I believe I first became aware of VNR through their “Evolving Compilation” (which I wrote about here). At the time, that comp had 8 songs, but the promise was that more would be added throughout 2020. Well, promise kept; they ended up with 67 tracks. Amazing.
Based on what I heard initially on “Evolving…” I subscribed to VNR (you should too…it’s really, really inexpensive. Like, rifle your pockets for spare change inexpensive.). Since that time, very frequently, new things get automatically added to my Bandcamp collection. There’s been so much interesting music pouring in that I felt I needed to give a little shout out to the label by mentioning a few recent releases.
First up is the stellar “2099” by marth daul. This mini album is spacey; sometimes musically but definitely thematically. Several of the tracks are named after specific “space things” (sorry for the technical scientific jargon). Maybe I should clarify they are deep space things like nebula and gas clouds. There are three songs named after these entities, and three titled “light years” tracks the seem to correspond with the approximate distance each is from earth. For example, the track “900 light years” leans up against “IC 2118,” which happens to be a nebula about 900 light years from earth.
Okay nerds, science lesson is over. The music here is a sublime trip through that deep space. Sometimes it’s ambient with pretty piano, sometimes it edges into noise territory, and sometimes it’s beat driven. A few times the music and production reminded me of FlyLo. The thing is, it’s all constantly shifting music as we move deeper into space. My only complaint: not enough. However, that can be remedied by exploring more of marth daul’s music here.
And since we’re speaking of space, the opening track “is it real (bookend 1)” on “haven’t” by Beckton Alps2 reminded me of HAL 9000 from the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” being shut down. This track has two overlapping slo-mo and distorted voices mixed with electronic sounds that sound like a malfunctioning artificial intelligence.
Many of the tracks also have somewhat odd elements – choppy sounds, unusual rhythms, distorted electronics. It often sounds like the machines being used are working but are not quite functioning correctly. A couple tracks even start as one thing (like the foreboding drones of “pointlessness”), and then turn into something completely different (in this case, a bit of a pop melody). It’s really a fascinating mix.
As I listened to the final track “when you tfw irl (bookend 2),” which sounds like a backwards variation of that opening salvo, I had my “eureka” moment: It’s not the machine that’s not quite right in all these songs, it’s the brain. It turns out the album subtitle of “meditations on sources of madness” was a hint.
Apropos of nothing, I have to give a shout out to the song “autobiography’ which is an honest-to-God electronic waltz. It just makes me happy thinking of two robots dancing to this song. On Twitter, Beckton Alps2 says: “I make terrible and incredible music.” I don’t know about that, but all of “haven’t” is certainly at the incredible end of the scale.
Last but not least is the beats and noise based “Phlegm_tape_01” by Phlegmulated. Of the three releases discussed here, this leans a little more toward the aggressive noise side. With that said, there’s lots of other great elements mixed in so the pure noise elements tend to be embellishments. For example, “Redemption LostDub” is a tangle between some distorted noise and lilting, dubby electronic organ. And I love the song “Pink,” with its industrial beats, skewed electronics and noise; at times it reminded me of early Test Dept. And that’s it…oh, wait, I can’t help myself, so one more: “SilkRoadDreadPirate” has some very slow rhythms with some moments of exotica down in the mix. Overall, yet another really cool VNR EP.