#even if modern pop music used more than a four chord loop (which many songs do)

[the-story-of-how-we-died]

I'm just a rando on the internet whose opinion doesn't really matter, but I have to say, I absolutely hate these types of videos

I did actually watch the video* (it seemed to mostly be an advertisement for a book, but ignoring that), it's premise was: "these songs contain all the notes in a certain key but don't really play the tonic chord of said key, which means it never visits the tonic chord!" which I find utterly maddening.

This is such a common trend among music theorists analyzing modern pop music ("modern" in this case meaning pretty much everything released in the last five decades that's not jazz). So many of them are willing to ignore how a song sounds and treats the harmonies and melodies inside it if it means they can analyze it inside this strict, 14th century western framework**. And, if the 14th century doesn't work, they just jump up one.

"Okay, okay, so the 14th century framework didn't work... what about the 15th? That didn't either? Whew. Well, guess we're pulling out all the stops today: 16th century, here we go."

The problem isn't the specific century's framework you're using, the problem is that you refuse to interact with this music on it's own terms. (The most frustrating part is that this isn't impossible! I know that there are music theorist who do interact with this music on it's own terms, and I find their work fascinating because it at least attempts to explain what's actually happening here.) Stop focusing on the collection of notes the music uses so much and start focusing on the how and why's!***

*You should also give it a watch. Since I disagreed with the basic premise, I might be being a tad uncharitable here.

**They also do mention modes in the final, like, 30 seconds of the video before rehashing the advertisement. But, even then, that is only a slightly more satisfactory answer for why these songs work they way they do.

***It's also possible to exist in two keys at once, which is something that a lot of pop music does that many theorists just... ignore. Purposefully obfuscating the tonic of a song is seriously a staple of so many genres of "modern" pop music. This is an aside, but I did want to mention another possible reason.

[thesinglesjukebox]

HATCHIE - STAY WITH ME [8.08] The album's called Keepsake, and it's one we might want to hang on to...

Ian Mathers: I don't care what the lyrics say when you look them up, in the moment of listening I cannot decide each time whether "Stay With Me" starts with "it's all better, now you're gone" or "it's no better". I don't think the song can decide either. It's far from the first song to have that sort of power, just like the drum machine-and-synth, loop-and-swoop approach, while beautiful here, isn't exactly new. But I've heard dozens of songs like this (some even by Hatchie) since the last time one made me feel the way "Stay With Me" is making me feel right now. And isn't that maybe the only true miracle of pop music: that mere human beings can make "just another song," one that on the surface isn't that different than a bunch of others we merely like, and yet it can hit us just as profoundly, as heartwrenchingly bittersweet, as hopefully, as this one is hitting me right now? I could write an essay about the things in my life "Stay With Me" connects up to, people and times and places and songs, but it wouldn't make much sense to anyone else even if it wasn't incredibly, tiresomely self indulgent. But the experience I've been having with "Stay With Me" is among other things a reminder of the worth of staying connected and engaged with the world, in art as in all things, and not just going back to listen to all the things I already love instead. The chances of any other given human being having this reaction to this particular song today ("if I met you in a different moment/if I met you would I be this broken?") are small, sure, maybe even tiny. But god, I hope we all get to keep having those moments, and that we recognize the wonder of them in each other. [10]

Katherine St Asaph: I know this was written as a deliberate experiment in writing a pop song (or so they say; I too have claimed my paychecks as experiments), and thus I know the exact places the mechanics are there to get you (unending wistful chords, the yearning "Everything Is Embarrassing" vocal, with an octave jump exactly where it needs to happen), and the places the mechanics clank a bit too loud (the ending sags before the [perfect] bridge; "I'm not done / I've come undone" is kind of circular, kind of on its own nose). It's also been out for months. But the second time I heard this song it just happened to catch me at the exact moment of flood of memory, of accreted stupid unrequited crushes and breakups and failures and regrets, until I was in tears in a cab, which is really the ideal setting to hear this song. [9]

Edward Okulicz: Oh god, this hits me so hard in my heart, it hurts. "Stay With Me" would have been incredible had it been sung by someone like Foxes as a glass-shattering EDM epic, and it would have been incredible done as a shoegaze number by an alternative universe Lush, but it's also perfect as it is, midway between those two extremes. The lyrics are simple, but they're no more complicated than they need to be. It's some heavy-duty yearning but at the same time it's as light as air. I want to go dancing somewhere this is playing and stare down at my sneakers all night. [10]

