Arriving after the gloomy 'Displacement', Singapore-based Australian musicmaker SUN CORP。 continues an introspective exploration of urban atmospheres with 'Renew'. Trickling into earshot, the track soon shudders with with a the ghost of a 1980s rock guitar chord, sweeping the the scuttling tick of the track and its watery foundations.
A tumble of lo-fi beats setting wheels in motion, the track is a tale of waking up from a fever dream told in shades of vaporwave. Hinting at its title, choral synths cut through the air like columns of sunbeams, punching holes in the storm clouds — the destructed crush of those chords, the sound of thunder, traffic, noise, disappearing into the distance.
With its synths like liquid metal glittering darkly in the intoxicated slosh of a cold starry night, 'Still' is a nocturnal number from a collection of tracks created by Berlin producer Mindsight. He attributes their creation to "a fascination with the world", coincidences, moments revisited in memory and expressed with music.
'Still' thumps with a rapid heartbeat, punctuated with lo-fi mechanical percussion, timeworn snares shot with industrial rust — the propulsion behind the flowing pulse of synths. Mindsight's vision is a vital one, unrelenting in its forward motion; flocks of high-pitched sounds soar, the sonic embodiment of a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings.
And as the mind inches away from memory, the present moment crawling into consciousness, the fantastical synth falls away, leaving only the beat, the pistons and cogs of the brain and body moving on and on.
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'Still' is taken from W___ EP, which you can stream and download from his Bandcamp.
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And if you like, you can stream or download 'Still' by Mindsight via whatever service you feel most comfortable with on this list.
Self-proclaimed maker of "spaghetti pop", the Cape Town-based Gourmet inducts us into a syrupy and psychedelic tribute to WWE star, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Well, tribute or not, much of the song — also named 'Stone Cold Steve Austin' — is spent with a vocal refrain that begins "Stone Cold Steve Austin..." It's wrestler-heavy, but it's not about wrestling.
It's just part of the idiosyncratic nature of Gourmet's music. A lyrical mosaic, stream of consciousness in style, the spoken word lines are unaffected, unpolished, and remain a refreshing strolling vernacular of a vocal.
Similarly, while decidedly modern in its undertaking, with its minimalist appeal and spacious production, 'Stone Cold Steve Austin' dips heavily into the hunny pot of the past, Gourmet also namechecking Michael Jackson as the track gloops onward in a groove, in a galaxy of its own.
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'Stone Cold Steve Austin' by (who calls it "intercontinental left-field pop music") is taken from his Peace Forever Seaside Senegal Castle EP, released by Baketown Records. You can get it on Apple Music among other places.
The distorted arpeggios that wind their way through 'Pretty Boy' by Glasgow producer Wuh Oh give it this final act suspense. Instead of drops, the track opens up into gaping chasms, the suspense weaving its way through like the last level on a platformer; all the difficulty with the final boss yet to rear its head.
Different elements fade and fall from the scathing, sharpness of it all, with only the gleaming vocal harmonies (what Wuh Oh calls his "angelic choir impression") lancing in like the glow of some unholy machine, innocent in its unholiness—a sense of discovery, uncovery, delving deeper into an expansive, but increasingly claustrophobic world.
The synth scuttles and twangs, the bugs on the underside of a rock in a parallel dimension.
"The track Pretty Boy happened in a weird way," Wuh Oh tells
yes/no over email. "I set myself the challenge of writing a track using only one synthesizer and no drums to see if I could achieve enough tension and release without resorting to typical build up and drop tropes.
"[But] the arpeggios were all major key. It sounded like an advert for a cruise holiday or some shit."
Moving the notes around, 'Pretty Boy' then transformed from his "corniest song yet" to his "spookiest." It's spooky alright. Sinister and demented in its last moments, everything comes to a stop as the synth takes on a new, garbled flavour; the motion of this final stage ends and the game's final boss appears. It's that scene-setting.
With its hesitant, thudding heartbeat, rhythmic flow of baleful water and skittering insectoid Goldeneye PP7 silencer percussion, 'Displacement' by SUN CORP。 cuts a drainpipe gloom, a seldom used fire escape aesthetic.
"You wake up in a strange city, how did you get here? Things are not quite right. Are you alive or already dead? There's no way of really knowing," the Australia-born, Singapore-based musicmaker sets the scene.
"Memories form in a foggy cloud. Which ones are real? You fill up the sink with water and see your reflection. Something hits the water."
Something filmic lurks in the heart of 'Displacement', not just in the description he gives, but in the atmospheric weariness and paranoia of the track; voices, stoked up from some unmentionable void, recall some lyrical past in the nocturnal glooping doom of the present. The result, perhaps, of making this track "in a somewhat delirious state" while stuck inside his apart for 2 weeks with the flu.
Either way, SUN CORP。 gathers textures for 'Displacement' and sets them in a compact 2-minutes-37-seconds frame of looming, lonely dread—a vignette for vaporwave after the shopping mall eternities and gleaming ads of tomorrow, where real life faces nights in boxes set in stalwart skyscrapers.
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This SUN CORP。 track is taken from the upcoming 4-track Displacement EP, due out 5th October. It's actually a double EP releasing with a run of 50 cassette tapes; the A side is γ·γ³γ―γΎγγ―ζΊΊγγ ("Sink or Drown") and the B side is "Displacement". You can pre-order it here on Bandcamp.
