Rapid Fire Reviews: Weirdo Electronica with Angel Electronics, Two Shell and Vylet Pony
ULTRA PARADISE - Angel Electronics
Carousel (An Examination Of The Shadow, 'Creekflow", And Its Life As An Afterthought) - Vylet Pony
Angel Electronics is a new music project from Black Dresses' Ada Rook and collaborator Ash Nerve. Putting the album into genre categories is exceedingly difficult as it blends pop punky refrains and sentiments with layering of screamo vocals and crushing metal guitars. Of course, as you'd expect there's also a thick electronic haze over everything and a vast array of synth leads heard across the record. So yeah, it's a bit of a whirlwind but that chaos is clearly on purpose and it keeps you from ever knowing where the album will go next. One thing I absolutely didn't expect this record to be was cute, but it's insanely cute. Not only are the sentiments here often overwhelmingly lovely but they're also played with an angsty pop-punk sentiment that is pulled off earnestly. Highlights like Party Girl and One Thousand And One Nights are genuinely adorable songs that if played only slightly less chaotic would be the kind of thing we all sent our middle school bfs and gfs. I can say I definitely like the more sentimental side of the record more than the most sonically intense moments it tosses up in between which is a surprise because I've loved Ada appearing on some truly brutal songs in the past few years. Here I just find that the combination of blown-out instrumentation, loud ambient fuzz, and screamed vocals just sucks the actual impact out of each of its individual elements. Still, all things considered, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this strange combination of sounds that feels a lot like a soup of gen-z nostalgia genres funneled through a pretty relentless musical creativity and resulting in something very unique. 6.5/10
lil spirits EP - Two Shell
Two Shell is an anonymous electronica and garage house duo that I first covered last year when some of their singles started to gain traction in the lead-up to their breakout EP Icons. Now they're back in a pretty short time frame with five new songs. This EP is similar in a lot of ways to their last one taking a very tongue-in-cheek approach to electronica with the vocal samples, song titles and silly breakdowns. While I complained on the last project that the deep cuts weren't quite as rough around the edges as my favorite tracks like Pods, these songs are arguably even more polished though this time around I think that's a good thing. That playfulness is occasionally balanced with the slightest hint of seriousness, like the struggle for expression on opening track i m e s s a g e or the first half of mind_flip which is a bit more meditative before a literal switch into a dancier finale. Even though it's only five tracks and I can comfortably say I'm not crazy about the song bluefairy at all, I still found myself enjoying this EP arguably even more than the duo's previous work. The ability they have to make their beats playful while still being pretty hard-hitting is impressive and while I was originally hung up on the rough edges of their style at first, if the sonic playfulness and detailed texturing continue to improve this much, I don't care how polished their next project is. 7/10
Vylet Pony is a name I've heard about a lot in the past few years, I mean I write for Ringtone Magazine come on. But while I had heard projects here and there I never really broke into their musical world which features very consistent releases and according to some of the more dedicated fans, a lot of lore worth digging into. But for the first time with Carousel I saw plenty of people praising the record who weren't just the normal Vylet Pony fans I was used to. It was that praise and the variety of places I heard it coming from that got me interested in checking this album out in particular and I went into it with very little in the way of expectations. One thing I didn't expect was the variety of collaborators and styles I would hear throughout which is on display in the albums opening run. Unfortunately, that opening run features an angsty track that I really don't enjoy, the 6-minute Constellation Cradle. But for review purposes the seemingly random way the song jumps from style to style is informative to exactly what listening to the whole album is like. Brohoof was the song that I saw being cited as a highlight the most and there's a really good reason for that as it's an absolutely infectious dance cut with thick grooves and catchy refrains laced throughout. While the longer songs on the record don't get off to a great start I do think the second one is a drastic improvement. Crush Kill Destroy Swag actually makes its 6 minutes worthwhile exploring both a confident and swagger-filled opening run before getting more sonically reserved with more isolated vocals. It even takes its time to work back up to a proper conclusion for the song I just think it all works well. Not knowing the most about Vylet Pony of anyone in the world I'm going to make a comparison that might not go over well. They seem very much like an explicitly queer and underground version of DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ. With the TV theming, the genreless style, the long wandering dancy songs, and the prolific output the comparison seems appropriate. The only caveat I'll make at least as it concerns this album is that Sabrina feels like a stronger conceptualizer of songs. Both artists seem content on making their ideas last as long as they need to in order to feel finished with them. While that can be taxing in both instances, I at least think Sabrina has a stronger grip on what makes a good song, resulting in less time that feels wasted when one of her albums wraps up. Vylet Pony shows off a ton of potential on this album with infectious dance grooves in the first half and pummeling distortion in the second but there is so much here that feels so inessential in the process. This may be among the best things Vylet Pony has done, but I think they've still got some distance left to cover to catch up with the bests artists in the underground and online dance scenes right now. 6/10