Ashley Bardhan: This feels like pretty straightforward dream pop. Super soupy, drowsy vocals over a synth loop. It's very fine, very reminiscent of making out with a 23-year-old mattress boy named DYLAN. [6]

Julian Axelrod: Hatchie's ability to craft grand, immersive synthscapes is impressive, rivaled only by her commitment to pushing semi-formed lyrical conceits past the four-minute mark. [6]

Will Adams: There's a heartbreaking circularity to the lyrics ("you're the one who's won"; "I'm not done/I've come undone") that nails the sense of uncontrollable spinning that comes from an unrequited love. The vacillation between confidence and doubt, the paper-thin façade of indifference, the endless what-ifs and agonizing of what could have been had the cards fallen differently: they all add up to a devastating crush song that, despite never resolving, nonetheless sounds like a massive, necessary release. [9]

Alex Clifton: Drenched in reverb, gorgeous synths and a lovely vocal line, and feels like a beautiful dream. It sounds like the end of a movie where there's a montage of the main characters heading off into the sunset, unsure of their futures but exchanging significant looks with one another. I hope this blows up, makes it big, becomes as iconic as it sounds -- everyone needs to hear this song. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: With a sturdy and prominent drum loop, "Stay With Me" brings to mind My Bloody Valentine's "Soon" and the sped-up Zeppelin sample on Chapterhouse's "Pearl." The key difference is how Hatchie's vocals are always front and center, clear enough that each word can permeate every synth pad and twangy guitar line and snappy kick drum with a melange of hopeful desperation and knowing despair. That spacious, ever-comfortable void that her voice rests inside reveals itself to be a place of unnerving contemplation. Despite this, Hatchie convinces you that this purgatorial dream state is far more desirable than the living Hell that is life spent all alone. [9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The art of the fadeout is an intentionally obscure one. It's the art of making the encroachment of silence into an instrument of its own, of stretching a song's end into a beautiful eternity. "Stay With Me" has a gorgeous fade-out, ending in a heartbeat of a drumtrack as its shoe-gaze-leaning guitars depart, but it in itself feels like a fadeout, taking the dying hopes of some vaguely sketched relationship and letting them sprawl out before you. It takes a while to get going (it didn't click for me until the bridge), but it's the kind of song that deserves your patience. [7]

Alfred Soto: So THIS is the synth pop bauble that Chvrches have failed to write for six years? It stinks of the past, peeks through v-shaped fingers at the future, and in Hatchie's sweet lies ("It's so better now you're gone") an ever-present present. [8]

Joshua Copperman: The tedious, nearly bass-less first half of "Stay With Me" surprised me, especially as so many TSJ colleagues were raving about this song. The lyrics are concise without being cliché, the production is a mostly interesting mix of Madchester drums and modern dream-pop, but I'm left living someone else's nostalgia. Like Snail Mail and other, similar acts, I'm an outsider for not having the same childhood as every other music writer. That doesn't make this a bad song: Once the live drums and harmonies kick in at 2:51, it becomes difficult not to fall in love with the song. But even that is probably because it evokes my own nostalgia -- it sounds like "Wake Up," and not the "Wake Up" indie rockers used to reference. (A bit like this pre-"Radioactive" Imagine Dragons song too, which I loved when I was 15.) And I still remain locked out; the YouTube comments claim that "listening to this song feels like being in a club on ecstasy in the 90's." But really, this feels like hearing someone else remember that oft-reminisced-upon time period, reminding me once more that things were apparently better before I got here. [6]

Vikram Joseph: From sixth form through much of my twenties, I thought I didn't really like dancing; far too late, I realised I just hated having to fake it in bleak, sticky-floored provincial or university clubs, damp with straight machismo and broken dreams. These days, I can lose my shit to "Dancing On My Own" and "Make Me Feel" in queer spaces I feel safe and happy in, and that's wonderful. It stings, though, to have missed out on a kind of transcendence I feel like I should have experienced on the cusp of adulthood, and "Stay With Me" speaks directly, powerfully to that part of me. Those "Born Slippy" synths feel soft-focus and hazy like inebriated happiness itself; Hatchie's vocals in the middle eight feel like they're grasping for something intangible and impossible, chasing every lost night and doomed love into the first glow of sunrise. This is slow-motion, tear-streaked disco-ball euphoria to remind you of nights you're not quite sure belong to you or to cinema; a fever-dream summer dance anthem that makes me believe that the perfect places we have always aspired to are eminently real, flickering in spaces that our younger selves could never have imagined existed. [9]

