200% Electronica - Espirit空想 (2017)

Probably technically chillwave, but I don’t have a tag for that yet and I’m not gonna go down that rabbithole.

This guy’s name is George Clanton (his actual name; not some Bob Vylan / Chet Faker pun). He’s done a lot of this kind of low-key listening music. He sets himself apart from the more amateurish DIY beat-makers by having a lot more compositional vision.

The vaporwave aesthetic is that nothing is out of bounds. While this is often campy or played for lolz, Clanton has a lot more sense of design and curation than some of his contemporaries.

There’s an endless churn of new sounds and patterns that show up seemingly out of nowhere. Why not put a guitar solo here? Is that a vintage ARP synth? It makes the tracks a little disjointed in places, but always interesting.