Ecoscraper – Lithium Excel
Recommendation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lithium Excel is part of a quirkly microgenre called “metrosong”, which was primarily promulgated by the short-lived label Clear Visions in the summer and fall of 2016. Metrosong refers to a highly polished aesthetic of utopian vaporwave/hypnagogic drift that evokes a hyper-corporate milieu.1 For many of the Clear Visions albums, this involves distinct references to real and imaginary consumer products, with releases often consisting of short EPs meant to advertise the product at hand.
In the case of Lithium Excel, the product is an eco-friendly hatchback/SUV called the Ecoscraper. Track titles refer to marketable characteristics of the car including its zero emission engineering and push-to-start ignition while imploring the listener to “calculate your savings” to see how the Ecoscraper fits in the budget. The songs are mid-tempo and squeaky clean on the production side with relatively simple progressions. All songs are between two-and-a-half and three minutes long – the perfect run-time for a corporate single made for a brief informative video. A good example is “Lithium Excel”, which features a minor piano lead with a percussive break toward the end.
Tracklist
1. Push to Start (Quiet Drive) – (2:27)
2. Aero – (2:49)
3. Calculate Your Savings – (2:42)
4. Lithium Excel – (2:46)
5. Zero Emissions – (2:51)
1An example of a release that is not metrosong but shares some of its tropes is Far Side Virtual by James Ferraro due to the album’s MIDI sound, corporate enterprise aesthetic, and ebullient progression that sound like advertising jingles.