30 Door Key - A Warning to the Curious
Released: January 31
This album is so many things all at once for me - lucid, whimsical, hazy, harmonious - and is a rather difficult to pin down in just a few words. I liken it much to a nostalgic dream with these moments spread throughout that just almost break through the haze that the whole album is enveloped in. It takes a lot of notes from a lot of different places as I can hear the definitive influence of classic vaporwavc in the foggy VHS synth tones and seemingly errantly placed samples. But these also quite a bit of odd stuff going on as well in the vein of Aphex Twin or even Autechre with a few genuinely odd rhythms and motifs. “Boscawen-ûn” is one of these positively odd tracks that a whimsical rhythm that feels something like a goofy march that makes really cool use of a squelchy 303-style bass line. It’s just one those tracks that puts a smile on my face for some reason.
But there’s also a bit of unease peppered into the album as well, especially in the just barely half-minute “Essonfance.” A very simple track consisting just a airy horn synth playing out some vaguely sour notes, it finds itself sandwiched between the slightly haunting “Someone at the Top of the Stairs” and the Boards of Canada vibes of “Cosmos Thru The Pond.” Here, as it gets to the midpoint of the album, we get a handle on the level of variety infused throughout the whole runtime. It’s a varied vibe throughout that doesn’t really break from its foggy aesthetic, but it does make me wonder where all of these influences are really coming from and how they are all being cohesively melded together.
Coming to the end, I heard some of my favorite vibes including the lo-fi banger that is “Monolith in Bowler,” I can’t really explain why this one caught my ear so thoroughly but it feels reminiscent of that late 90s/early 2000s out of sequence noir film aesthetic. Maybe akin to watching an early Guy Ritchie film in which you don’t quite know what going on since things seem all jumbled up. The end of the album kind of keeps this vibes to some extent in “Kynna Maer,” at least in the beginning but then it ends on a very cinematic note. It’s a nice little end to the album that fits really well with the late 90’s movie intrigue it suggests in the beginning.
Comments
Post a Comment