#66: That’s the sun in my hands, man!
#66: That’s the sun in my hands, man!
Death’s Dynamic Shroud; Mensa Deathsquad; A Lovely Sort of Death; Nuclear Death Wish; Harakiri for the Sky
Death’s Dynamic Shroud
As a genre, vaporwave can be off-putting, because it seems built on labored irony. Just read this description from everyone’s No. 1 source for musical insight, Wikipedia:
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades.
Hmm, ok. But what do you have to say, vaporwave subreddit?
Global capitalism is nearly there. At the end of the world there will only be liquid advertisement and gaseous desire. Sublimated from our bodies, our untethered senses will endlessly ride escalators through pristine artificial environments, more and less than human, drugged-up and drugged down, catalyzed, consuming and consumed by a relentlessly rich economy of sensory information, valued by the pixel. The Virtual Plaza welcomes you, and you will welcome it too.
Here’s a prediction: No I won’t.
While DDS member Tech Honors (mm-hmm) says he thinks “of myself simply as a ‘recording artist,’” not a vaporwave artist, and that “genres are best left for listeners and critics to decide,” Death’s Dynamic Shroud sure walks the walk.
That’s because DDS owes its origins to the Sega Dreamcast game Shenmue, which co-founder James Webster once described as an interactive vaporwave album. While home sick during Christmas break 2013, he created a bunch of songs using only samples from Shenmue then shared them with high school friend Tech Honors. The latter responded with his own vaporwave collection, and thus began deaths dynamic shroud.wmv.
What’s with the .wmv? The trio uses “Death’s Dynamic Shroud” for its main albums and “deaths dynamic shroud.wmv” for mixtapes. If you don’t get it, you need to visit the Virtual Plaza for re-education!
Mensa Deathsquad
From vaporwave to darkwave. The name Mensa Deathsquad conjures an image of brainiac assassins, because Mensa is a club for people with a high IQ, as anyone who’s seen season 10, episode 22 of The Simpsons knows.
Kansas City’s Mensa Deathsquad, a.k.a. Brandon Phillips, hasn’t disclosed his IQ. And if he wanted to join Mensa, he’d have to hoof it to their nearest office just to find out how to take an approved IQ test. (Sounds like a scam.)
As far as the “deathsquad” part of his moniker goes, let’s just say influencers should watch their backs around Phillips. In a hyperbolic cri de coeur that accompanied the release of his 2021 single “Famous,” he explained:
I loathe, detest and revile celebrity influencer culture so thoroughly that I believe it should be garroted to death at the earliest possible time and pushed into an unmarked grave so that its adherents are left no hallowed piece of ground on which to memorialize its ever having existed.
It goes on and on with lines like, “the dark side of personal branding and the culture of celebrity influencers and monetized social capital is literal fascism.”
I mean, I get it. A 30-year-old influencer recently paid more than $3 million for a house on my street, and I kinda wanted to burn down the world too.
A Lovely Sort of Death
A lovely sort of death. Lovely. Sort. Death. LSD. Isn’t the real world good enough for you, love freak?
That last sentence is a direct quote from Roger Corman’s 1967 film The Trip—also known as A Lovely Sort of Death—written by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Dennis Hopper. I’ve never seen it, but IMDB tells me Fonda plays a “disillusioned commercial director” who goes on an acid trip and says things like, “That’s the sun in my hands, man! Oh, it gives off an orange cloud of light that just flows right out over the sea! Wow!” He’s looking at an orange.
In a laconic interview that must have taken minutes to complete, a member of A Lovely Sort of Death says they lifted the name from the film because they “thought it was provocative.” And how would they describe their sound? “Fucking awesome.” OK, guess we’re done here!
Whichever member answered the admittedly uninspired questions cites a trio of influences beyond counter-culture freakout movies: the Jesus Lizard, Shellac, and Fugazi. That’s surprising, because the name A Lovely Sort of Death sounds like a gothy screamo band that tours with AFI.
Nuclear Death Wish
While little biographical information about this San Francisco group is available, nearly all of their shows are on a 55-video YouTube playlist. There you can witness the group’s “harsh improvisation” that tries “to bring on the reality of a Reaganomic Nuclear Apocalypse via live performance.”
So, you know, room-clearing squalls of feedback, noise, and frenetic drumming. A video from January 2020 shows them performing in a venue that has five TVs over the nearby bar as the crowd stays a good 10 to 15 feet away from the band. Pfft, if those bourgeois jagoffs can’t take it, fuck them! Let ’em riot! We can take it! We’re fuckin’ Nuclear Death Wish!
Harakiri for the Sky
Yes, you love black metal, but how about post-black metal? From Austria? With lyrical themes, per Encyclopedia Metallum, of depression, addiction, death, and suicide? Music that’s “maelstrom of self-hate and despair,” according to the press materials? You’re all in, right?
You know where this is going. Song titles like “02:19AM, Psychosis,” “Drown in My Nihilism,” “I, Pallbearer,” “This Life as a Dagger.” Album titles like III:Trauma, Arson, and Aokigahara, named after Japan’s infamous suicide forest. There’s also Mære, named after “a malicious folkloristic entity creeping on sleeping people’s chest during the night and causing breathlessness and anxiety,” according to HFTS’ Bandcamp.
It’s all very heavy, both thematically and musically. But as is often the case with these bands, vocalist and lyricist J.J. comes off as friendly and affable in interviews—even in this one from, uh, Antichrist Magazine, which addresses the origin of the name:
I was thinking of some kind of feeling I get when I listen to post rock songs, by Sigur Rós for example. It’s like running to a cliff and flying. It’s a metaphor, you can interpret it however you want.
Even if I want to interpret it as puppy dogs and rainbows?
POST-SCRIPTS
Album title for free: Liquid Advertisement and Gaseous Desire.
“Kyle, more than $3 million for a house? You must live near mansions!” Nope, it’s 2,400 square feet with four bedrooms and three baths. Welcome to Silver Lake!
I kinda want to get a byline in Antichrist Magazine?
I love this “compliment” from Album_Hunters regarding Mære: “Its [sic] really long, but on a road trip, in the shower, or at home it’s quite beautiful to have in the background.” I’m sure HFTS feels flattered.
Coming soon: I had a lovely chat with Big Scary Indian (highlighted in BNB #33) digging into his caginess about his moniker.