Artist: Sweet Trip
Album: Velocity: Design: Comfort
Reviewer: Rem Jensen
Somewhere between the buttery sweet noise-pop ballads of Swirlies and the dense, digital abstractions of Autechre lay “Velocity: Design: Comfort.” the sophomore effort from San Fran cyber-slacker pop duo Sweet Trip. Unbridled by an expectation of predictability, the group found a sound that few have truly blissed out in such originality; an act like Seefeel – and their record Quique from 1993 – were functionally the touchstone group that veered in the direction of such a combination, until the late-90s where acts like Scala and Polykroma began to take note of the concoction of techno and shoegaze, only to meander a bit more into ambient territory rather than take it full hooky pop.
In 2003, however, VDC threw this concept of dipping their toes out the window and into an intimate and frenetic wastebasket that seeped from atop the architectural limits of variegated dumpsters; or rather, they embraced such priorly disparallel genres and fused said blend together in a harmonious conjoined-twin potion of illustrious fuzz and meltingly plotted glitch.
The juxtaposition of the first two tracks, “Tekka” and “Dsco,” jump immediately into this hodgepodge of styles, if not separate from each other here at the start of the record: the former track barraging the listener with splayed out breakbeaty sparkling mishmashes that bring to mind predecessors of this IDM shrapnel sound, like some of the more energetic tracks from Mouse on Mars, or a vision from Jega’s Geometry, which predates VDC by just three years; the latter song snapping us back from chaos and steeping us sugarly into a bath of pert, floaty, catchy-chockful jams, not without that disco (ergo the name of the track) hi-hat backbeat driving the course as the groop’s dream-pop vocals swell around the upbeat, single-begging appeal of just the second song on this 73-minute album.
Yet, the tracks that make that length necessitating the CD’s durational ability are some of the strongest cuts on the album: despite half of these 12 songs being over six minutes, the heavy hitters like “International,” “Sept” and “Velocity” absolutely deserve their runtime, filled to the brim with creative flourishes in the rhythms, tone and progressions that are rarely found as consistent on an album that is trying “new” things. Combining the general languid sprawls of electronic tracks – particularly during the prime CD era – I’m looking at you again, drukqs – with that always sweet under-four-minute-radio-ready hit, would frankly beckon a struggle uphill against the differences in pace and implied generical conventions, yet by virtue of depth and gall, this concept gets annihilatingly smashed out of the park.
One of the lengthier cuts – and a long-time favorite of mine – “Fruitcake and Cookies,” sees itself oscillate in theme between Fennesz-level microglitchiness, mid-career Animal Collective strummed, fragmented pop softness, and a bold, turbulent foray into crayon-etched drill-and-bass balladry, all combining before the track’s true explosion in the second half. At 4:25 we suddenly predate the DIY indiegaze scene by a decade and a half; I hear so much of the future in these next minutes, where the limiter-smashed mixed walls of earwormable psychy-noise from artists like Parannoul, Weatherday or Spirit of the Beehive are captured through an oblique, crystalline fisheye lens, picking up the wicked tracers of the bright, fluttery synthesizers, ascensionous group oohs and ahhs and the wetly chorused mixing of all of these elements, mellifluously pouncing out from the speakers and into an amalgamation much unkin to the music before it – and I’d reckon, most of the music that succeeded it – save for thee Fishmans.
To pivot from the extra, the more subdued cuts on VDC flow like the sun-reflected dripping floe of heated sliding glaciers; smooth, resilient to obtuseness and rich with chilled-out nuance. The most obvious example being another monolith “International”: an exceptionally glitchy, busy, yet completely entrancing stroll down a much-needed relaxing pathway. Behind the sweet, Flaming Lips-esque beginning to the track and the Slowdivean dream-pop westernish twang that ends it, the middle bulk contains Valerie’s philtering vocals syncopating in and out, cut and clicked apart as blippy lackadaisical synths fill the world, all the while the beat behind flashes with IDM downtempo programming, giving sight to a snow-trodden bubblegum meadow, with sweet tulips and stem-fast dandelions that totter gracefully in the fantastical gusts that breeze through the track’s plains of beauty and palatable coziness.
