hotline – nights

Recommendation: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Miami? No, nights! hotline is Chase Randall, whose other aliases include Cyberport, Digitalage, and 回声广场. The hotline alias has been active since early 2016, and its discography includes releases on Evaporated Sounds, Adhesive Sounds, Floyd Records, and Sunset Recordings – a pretty diverse group within the contemporaneous scene. nights is the forty-first release for Verbatim Consciousness Recordings and the 341st overall release for parent label DMT Tapes FL, which operates out of Tallahassee, Florida.

This fifteen-track, thirty-nine minute full-length is deeply indebted to luxury elite, a fellow lowercase-typeset artist who is somewhat of a household name in old-school vaporwave for being the creative director of the Fortune 500 label, which was extremely influential through being the home for several high-profile artists.1 luxury elite’s credits also extend to codifying the nascent subgenre of late night lo-fi, which is based in sample curation of adult contemporary music from the 80s and 90s with distinct filtering and equalization to sound as if the music is coming from an old cassette that’s seen its share of passion. Most late night lo-fi has some vague sex appeal through the smokiness of the production and/or through album artworks and song titles that reference love and emotional vulnerability.

At the risk of sounding reductive, nights is a clone of luxury elite’s brand of late night lo-fi. It’s placed well on DMT Tapes FL then, as label owner VitoJames has made it quite clear that luxury elite greatly influenced his creative decisions. This album will chiefly appeal to listeners whose favorite vaporwave aesthetic is that dreamy, romantic nostalgia for a time they may not have even experienced – and with a bit of lo-fi to emphasize the historical nature.

 

Tracklist


1. nights – (1:37)
2. haze – (1:51)
3. lounge – (2:54)
4. relax – (2:20)
5. expressway – (2:39)
6. altitude – (2:56)
7. victoria – (3:20)
8. parkway – (3:09
9. groove – (2:27)
10. her touch – (2:19)
11. episode – (3:21)
12. central – (1:52)
13. finesse – (2:53)
14. fortune – (2:50)
15. departure – (2:39)


 

1E.g. 18 Carat Affair, Golden Living Room, Saint Pepsi, and ESPRIT 空想.

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