Iris Xie: When I review songs, I repeat them in order to sink in their atmosphere and be flooded into their sentiments, because otherwise, it doesn't come clear to me. In this discovery process, I often find myself compelled to sing and ad lib along. For "Stay With Me," at 2:50, I found myself unconsciously singing the bridge when the midpoint of the kicks off into the instrumental, specifically these two lines: "If I met you in a different moment/If I met you, would I be this broken?" I kept singing these two lines over and over again as each repeat occurs, and then I realized that the bridge is the verbal personification of the instrumental, and it is the underlying sentiment that drives all the stark, urgent confessions, so naked in their desperation and knowing that it is futile and they won't be heard, but nevertheless, they must be said. This stands in contrast with the first two lines, which put on such a brave face that contains a bitter heart: "It's all better now you're gone/It's all better on my own." When you sing these lyrics over each other, the synths are so lively and comforting in this melancholy and blend together with warm guitar strums, and solid drums to illuminate these sentiments. Hatchie is in pain from having to deal with such a broken void, and the vibrant singing of the bridge contrasts with the reluctant, forlorn sentiment of the initial verse, so it actually reads: "It's all better now you're gone/If I met you in a different moment/If I met you would I be this broken/It's all better on my own." Even though Hatchie acknowledges it feels wrong, saying "stay with me" is the balm that she settles on to ease this pain of her lover's departure because she's responsible for this pain. The beautiful part about the instrumental is that it reminds me of why music, and art overall, is so deeply important: when one is able to access the space of these heartfelt emotions, and to use the tools at your disposal to create the specific weight and textures of those experiences, it also can help give shape to those who are also feeling these certain ways, and allowing them to release and transmit it. I've shied away from my own private embarrassment and shame about this exact situation for years, and have only recently started talking about it with my therapist and supportive friends, but yesterday, I allowed myself to look through old journals and communications about that relationship. In reality, I never allowed myself to feel comfortable with the endless weight of these emotions and regrets, for I never wanted to be haphazard about the textures of this experience, even in making art about it. I feared it'd only sour the reality and aggravate my anxieties about people not taking the level of pain I had seriously and mocking it. Putting myself in that impossible situation for not wanting to mar those moments, I shut it down for the past few years. But I've had to let those similar feelings wash over me in the past few months to create art and even give justice to the reviews that I want to give on TSJ and elsewhere, so now I have to acknowledge that buried sadness. I no longer feel shame about that plaintive way to express my emotions about those situations, for this song's fuzzy, warm haze of disorientation is so familiar, and now I trust myself to just go, which is what I did with this review today. I guess that's one reason why pop is so lovely -- a salve for private hearts, not ready to debut, until they are. It's clear now. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[thesunlounge]

Reviews 237: Ai

I’ll never be able to resist the wild and freaky prog, psychedelia, and space music that came out of Germany during the 70s. It was this perfect convergence of psychoactive substances, futuristic electronics, spiritual mind expansion, and rock’n’roll shamanism that produced some of the music I cherish most and while there are many great examples of artists exploring this sound in the modern era, very few have overwhelmed me with krautrock and kosmische perfection like Ai. The collective of Matt Flores, Frank Bauer, Andreas von Hillebrandt, and Shunsuke Oshio first appeared on Slowboy Records’ Kingii comp in 2012 and followed that up three years later with “Anima Itako” on Theme for Great Cities’ third Mogul release. This track then appeared later in 2015 when Ai issued their debut self-titled full-length on Hauch, which was deep and far-out trip into motorik trance rhythms, space riff percolations, kaleidoscopic synthesis, and amorphous starscape bliss outs that could equally  soundtrack post-rave chill-out rooms and planetarium laser shows. For their second album II released at the end of 2018, Ai explore these same sonic spaces, but a slight change in personnel has augmented the sound in new and surprising ways. As opposed to their debut, Shunsuke Oshio only appears on four of II’s seven tracks and much of the guitar work has been transferred to new member Nima Moussavi, who brings a muscular 70s space rock riff energy as well as an even more pronounced level of interstellar prog majesty and funk and fusion fire. And in the shimmering “Amberica,” Amber Pine’s whispered vocals lead an etheric float down a river of dream-pop radiance.

