I get so caught up thinking of music in terms of how it might appear visually, how it might taste, or even how it might feel that I rarely associate scent with sound. It probably has something to do with the fact I can’t smell much of anything for a quarter of the year, but regardless, it’s woefully neglected on part. Thankfully, with the thaw from an Ohio winter comes fresh scents and all sorts of fragrances for new music. Prolific vapor artist EIGHTXNIGHTS comes on that precipice with a new project for PLUS100 Records, and it has me mediating on some aromas.
Origami Girl has the vibe of classic mallsoft, the sort of mild, reverb-y ambient vaporwave that would be at home in a plastic garden or a Sapporo perfume shop. “Lotus Flowers” doesn’t overwhelm me with the gratuitous reverb or haze though. It’s a simple fragrance, but no less pervasive, like moist rhododendron petals, sitting on perfectly burnished granite. It’s a sublime, self-contained atmosphere, scented by powders of a vaguely disorienting sort. This is the kind of vapor I partake in, just the right sort for the approach of spring, in all its perfumed auspices.
PLUS100 Records releases Lotus Flowers in full TONIGHT. Catch a whiff of the title track beforehand.