklist


1. Other – (4:23)
2. Creepy Radiance – (9:02)
3. Validations in Discord – (8:14)


 

1Years of listening to D.C. hardcore punk made me want to write this as “Validations in Dischord”.
2Let’s see how many times I can reference D.C. in this article.
3Only three references? I’m disappointed in myself.

0

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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