Ai - II (Hauch, 2018) “Ai Theme” sets the stage with sweeping filters and sea blue hazes swirling above a balearic dreamscape. Downbeat electro-drums pound majestically through aquatic cloudrealms and vaporous pad washes smear together with romantic guitar atmospheres, with everything slowly phasing from one ear to the other. Chiming bubble melodies drift towards a sunburst sky while searing static waves swoon through romance motions and as we move towards the end, outerspace voice transmissions are surround by ever-evolving layers of oceanic mesmerism. At the other end of the A-side sits the gleaming pop of “Amberica,” which starts with a radiant soudbath of deep space filtering and chittering feedback. A dopamine drumbeat enters and cruises on light kick taps and air cracking snare smacks as dreamy vibraphone synthetics melt down from the sky. Heatwave brass layers swell around vibrato guitar weavings that at times evoke some sort of futuristic recollection of patriotic Americana, but this vibe is soon worked against by Amber Pine’s subversive and feminist beat poetry spells, which are delivered via sensual breaths and ambivalent whispers. She’s surrounded by immersive layers of shoegazing bassline funk, all subterranean sustain and riffing vibrations moving beneath wavering currents of guitar shimmer. I’m reminded of Amp, Bowery Electric, Jessamine, very early Spiritualized, and so much else from the golden age of pop-kissed 90s space rock, especially as Shunsuke Oshio radiates golden guitar magic that vibrates in tune with the universe while misty-eyed bassline lyricisms swim upwards through glowing reverb hazes.

In between “Ai Theme” and “Amberica” sits “Aruki Ikura,” where wind blown chimes and rustic guitars give way to riffing bass guitar heat and a mutant breakbeat riding on dazzling snare rolls and sizzling hat patterns. Frank Bauer’s ethereal prog organs descend and blistering noise waves swell while a spellbinding synth sequence works through the sky…starting subtle but slowly growing into a vocal strand of space acid magic that snakes continuously through the mix. After a rhythmic pause, the track erupts into pure motorik perfection with fat-bottomed basslines chugging beneath tight hypno-riffs and drums locking into an energetic krautrock stomp. The vibe sits somewhere between Neu! and Hawkwind, all pastoral psych magic intertwining with chugging space rock fire while phaser morphed organs fly through the sky. The Michael Rother airs are all the more pronounced when vaporous wah-wah licks enter, setting the stage for Nima Moussavi’s molten fuzz solo magic. Dreamy wailing guitar leads trail polychromatic tracers as the ultra-tight jam underneath threatens to explode, with massive drum fills and snare rolls surrounding liquid basslines as they slip and slide through LSD groove motions. Then the song fractures and fades into mist, before snapping back to life with a downbeat stoner funk jam out. Crystalline clean guitars underly moaning fuzz leads that play themes for majestic cloud kingdoms and eventually, Matt Flores works his rhythms back into a sunshine kosmisch glide while interstellar keyboard layers float the soul. And as we work towards the end, epic harmonizations and dueling leads locking together and climb towards a starscape horizon.

The first track on side B is split across three parts, with “Akai Indigo” seeing insectoid oscillations locking in with a fusion breakbeat jam-out. Snares skitter around tight kick and hat patterns while guitars drop deep blue shadow swells over exotic bass guitar walks. The panning oscillations grow ever more intense as they swim through distorted synth dream weavings and eventually the drums work into an upbeat gallop with off-beat snare flourishes and rhythmic clacks cutting through futuristic melody hazes and phaserwave oceans. Moving into  “Akai Indika,” chugging bass riffs, technoid kraut-disco rhythms, and percussive dial tones slam through a black haze nightscape and evoke Heldon soaring at hyperspeed. Shakers pulse ecstatically as alien oscillations chitter and laugh and there’s so much magic in Andreas von Hillebrandt’s basslines…like Jannick Top locked into a hypno-groove disco ritual. As clanging chimes lock into an Afro-folk starscape, layers of resonance grow in strength, causing the synths to sound like glowing balls of energy bouncing through a galactic tunnel. And after dramatic horror-prog chords flow down from dark skies, we transition into “Akai Indigo (Reprise).” It’s a return to a world of jamming psych basslines and splattery swinging drumbeats, though it’s all somehow more lo-fi than before…like far-out garage rock blasted onto the surface of the sun. Burning waves of guitar sorcery melt over the mix and eventually move through rippling wah-wah motions and reality tearing phase-shifts and near the end, galactic synth solos bring dark funeral enchantments before it all disappears into self-oscillating smoke.

