I have a little hobby. Once every few weeks, I get some local brew and sit down at my computer to dive into a rabbit hole of music-themed obscura. Up and coming genres and creators, gone and nearly forgotten albums that are microcosms of lost subcommunities, and generally I hipster about and find music that not a lot of people seem to know about, anecdotally speaking.
I've got two examples here and I'd love for anyone to give this dive a try or share whatever you've found in the past. These two examples are one night a few weeks ago where my love for vaporwave evolved mightily into a flourishing collection of artists, and one that I've just recently picked up a lead on that I find highly intriguing considering the upcoming season.
First off, we have something that really really intrigued me. I followed a few recommendation links from Bandcamp and found myself lostening to an old favorite, a collection of his own works released in 2018, Haircuts for Men.
Fantastic album. The artist himself seemed to spring from the Vaporwave community considering the influences on his album art and voice modulation, but the mixing of samples provides a unique take on the genre, which to some has now come to be known as Barber Beats in his honor. No source for that.
Directly from there, I found an artist named Macroblank that was recommended to me. I can't recommend him enough! A true solidification of the Barber Beats genre, and something I can listen to literally any time and get any feeling I'm trying to elicit from it. My favorite by him would be a best-of mix called Plastic Fables.
Macroblank sells some merchandise (sold out before I could get my hands on any) and vinyls over on Aloe City Wrld. Heartbreak Network is the sister label to Aloe City Wrld, and a dual listing with the Japanese language label Dream Channel contained this fantastic gem, the mother lode six feet under the rabbit hole of Barber Beats that brought me to a satisfying conclusion. Let me tell you, at 2 AM this 2020 two-track hit me hard.
The picture is edited, but it's from an 80s makeup advertisement from Japan. Rad!
An honorable mention of the mission is Oblique Occasions, who occasionally collabs with Macroblank. Nice selection of theirs right here.
And that ended my Barber Beats quest. A fantastic group of four albums that really don't get enough love. The language barrier and niche culture of these genres of music hidden behind the meme-ry of Vaporwave leaves these folks in the dust of what their popularity should be.
And here we are, the infancy of my next quest: early synth music. Anyone who listens to 70s synth music knows Mort Garson and his signature style of Moog sounds, but not as many know of his action alongside (or under the pseudonym, couldn't confirm) Ataraxia. Ataraxia released this album in 1975 known as The Unexplained, an exploration of the aural sensations representative of occult rituals such as tarot and seance. The seminal track of this album, in my opinion, is Deja Vu.
I can't get enough of this track. I'm definitely using this and some others from this album in my next tabletop game.
That is all I've got for this one.