What better way to inaugurate the first post-apocalyptic year than a brand new track from Vektroid, the shadowy, sphinxlike entity behind New Dreams Ltd. (responsible for numbers 29 and 6 on our Favorite Albums of 2012 as 情報デスクVIRTUAL and Macintosh Plus)? Vektroid didn’t invent vaporwave, but Vektroid perfected vaporwave; and having done so, Vektroid is now pointing the way towards one of many possible afterlives for vaporwave. “Enemy” is a 10-minute slow jam that takes vapor techniques to a new and unmistakably advanced level, producing an epic, atmospheric data dream that visualizes an intensive paranoid fantasy of blissful corporate mind control.
Even as it settles into a gentle, infectious groove, “Enemy” reminds us that our dreams and desires are not our own. They are alien, predicated on the control, redirection, and delimitation of informational streams, flows of capital, and allocation of resources by vast corporate-government entities that are opaque in their machinations. Even our reflexes have been entrained by video games that double as war simulations, produced by private corporations in tandem with an all-encompassing military-entertainment complex. “Enemy” reproduces those machines of control on a fetishistic wavelength, all gleaming surfaces and crystal clear tones, beckoning us toward an uncertain future defined not by dissent and revolution, but by mastery of the simulation.
• Vektroid: http://vektroid.tumblr.com
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