Another terrific, slower breath of fresh air – more in a sense of tempo and assiduousness, rather than compositionally same-y, which this record lacks none of – is the effervescent gazey head nodder “To All The Dancers of the World, A Round Form of Fantasy,” whose swayable lull captures the taste of a hypnotically emblazoned pop cocktail. Its propulsive back half of near-cloying fuzz, swinging from side to side – literally with strong textures panning across the spectrum as the song ends – is not without the warm programmed opulence that occurs in its first half; some parts Stereloab fed through a microsound transmitter, some parts nearly emo in its bittersweet keys, with some tasteful flourishes of drum-break spatters and Casino Versus Japan-quality bitcrushing to boot.
Speaking of programmed drum breaks, this Darla Records behemoth fails not at sketching some wonderfully interesting rhythms, and rather congruent to this record’s ability in balance, both devastate the listener – like on “Dedicated” with its flashcore scattershot goodness – and console the vibe from its hectic moments with gentle yet captivating grooves – like on “Dedicated” again, whose opening and closing moments – relative to the voltaic two-minute middle section of the track – synthesize an alluring atmosphere with still secundum intricate and engaging beats, kept afloat by the rubbery, almost nursery rhyme level vocals here from Valerie.
It’s peculiar, however, because despite my focus on the electronic aspects on VDC, this is still quite an indie record; it’s a reason why this album stands out so much among its – if comparable even exist – contemporaries, because despite the Postal Service-praising indietronica craze in the mid-00s, Sweet Trip here bridged some sort of gap between those shoegaze ambient techno roots of the 90s and the maximum loud, poppy, digitized mastering jobs of the late-10s to now. Although the beats and production scream Warp, and the timbre weeping to be acknowledged by Topshelf, it again falls with incredibly firm alacrity in the middle, not without its impact – at least to this one reviewer.
An overt aspect of this record I’ve yet to mention – and perchance why the record has boatloads of staying power, relistenability-wise and approachability – are the lyrics; complementing the bright and upbeat guitars surrounding it, tracks like “Dsco” are undeniable love songs, charming and uplifting in nature and arguably cordial at times, and other cuts such as the shorter “Chocolate Matter” are downright inspirational in message and cathartically convincing of such a mood, much to be credited its pairing with the sheer Shieldean sonance and fantastic Mascisian use of the tremolo arm that guide one section to another. Looping back to “International,” this track’s gutturally self-destructible phrasing implies a breakup of intercontinental magnitudes – least to thee singer – and my previously defined bright melodic harvest of its instruments gain a much different sensation when coinciding with lyrics that elicit an image much like gnawing through your cheek at the thought of separation, and the apathetic acceptance and crusade of having hope in the presence of an undisputable end result. Simply: electronic + indie + happy + sad + lyrics that don’t feel haphazardly heavy-handed in their elucidation become a mighty combo when done with such intention here on VDC.
The final missing piece of that equation could be the undeniably fun distraction that it is: “Pro: Love: Ad” is pure dance fuel; “Dedicated” scratches all the itches that your brain may have and lets you bask in its fulfilling nature; “Velocity” is a pure illumine, summertime, shirt-over-your-shoulder-no-looking-back soundtrack, and the healthy, bright, prismatic, cartoon-heyday, shimmeringly carefree but cereal-full nostalgia factor hits like a screaming electric turbocharged bulldozer on songs like “Sept,” “International” or “Tekka.”
It’s almost as if this glinting rainbow monolith, somehow casting no penumbra across the glowing, mind-numbing x-y chart of the ground, nor under the static, screensaver wallpaper sky, sits in this perfect little space in our plane, inscrutable in its concept, stymie in its intention, floating in a brutalist bubble, with windows in every direction so that you could see thee ever-never-changing environment from a different direction than the day before. In the face of the bombastic Americanized technocracy, I’d err in the direction of the massive chromatic wall of striped candy chunks, but here’s to times future, able to present themselves as need be, with some needed steroids at standby in the form of the virtuosity-laden, taffy stretched and blindingly glucotoxic project Velocity: Comfort: Design.
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