#005

Okay. Keeping myself honest— I’m phoning it in here. But I spent most of today learning some new stuff in Premiere and making something fun for my friends. Cut me some slack!

Like every other renaissance of 20-year-cycle nostalgia, the Y2k wave will eventually become hackneyed. It will see imitators that fail to understand what makes it appealing, and grate on us all as it is eventually ground to a paste that vaguely resembles what it once was. But right now I still see creative people doing really incredible shit with the style that I grew up with and still really, really adore. It’s bubble-shaped. It’s airy. It’s hyper-futuristic. It’s fun. It feels validating in its own strange way. And most importantly, it’s cloyingly optimistic for the future, which is both wryly funny given how things have turned out so far, and something I feel myself gripping, white knuckled as things continue to be extremely uncertain.

I heard “memoryland” for the first time last year and fell in love. (In fact, don't be too surprised if you see a blurb or two pop up for single songs off of it!) It really does feel like a huge achievement in this “neo-Y2k” space a lot of people have been quietly building in the last 5 or so years; a real laser guided understanding of its trappings. I’ve listened to some of the hits off of it a lot since then as well. And then I listened to the entire album front to back about seven times last week. It really is that good.

“memoryland enhanced” is fun. I don’t love every remix on it, but I do love hearing all of these tracks getting poked and prodded. The one that truly bums me out is the GRRL remix of “Night/Day/Work/Home,” a song I think is truly just about perfect, which is likely why I just can’t bring myself to listen to it after the two times I have. But seeing “Punksong” change to “Indiesong” and hearing new takes on my favorites is an opportunity I’ll take.

favorite tracks: self service 1999 (instupendo remix), heaven (dj lostboi edit), after the after (bodysync remix)