Heaven Topology - Describer

 Released: August 1

This latest album from Heaven Topology is a sprawling twenty-two track album that covers a lot of different motifs and moods, but all have this unifying charm about them. Something about every track has this vaguely 16-bit video game type of vibe about it that manifests itself in a lot of different ways. You can hear it right off the bat with the first track “Deck Edit.” It has this supremely chill vibe with a laid back rhythm and synth parts that feel just this side of cheesy. I love the way the parts come into play as well, with this echo-y synth coming in about halfway through and given a little jungle to the rest of the track. But there’s a few other tracks on here that I particularly enjoyed even though the whole album is a fun little ride.

 

“Mercury to Tiger and Dragon” was instantly a hit for me due to that lofi cheese machine aesthetic that feels like something you might hear on a bootleg copy of Contra. Squished drums and a constant humming bass give slight start menu type of feeling. “Kundalini Medicaid” carries on with that Sega Genesis kind of aesthetic especially as you hear a distinct power-up sound that interjects itself regularly. There’s also the mostly ambient “Pac-Man Geo” that is comprised of mostly low fidelity string sounds for the first half. There’s a weird part right in the middle where a whole drum part starts up for all of like 30 seconds, suddenly disappears and then takes us back to the strings and reappears right at the end. With all of these in mind, I have to say that what I really appreciated about this album as a whole was the willingness to just be all over the place, unconstrained by trying to keep a specific motif through the whole thing and instead making sure the vibes stay weird and fun. 

It’s overall a wonderfully random album. It tries a bunch of different things with its 16-bit palette and some of them are good, some are okay, and some are just a great vibe. There’s enough here that you’re bound to find at least one track you love and at least one that activates the nostalgia in your brain just right.