Reso-filtered machine cymbals and paranoid percussion energies give way to dubwise basslines and phaser-blasted hi-hat chaos in “Aleister Instamatic,” while melodic electro-tom cascades circle overhead. Unintelligible voices beam in through shortwave radios as a sped up break beat enters, with switching and smacking snare magic intercutting deep bass drum thuds. Sequences flash overhead and recall the crazed lines dominating “Akuri Ikura”…as if playful electro-spiders are crawling across the mind…while skronked out guitar chords sit beneath cymbals splashes that are increasingly shrouded in galactic static. We then sweep upwards into a swooning robot romance chorus with Frank Bauer’s melancholic vocoder melodies melting the heart until the track cuts into a wild guitar passage filled with wah-wah trance vibrations, violent flanger and phaser oscillations, and bubble-form delay clouds. Everything eventually breaks down into crazed plastic crinkles and metallic liquid noise, with bass guitars chugging through a nightmare landscape. But as kick drums push dark clouds of reverb, the basslines are progressively reduced to abstract picking sounds and acoustic string vibrations before fading away almost entirely, leaving guitar mirages flashing side-to-side while incandescent hums emanate from deep space. Angry screams and cosmic wind gusts surround crazed guitar loopings and everything stretches and smears out, with heatwave noise blasts growing in strength as the skittering beats return. And after a sharp pause, we explode once more into the climactic vocoder chorus, now with sweeping string synth orchestrations raining down from the heavens and leading into a gemstone piano solo coda. 

“Anikulapo Immortal” starts in a world of smokey lounge jazz as basslines wander apart from tapped cymbals and midnight guitar chords. Anxious synth repetitions, floating aqueous hazes, and clattering rimshots move thorough air-sucking delay and reverb fx and Von Hillebrandt and Flores are in spiritual communion, with pulsating basslines supporting funked out tom-tom tribalisms. And as vocal breaths are spectrally morphed while deep space guitars shimmer like stars, I’m reminded of the ethnological forgery freak outs of Can and Amon Düül II and the side-long epics of Earthless. Galactic drone waves enter while the ecstatic groove motions flail ever forwards and there’s a growing sense of anticipation leading to a slow-burn explosion of dreamworld psychedelia and underwater jazz, wherein gemstone guitar strands are woven from liquid arpeggiations and spaghetti western slides. Then we transition sharply as low-down bass riffs stomp through a solar ascent, with palm-muted echo riffs, synth squiggles, and zany e-pianos floating on water waves. Flores revels in ride cymbal fire and revolving tom majesty while trancey pad smears and staccato riff bursts interlock with thunderous bass riffs….the whole thing evoking the hypno-prog and NWOFHM of Circle. Eventually the jam transitions from militant cosmic ritualism to post-rock majesty as Von Hillebrandt’s bass climbs through lyrical fantasias and leads us again into a passage of joyous pop-psychedelia and aquatic jazz, where haunted pad gases, e-piano vibrato weavings, chiming percolations, sliding guitars, and swinging cymbal and snare rhythms sit below distorted piano notes that seem to decay across the galaxy.

The track then shifts into a patient kick drum march with airy hi-hat taps fluttering and bewildering tom fill madness building in from the depths. Smoldering guitars riffs and shimmering cymbal taps cut through fogs of synth chaos, galactic reverb blasts, sci-fi chime cascades, and blistering filter weirdness and there’s so much ecstatic percussive energy as polyrhythms fly out in all directions. The bass guitar stomps and storms through the sky as the melodic layerings seem to devolve into clicks and scrapes. Then all of a sudden, a blazing guitar solo rips through the fabric of spacetime with bridge pick-up western twang and surf blues spiritualism smothered in slapback echo and white light vibrato fuzz. Breaky drum beats ride on golden cymbal taps and hypno-snare smacks while tambourines jangle joyously and wah-wah clicks flash across the spectrum. The rhythm guitars vibe out with bluesy hammer-ons and interstellar funk wiggles and Von Hillebrandt’s bass locks in and harmonizes with the sun-soaked psych soloing as the mix grows ever more anarchic and free, moving especially far-out once mind-melting organ drones blast in…their longform chordscapes drifting over the mix like muted rainbow light. And there’s a thrilling sense of transition, with the spirit being surrounded by aquamarine crystal hazes, searing feedback spirals, and crashing and thrashing cymbals as Ai work miraculously back towards that irrestible dreamwave psych and ocean jazz sway…a seamless transition from shamanic and shambolic psych bombast to instrumental pop enchantment. 

