Holographic Technologies – Edit / Delete
Recommendation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit / Delete is notable for being the first album ever to be released on North Carolina label Occasionally Tapes, coming out on 7 August 2016 on digital download and cassette format. This twenty-three track1 album consists of classic-style vaporwave that’s edited together into two cassette sides of pretty much continuous music. The album makes use of very short track lengths interspersed with the occasional single-length track, eliciting a signalwave-style effect in which ideas switch around like a TV antenna on the fritz. CD-skipping is a big element; the tracks utilize standard classic-style samplism, but many also feature the stutter effect like when your music player is having trouble reading the disc, or when the spool in your cassette is catching on a poorly-cleaned cassette player.2
The result is standard classic-style/signalwave, but fans of the aesthetic should probably check this out. It has the goofiness of classic-style vaporwave (e.g. that neon city album artwork with the MS-DOS logo) without the self-indulgence that plagues so much of the subgenre following its early-2010s heyday. Have fun with digital errors.
Tracklist
1. Press a key to play – (0:12)
2. スイング時間 – (1:16)3
3. Hazy – (1:36)
4. V3 – (0:20)
5. 爆発 – (2:23)4
6. No Ends – (1:01)
7. Wrong Way – (0:44)
8. It’s never been – (1:32)
9. 周囲ループ – (0:25)5
10. Hd Error – (0:47)
11. アボート – (0:46)
12. Styrene Visions – (5:53)
13. Side B – (0:00)6
14. I’d like to know – (1:31)
15. Lost in the Crypt – (1:59)
16. 漠然と悲しいです – (4:44)7
17. April’s March – (0:30)
18. Out – (1:04)
19. →→→→→↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ – (1:46)
20. Dream World – (2:03)
21. Delete – (0:01)
22. No Party / Press Y to Quit – (3:36)
1Debatable. It’s confusing. See the tracklist.
2Don’t let it happen to you, folks! Clean your equipment!
3Japanese translation: “Swing time”
4Japanese translation: “Explosion”
5Japanese translation: “Perimeter Loop”
6Not a typo. The track shows up in my media player but does not have a time-stamp. The actual tracklisting on the Bandcamp page says “(0:00)”. I’ve never seen that before.
7Japanese translation: “It is vague and sad”