#ju4n

Get Lost In Ju4N’s Beautiful “Loops For MIDI Pt. 1”

Holodeck Records has put some excitement back into the lives of the music hungry. Something for us to look forward to on Fridays once again. For the past few weeks Holodeck Records has been dropping digital singles from some of the most forward-thinking electronic artists working today. This Friday is no different. Austin-based electronic composer JU4N has dropped the gorgeously sublime “Loops…

At this point, when you see a title in any way involved with a word like "vapor", you might just shake your head, laugh, and scroll on. Or maybe the sentiment hasn't been over-done for you yet. Either way, the re-appropriations of the term and ideal has crowded the shores of the internet for some time now and what was once believed to be a passing trend has stuck around longer than a few would have hoped. What is vapor? And what does it have to do with music, anyway?

Vaporware (HD010) by JU4N

Juxtapose to an infinite number of ephemeral genres and taglines (what happened to trillwave?), one may conceive that the "vapor" movement has been more open to interpretation than most others. That is to say that it has been rather difficult to pin down and could possibly exist purely out of listener laziness, myself included, who can't think of anything better to call it. Because lets face, we're all tired of using "experimental" to describe the fuzzy, electrified weirdness that we sometimes just can't explain. But i digress....

Vaporware is the newest cassette from JU4N, a relatively obscure artist who's name i hadn't heard before this release. After sampling the tape online, i was surprised to find that it sounded little like what i was expecting. The sounds are loose, crisp, expressive, and most of all sound little like anything else commonly associated with any kind of "vapor" music. But in the end, thats exactly what it feels like, and in the best way possible.

It's almost as if he's taken it upon himself to reinvent the term and its connotations. The music is for the most part written and samples are used sparsely. There's even moments where it trails off and you could swear it was recorded in maybe just one take, but this adds value to each track. It's believable, conceivable, and laced with all the nostalgia we've come to expect from such electronic visions. Real synths, real drum machines, real tonal structure, all paying homage to synthetics, microchips, and the all-too-elusive virtual world. Another splendid tape from Holodeck who show no signs of letting up the jams.