The album closes with “A Huge Structure Far Behind the Sun,” which earns the Orb-ian evocations of its title by foregounding a pulsating sequence that is continually worked through otherworldly filter and envelope modulations in a way recalling “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld.” All around swirl primordial drones, UFO whooshes, ethereal washes of static, and hovering angel atmospheres as twinkling synth-pianos radiate webs of crystal. Warm swells of distortion break free from the rhythmic swirl of planetarium phase-shifters and the soul glides eternally on soft feedback pulses, filter morphing wave fronts, and layered strands of electronic fire…all while the hallucinogenic lead sequence morphs through long flowing decay trails and sharp staccato percolations. At some point, the bubbling yet subtle currents of rhythm give way to amorphous mermaid dirfstscapes, whale song oscillations, and deep sea lullabies that bring to mind Michael Stearns, Tangerine Dream’s Zeit, Seahawks, and Anna Själv Tredje. It’s pure psychoactive ritualism submerged within an underwater dreamscape where infinite webs of shimmering jewels are constructed from e-piano fractals and electro-bubbles. Mind-melting cymbal swells move into the mix then fade into ether and the Orb-ian galaxy sequence continues weaving polychromatic strands while sometimes overtaking the mix with transcendent blasts of spectral sonic vapor. And beneath it all, heavily treated guitars are transmuted into temple bells.

As we go along, the track continue to spread out and submerge itself within a sea of LSD tracers…as if the mind is being wrapped around by vibratory threads of every possible color. Sparkling melodies, screaming fuzz arcs, and blinding synth solos intertwine while all throughout the mix float the sounds of electrified marbles rolling through echo-caverns. The dreamscape lead sequence swims through modulating waves of distortion and slow motion oscillators accelerate into hyperspace spirals while interstellar resonances create droning clouds of warmth. And as we move deeper into the otherworldly electronic miasma, I am increasingly reminded of Experimental Audio Research, especially Beyond the Pale and Mesmerised…just a joyous celebration of the possibilities of analog synthesis to evoke neon jungle environments on emerald planets or seas of intergalactic gas crashing upon diamond shores. Overt rhythms are abandoned, as are MIDI-sequencing and programming, with Ai instead reveling in human manipulations of crazed alien electronics.  Starlight keys add further layers of cosmic shimmer while swelling currents of cymbal metal push the spirit towards ecstasy and moving towards the end, delay trails and reverb tails start merging together…like lapping ripples of feedback spreading outwards on a surface made of glass.

(images from my personal copy)

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Solemnly Dinky High-Camp Bleepy: Chiptune Radio’s ‘Undertale’

Chiptune Radio is a remix organization (producer? DJ? group? cottage industry?) that for at least a few years now has been releasing compilations of known music reconfigured on vintage-sounding 8-bit video game synthesizers. No clue as to the intended audience—product lines like Power Music Workout indicate a market of personal trainers and anyone else who would want to sync their favorite songs to workout speed, but if there exists a community of aesthetes who appreciate hearing, say, Madonna songs reimagined as Nintendo soundtracks just for kicks, I’d love to find it. Those who value momentousness, expression, and auteurship won’t consider this music art. Too bad they’ll miss Undertale (8-bit Versions), one of 2016’s best albums.

Chiptune Radio’s Undertale, the remixed soundtrack to the critically acclaimed role-playing video game designed by Toby Fox (one I’ve never played), is deliriously catchy; it tickles your ears and diddles your dopamine receptors. I won’t defend my decision to subject such a transparently faceless piece of product to critical evaluation except to say that all popular music sold on the market is received as product and that anything sold on the market is hence fair game, especially if replayability and use value take precedence over meaning and beauty. Anyway, the record generates plenty of beauty, and the transposition of living, breathing, three-dimensional music into an antiquated form of synthesizer (or more likely a modern, digital approximation thereof) entails artfully unpredictable choices for pitch, texture, and counterpoint strategy. Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, and the Chainsmokers wouldn’t sell records if there weren’t something inherently amusing about computer noises. You needn’t have played arcade games as a child to savor the chiptune synthesizer, which independent artists to this day still play (seek out ComputeHer’s Bliptastic! [2016] for an excellent recent example). Chiptune’s thick, chintzy, modular crunch snaps into place with dissonance in the lower end, as if two adjacent notes are playing at once; the technology’s simplicity reassures. As mere sound, chiptune posits a mechanized robotic future that’s friendly and reliable but not efficient enough for inhuman slickness, inhabiting an aesthetic closer to R2-D2 than an iPad. Whistles and bleeps project a shiny surface that reflects charm.

