Thumbing through loose Gamecube discs in their blank, yellow sleeves, the walls of now-defunct Game City 360 bore down on my child-self as if I were incubating inside a giant, green tennis ball slightly more verdant than your average Wilson or Penn 100.
It’s a very specific shade that dominates moon mask’s visual style: a phosphorescent happy medium between a Livestrong bracelet and the sort of blue you might find on a public park’s picnic table, perhaps whitened up to a brighter tint. Like his music, this retro “Xbox Green” oozes artificial vitality — too vibrant to feel real and too intense to be completely consumed in a single glance or listen. Consider the full moon mask experience an audiovisual equivalent to one of the brutishly-named energy drinks that saturated the beverage market around the same time Microsoft launched their first game console.
Though the Filipino-based producer may don the hues of past X Games and reflective tape, beneath his lime exterior is a pink and purple new-wave soul. Eschewing some of the Gothic gloom of fellow 80s revivalists like Wild Nothing and Craft Spells, moon mask’s latest single, “twenty minutes, dream runner”, looks more to the decade’s one-hit wonders (A-Ha, Thompson Twins) for inspiration than its more esteemed innovators. The tune blossoms with grainy synths that burst with chords so fragrant you can almost smell them, ripe enough to be tilled by clanking, reverb-laden drum machines. Bring the soft flesh of peaches/oranges/bananas to your face and breathe in. Zeon Gomez turns Boy George vocal somersaults in perfumed clouds. You savor the moment, bracing for the finish line.
20 minutes better run baby ah,
20 minutes left before they take you away
20 mins in a world crumbling ah,
20 mins til it all fades into gray