.CASTING – 5AM

Album information:


Artist: .CASTING
Album: 5AM
Type: Extended-play/Mini-album (EP/MLP)
Release date: 11 September 2015
Label: self-released / Cindys Tapes
Format:

  • Digital download (self-release, 2015)
  • Digital download (Cindys Tapes, 2015)

 

Recommendation: ☀☁☁


Italy’s .Casting (sometimes typecast as .CASTING) spent a year and a half releasing vaporwave album after another before disappearing in October 2015 – either to a new pseudonym or from vaporwave altogether. 5AM is their penultimate release. This twelve-track EP plays seventeen minutes of a mix of ECCOJAMS and future funk music; the album sticks to ECCOJAMS samplism tropes as it is constructed entirely of chopped-and-screwed samples of pop music with a narcotic twist, but there’s a strong focus on encompassing production and hard-hitting mid-tempo percussion that’s more often associated with future funk than it ever is with your normal ECCOJAMS proclivities.

Each track is bookended with a short burst of static, as if the radio station is going in and out more so than it being changed. The songs average between one and two minutes, with most being short yet addictive earworms of instrumental or vocal verses that only last as long as they want with a kiss-and-goodbye after their run is up. “YEASAYER” and “WETLUV” are just as sexy as their titles imply. There’s a bit of silliness too; “DOUBLERAINBOW” backs the famous “double rainbow all the way across the sky” YouTube video with some chilltastic adult contemporary music.

Check this out for a different (and decidedly mainland European) take on ECCOJAMS. Vaporwave might be considered a “death of geography” genre in the sense of its complete and total invention through on-line media formats, but the prevalence of albums like 5AM show that there are certainly some variations based on the physical location of the artist – or, in the case of ones like telepath, where they want to be physically located. But that’s talk for another article.

 

Tracklist


1. BORDEAU – (2:23)
2. FIVEAM – (1:50)
3. YEASAYER – (2:38)
4. RONI – (1:29)
5. GOOFYGURLSHWEG – (1:04)
6. OUCH – (1:07)
7. DOUBLERAINBOW – (2:00)
8. DREAMLADY – (1:35)
9. WETLUV – (2:21)
10. LIPPS – (1:25)
11. OHSHEILA – (1:13)


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