Pop aesthetes who think continual Top 40 exposure has immunized them to the earworm should listen to video game soundtracks. There’s a science to it, whereby the game’s addictive qualities and the music’s addictive qualities produce a feedback loop and before you know it you’ve been playing for an hour listening to the same tune over and over again. How themes are composed to the contours of gameplay depends on algorithms I’m not privy to, but frequently the music survives out of context; to hear Pokemon Heartgold & Soulsilver’s title screen music or Super Smash Bros. Melee’s “Dreamland” theme, even once, is to sear the music’s every detail onto your amygdala forever. Undertale’s “Megalovania” and “Battle Against a True Hero” exist at this rarefied level of hummability. While I enjoy the game’s original soundtrack album, composed entirely by Toby Fox and played on a greater range of instruments, Fox’s Undertale Soundtrack exhausts in its completism and willingness to include every little ten-second interlude. Chiptune Radio’s version picks and elaborates on select greatest hits in a parsable sequence. Plus, 8-bit synthesizers suit the playful simplicity of Fox’s melodies; two forms of cuteness complement each other. Behold also two forms of escapism: certain songs (“Ruins,” “Snowdin Town”) named after game settings capture feelings evocative of their titles. Often music functions as a travelogue, conjuring pretty vistas reassuring in their respite from daily life and breathtaking in their nonexistence. Video games literalize this tendency, and video game music is explicitly designed for it — imagine a series of interactive digital landscape paintings inspired by Brian Eno’s environmental sketchpieces (“In Dark Trees,” “Fullness of Wind”). Undertale’s “Ruins” and “Snowdin Town” achieve similarly simulatory wonder through childlike lyricism.

Gliding and burbling, ringing and spattering and glitching, that lyricism animates an album whose loveliness and silliness are inextricable. To giggle at the placid pitterpatter of “Snowdin Town,” or the frantic, crackling swagger of “Bonetrousle,” or the nursery-rhyme bells of “Your Best Friend (Flowey’s Theme),” played four times, each time a little slower and lower in pitch, is to feel a twinge in the heart, moments later, at how wonderful it is to have assembled before you so many giggleworthy textures and tunelets in one place. Sequencing matters with a travelogue, and the record moves from alarm to tranquility back to a flashy climax before ending with non-closural melancholy. “Megalovania,” whose solemnly dinky high-camp urgency sums up the record, stacks no less than four distinct hooks in chintzy percussive-synth mode on top of each other to produce an obscenely catchy concoction. Title track “Undertale” loops a set of hushed chimes around a spiraling, contemplative tune and becomes a thing of bent fragility. “Another Medium” twitches around, dodging melodic resolution as high keyboard arpeggios waver in reaction to the chord progression’s nervous shift. “Battle Against a True Hero” goes over the top with a confluence of jittery hooks that recall a sped-up, harmonically plainer bastardization of 19th-century classical kitsch, played on instruments whose textural range includes crunchy, bleepy, glittery, and vaporous. Finally, the pensive “It’s Raining Somewhere Else” soothes the nerves with purring keyboard figures that indeed evoke rainfall. Undertale’s sonic unity is a pleasure; so too is its melodic immediacy. It clicks and lingers in the mind. It coheres into a twisted, friendly, aurally amusing shape.

The cartoon qualities of Chiptune Radio’s Undertale aren’t for everyone — garish sound and obvious tunes can irritate even within the confines of a childlike aesthetic. I find such qualities apt, exactly suited to the album’s particular flavor of escapism. No matter how grotesque the enemy or even the self, video games comfort by constructing an alternate universe where you can win. If the alternate universe happens to be lovely and adorable, the existence of such a potential world also comforts, and musical soundscape works like that too. Undertale’s catchiness and chintziness appear in neither the pumped-up power balladry of commercial EDM nor the atmospheric indulgence of arty indie-electronica. That such wondrous music gushes from such an obscure non-canonical hole in the internet is a joy; it suggests that there’s more music to listen to and more categories to explore than anyone knows. Discard the intentional fallacy and discover so much beauty in the world.

Undertale (8-bit Versions)(2016) and Undertale Soundtrack (2016) are available from Amazon and other online retailers.

