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Japanese bedroom savant ventla is back at it, having released two free new albums in the past week: somethingness and ultraviolet. These are the 24th and 25th installments of a planned 100 that began in July 2011, incrementally advancing ventla’s ongoing "fuck you" to the distractibility of big-mouthed woulda-beens like Sufjan Stevens. Welcome to the bleeding edge of today's serialized pop, everybody. ("Fuck you" implicit, and dubiously inferred.)
Often associated with vaporware by sheer dint of his fantastic fansubbed last words, ventla has little to do with those sample-wholesale sounds: a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and master of analog home recording, he explores a creative process more akin to an R. Stevie Moore, a Chris Knox, or an Ariel Pink of yore.
ultraviolet is perhaps the more robust offering, but my favorite track of the crop stems from somethingness. Like many of ventla’s songs, "ushihama" borrows its name from one of the suburban train stations in his fair city Tokyo. And indeed, the quaint marimba melody, sunstroked guitar, and low drums sound like an old 16-bit master composing a podunk theme between swigs of Francis Bebey or some other Ghanain homebrew from the 70s.
Ventla, a one-man recording project from actual Japan (/not future-fetish Japan), has released his fantastic 21st free album (of 100), titled Surely Reliable. Somewhat of an extension of his previous volume, Fansubbed Last Words, this 28-minute episode marks Ventla's self-aware foray into the vaporwave movement. But unlike the sample-screw-release process of the vaporwave everyman, Ventla actually composes and records his own thought leader anthems and executive lounge dance jams, the cassette hiss you hear no DAW preset but every bit the real deal. Free to incorporate influences far beyond the wholesale muzak norm (new jack, chiptune and YMO, to name a few obvious ones on Reliable), Ventlan vaporwave arguably bests the flagging movement's erstwhile heroes in sheer musicality and replay value—though some may posit that his tactics run counter to vaporwave's possibly subversive and demi-academic intent. Whatever; try bumping "ATRAC 4 Swing" and act like you mind.