vertigo - Eden (2018)

Recommended by my excellent first-born (and heir to my lands and titles), Dylan

I kind of love it when I hear something that not only has never popped up in any of my suggestions, but also all of its related artists and suggestions are stuff I’ve never heard of. There’s lots of music I don’t know, obviously, but when I find something so completely new to me, it’s exhilarating.

I suppose I’d call it pop music, although there’s a lot of live instrumentation (especially guitar) that you don’t hear all the time in pop music, but plenty of electronics and studio frippery as well. The lyrics are thoughtful and mature and a little melancholy. The wikipedia page lists just the one guy in the credits (his name is Jonathan Ng), crediting him with “guitar, lyrics, drums, vocals, piano, sound design, production, mixing, mastering, engineering, programming, string arrangement.” That’s pretty amazing.

This is an amazing era for music, because someone who has a clear plan for what they want to do (like this guy, obviously) has almost no barriers to building the sound as they hear it in their head. Sometimes people make a mistake with this argument and it comes off sounding like “anyone can do this.” That’s definitely not true; the level of talent in songwriting, playing, singing, and production obviously doesn’t come in the box with the software. But artists like this that can put a unique vision into the world with studio-level quality (and without major label money and equipment) weren’t possible even 15 years ago.

Tracks I liked

start // end - my favorite kind of icy, electronic pop, like James Blake or Chet Faker.

icarus - moody and soulful with a nice build-up

float - a little glitchier and bubblier than the other tracks.