An album to cure your autumnal anguish
George Clanton, a previously little known underground electronic artist, is changing perspectives on vapourwave by collecting his knowledge from past work to create what he calls a ‘Vapourwave Opera’.
The nights are colder, the days are shorter, and there isn’t much new music being released. Guess what I’m most upset about. As the icy winter chill grows, my mind has gone back to one of my favourite albums of the summer just gone, Slide by George Clanton. Clanton’s been creating for years but mostly under different names. As Mirror Kisses Clanton released chillwave music and as ESPRIT 空想 he released vapourwave. In Slide, Clanton draws from previous work but also from genres such as breakbeat, electronic pop and indie pop.
Now this is not my usual kind of music, but the mosaic of synths, beats, samples, vocals and instrumentation is so intoxicatingly lush I couldn’t help but become addicted. The album opens with ‘Livin’ Loose’. You’re immediately struck by the sound of glassy chimes with the reverb turned right up, it’ll reflect and bounce around the inside of your head in the nicest way possible. A sax then “improvises” over top, followed by reverbed and echoed vocals by Clanton. If heaven exists, this is what you hear as you ascend to the golden gates.
As the song goes on the layers build, including a dance beat and some nice gritty bass synths, and it gains a powerful momentum; something Clanton is really good at. None of the elements in his songs are especially loud or forceful but his skill in layering and mixing means that all the pieces fit perfectly together to create a full sound.
Clanton also demonstrates impressive versatility between the styles of his songs. There’s a selection of more electronic based tracks with stretching synths, low-pitched percussion, catchy loops and swelling choruses. Some tracks are more acoustic using live recordings of drum kits and distorted guitars. Other tracks are ethereal in nature. The track ‘Blast Off’ has falling arpeggios and sweeping strings which work well as a cool down from the previous track ‘Dumb’, which is the roughest on the album.
The tracks ‘Make It Forever’, ‘You Lost Me There’, ‘Encore’, and ‘Walk Slowly’ all have the same chord sequence, two of them share the same BPM and almost identical lyrics. However, all four songs manage to sound either somewhat or entirely different to each other. While this isn’t executed perfectly, and does feel like a bit of a cheat, you do have to give credit where credit is due, because I’ve listened to these same four tracks more times than I’d care to admit and I’m nowhere near sick of them.
As much as I love this album it is lacking in places. Clanton’s lyrics can be interesting and creative but the types of stories he tells don’t venture out of love or heartbreak. Despite my compliments about the album’s diversity I can’t help but want more. I really do feel cheated that four of the songs use the same chord sequence in such an obvious way and while the sounds Clanton is working with are beautiful there is definitely room for expansion.
Regardless I love this album because it carries a bit of 2018’s summer, exactly what I’ve been needing to combat my winter woes.
-4 stars