The post Solemnly Dinky High-Camp Bleepy: Chiptune Radio’s ‘Undertale’ appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[thesinglesjukebox]

SELF ESTEEM - GIRL CRUSH

[6.56]

No word on whether radio stations are allegedly pulling this from their lineup... yet.

William John: I'm very attached to the music of Slow Club -- mostly because I saw them once in a tiny venue that couldn't have held many more than a hundred people, and witnessed the affinity that existed between members Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor, almost like that of siblings, at such close range. Nonetheless, it's impossible to deny that Taylor has always had a voice that was built to soar beyond the confines of twee, and thus if the dissolution of the band results in her breakout as a solo artist you won't find me lodging a complaint. Taylor's album as Self Esteem, Compliments Please, is more or less the precise midpoint of U.S. Girls and Lily Allen -- it approaches millennial womanhood in a way that's both forthright and playful. An early highlight is "Girl Crush," where a thudding drum and loping strings grow more and more confident as the song progresses, enveloping Taylor as she rebukes the performative queerness that often comes with using the titular expression. Taylor's voice has always been big, but I'm not sure that it's ever hit with as much blunt sincerity as it does here. [8]

Katie Gill: At least it's not as blatantly no-homo as that other "Girl Crush" song. The strings are beautiful, the flute is superb, and the harmonies in the bridge are SUPERB. This has all the makings of an absolute banger. But I just can't fully get behind that minimalist hand-clap beat. There are parts where it works but there are parts, like the outro, where the gorgeous, lush harmonies and instruments are layered over each other that it feels completely out of place, like a relic put in solely to keep the song from sounding too "classical." [7]

Iain Mew: It sounds like Jax Jones/Ina Wrolden's "Breathe" if interpreted by Empress Of, which is an unexpected and great combination, moving fast with rawness and banging determination. That's before adding on the flute and strings, too, which add an extra edge of uneasy conviction. [8]

Katherine St Asaph: When I've liked Slow Club it's been for high drama, and the string loop on "Girl Crush" qualifies: very transplanted-Eurovision-hit, could've been on an Emmelie de Forest track, and thus very great. Rebecca Taylor's voice lends an additional Sophie Ellis Bextor-ish archness I don't hear nearly enough. Shame about those reedy background vocals, though. [7]

Anthony Easton: The vocals in this are perfect, sliding, meeting, cruising and splitting, reinforcing and isolating in equal measure. This might be one of the better metaphors for the liquidity of desire this year -- made better by some weird instrumental choices, including what I think are panpipes. [7]

Vikram Joseph: There's a strange and intoxicating combination of modern alt-pop production and idiosyncratic embellishments (panpipes, dramatic Baroque string flourishes) at work here; it took me several listens to figure out that it reminded me of Wounded Rhymes-era Lykke Li. This is a simmering, serpentine pop song, eschewing easy options at every turn; even the four-chord throb of the chorus ("somebody / toooluvme") feels deliciously unresolved, mirroring the conflicted emotions of the lyrics, in which Rebecca Taylor firmly reminds a potential lover that, as a queer woman, she's not a toy to be played with. The concept is a little reminiscent of Tegan & Sara's "Boyfriend," but where Sara agonised over her partner's intransigence, "Girl Crush" is steelier and deals in different stakes. You don't get the feeling that Taylor is in love here, just that she refuses to be messed around by someone for whom queerness is a fun detour rather than a lived experience. "Experiment in your own time," she warns, "I'm not your tour guide." [8]

Tim de Reuse: A dull, unadorned dembow rhythm spins in circles underneath the bizarre, awkward chant of "SomeboDY / to luv-ME," which mangles its syllables together in a way that repetition does not heal. The final minute, at least, is rescued by a spike in energy that flows in with a swooping, well-utilized string section, some propulsive backing vocals, and lyrics that use fewer slant rhymes. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I'm sorry, but these handclaps never end, and they get on my nerves when placed in a song that doesn't develop into anything. The pan flute sounds like sampled stock music, and it's exacerbated by strings that are as ugly and theatrically forthright as the ones in Clean Bandit's "Rather Be." [3]

Iris Xie: I have no idea what genre this song is, but the last time I heard the same style, it was Through Juniper Vale's "Bird Song." They both have this jaunty, asymmetrical hyper-pop folk song style, with bombastic uses of strings, lots of backup vocals and high-toned lilts, but it comes off as jumpy, hyper, and disorganized and hard to listen to without having to be on their particular tempo. [5]

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