#011

Seriously, are there any more artists that I’ll happen randomly upon who have been heavily influenced by the fucking Beach Boys? I get it— I know I should listen to Pet Sounds eventually. I’ve tried before and it just wasn’t my thing but now it’s beginning to feel like I’ve missed required reading.

“Fantasma” is great, and my in-earnest introduction to Shibuya-kei, a genre that I feel I may have passed in the night since my first brush with Jet Set Radio. I enjoy a good sonic journey every now and then, and it’s nice to know that’s exactly what this album was intended to be. Despite being thrown off by how it seems to burst into turntablism-inspired sprints, I enjoy how dense and filled with variety this entire album truly is. As the crow flies, I’ll probably find myself relistening to the more rock-skewed tracks despite being a huge fan of turntablism and sample-heavy hip-hop. Tracks like “Chapter 8,” “Free Fall,” and “Thank You For The Music” feel like these shots of summery happiness that I’ve been needing lately. Looking at it as one cohesive project, however, the painfully-90’s blender-bomb full of samples that are “Magoo Opening,” “Mic Check” and, (the remastered version exclusive,) “Taylor” serve as proof that it can be way more than a shiny, oddball rock album.

I think I sort of buried the lede on the “listening to the remaster as my first experience” thing. Anyone who’s known me for a decent amount of time knows that I fucking hate Spotify. I will also never stop using it. At the age of ~15 I started using Spotify in its nascent, charming, and kind of shitty state. I’ve been using it consistently for nearly a decade. In 2020 I hit the limit for liked songs and had to spend about an hour making a playlist to preserve them all so I could save more. Only for the limit to be raised two weeks later. To stop using Spotify now and track down all of the music that I listened to separate of it, however, would be such a pain in the ass that I just can’t see myself surviving. The convenience is one of the few concessions I’m willing to make as a broke 20-something in an increasingly consumer-unfriendly tech landscape.

I would LOVE to be one of those people who pirates everything and sticks it on a 1TB flac player. I wouldn’t like to be as obnoxious as those people, but it would undeniably be a quality of life upgrade.

This is all to say that the remastered version of “Fantasma” is the only surviving version on Spotify. I usually like to listen to the most untouched version of an album that I can, but Spotify has made this harder and harder, and most people probably just don’t care if they’re listening to a remaster. That bothers me personally, but c’est la vie. I think the remaster issue tracks are actually all pretty damn good, but make the album feel just slightly too long. Feels almost appropriate that “2010” speaks of a “broken down music machine.” Think I'm going to be listening to this one again in the coming months, when the weather gets warmer.

favorite tracks: mic check, star fruits surf rider, chapter 8 "seashore and horizon," thank you for the music