DEKATRON — TIME FLIES

⌾ LISTEN TO DEKATRON, TIME FLIES ⌾

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Punching into the ether with the anticipation of discovery, 'Time Flies' by Phoenix, Arizona producer Dekatron is a marvel of midiwave simplicity. The unconventional see-saw between kicks and snares in the robust beat gives it a unique rhythm, something which may have been conscious, a sonic illustration of the sea which is partly the inspiration of the track.

"I imagined ... an old sailing vessel sailing the seas with the ups and downs of the tides, as well as the ups and downs of life and survival in general. I wanted to cast the seriousness against a fun experience for the sailors also anticipating the arrival," Dekatron tells yes/no via email.

With the stripped-back instruments helping to place the soundtracking credentials of 'Time Flies' somewhere in a timeless past, it's the constant marriage of strings and bass with the rhythm of the beat that gives the track its kinetic power, that keeps it jolting, lurching forward like a storm-hit ship. Space is left for dynamic additions and subtractions, while more minimal segments with low, moody strings.

"I put myself in the shoes of the sailors and thought about the adrenaline pumping through them as they are geared up for destiny," Dekatron writes.

With imagination such as this laid bare, it's easy to look through the creative resources at any producer's disposal, and find the roots of adventure sprouting into a tract of sound that extends into branches and boughs, galaxies greater than the sum of its parts.

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• 🔔 Listen to more of Dekatron's varied oeuvre of music over on his SoundCloud.

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📠
☟ Dekatron Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify ⚘

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🐣 DOWNSTATE — HOW TO FIX AN IBM FAX MACHINE INSTRUCTIONAL GUIDE 1996

This one is a scenic soundscape, a canvas painted with old tools, vintage equipment employed in the creation of something new and something beautiful, something that summons an elsewhere. In the description of the track on SoundCloud musicmaker and creator of this particular track – the descriptively titled 'how to fix an IBM fax machine instructional guide 1996' – downstate wrote: "I made this with the drum sounds from a dying roland jv30 and the korg M1 digital synthesizer." At points it's like breakcore made with an old drum machine, which in fact might be exactly what it is, with the percussive clacks and metallic zings zipping and trilling with glitch intensity and wheezing retro quality.

There is that newness to it, painted with old brushes and old paint. But then there is this golden-age sound to it, and it probably has a lot to do with the warmth of this, the analogue warmth in the thick chords that bubble in their slow singular refrains, as much as it has to do with the quite literally gleaming melodies that ache and twinkle zither-like above. And in this classic sound is perhaps an inherent leaning towards cinematic, scene-setting, VGM-style (thinking Earthbound, Streets of Rage, for instance), the expansive, exploratory feel of it. downstate also mentions that they probably "could have cut the hiss from the broken keyboard but i like it sounding like shit its authentic." But that hiss, that decayed grey noise hovering throughout, does indeed add to it, does add authenticity, gives it the swathing static of ages gone by as a backdrop.

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• 🔔 You can download all and any of Downstate's tracks from this Wordpress that they've set up as an archive.

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📠
☟ Downstate Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ traktrain

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🐣 OKPK — PARADISE [初演 • PREMIERE]

The opening seconds of sound in this track are transportive. It becomes very clear very quickly that you're no longer where you thought you were. The damaged digital synth that pings out wonkily as if you've just stumbled on some ancient technology and somehow awakened it, a sound that conjures something between earthly magic and inexplicable otherworldliness, spiritual electronics, familiar yet foreign, exotic and integral. That remoteness is echoed eerily in the vocal samples crying out pitch-shifted unfamiliar; and the doomful gloopy modulated synth sound that plays the robust refrain, arriving obtusely, keeping sparse abnormal rhythm; here is 'Paradise', an arid yet living melted-sky landscape.

Created by Victoria, Canada-based musicmaker okpk, this morsel of music is a dream-gone-wrong of subtle menace and narcotic haze. The sounds are immediate in their emotivity, their power to transport, with crackling arpeggio music box twangs, phasing columns of electric crunch, and plosive percussion clustering infrequently with glutinous kick flurries and thin rollicking snares and ts-ts ticking hi-hats and smart fingerclicks set out in the quivering crumbling space. With the legibility of vaporwave's decayed scene-setting, its inherent neither-here-nor-there extradimensional quality, 'Paradise' paints a surreal soundscape, a beautiful wasteland of an inverted paradise.

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• 🔔 This sonic scene turns out to be at the heart of the Pleasure Seekers EP from which this track is taken, being a "soundtrack to an imaginary film about a pair of lovers trapped in a disintegrating virtual paradise," but with the twist that "their collapsing environment is a manifestation of the unspoken problems in their relationship." That's thematically very vaporwave. The EP is set for release on 30th June via r/n collective and features artwork by multimedia artist Arya Hawker, who has created six videos, one for each of the EP's tracks.

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📠
☟ okpk Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter

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