Things that come to mind 2 - Sweet Trip: velocity : design : comfort (2003)
“Things that come to mind” is a series of blog entries that I will be writing on stream of consciousness. Each of these entries will be given a duration of 24 hours to write and edit.
https://sweettrip.bandcamp.com/album/velocity-design-comfort
Perfect Album Forever.
To be honest, I was put on to Sweet Trip fairly late in the game. I’ve listened to v:d:c before, but not in one continuous sitting, prior to Luke telling me to do so in one go in late 2019. It was until then I realized I had made a big Oopsie as I tried to comprehend what velocity : design : comfort is.
This is what may happen when you listen to velocity : design : comfort. Image co-authored with Wei, April 2020
v:d:c is a “feeling” album. I listen to it when I’m sad. I listen to it when I yearn. I listen to it whenever I’m detached from the world. I listen to it when I’m on cloud nine, and in almost all cases of listening, from start to finish. I guess this is what Roberto Burgos meant by “modular” and “feeling like flipping through channels on television”.1
Thanks Wikipedia.
This thoughtful execution pretty much outdoes itself time and time again upon each time I listen to it once again. Maximalist in its roots, v:d:c is an overwhelming experience that allows one to lose themselves in its flow. I can argue that v:d:c is an exploration of finding ideal comfort within chaos and order. A perfect example of an “image album” which makes me experience abstract forms of somewhat hedonistic indulgence to the purest form of innocent longing. I really apologize for these wishy washy words but it just is an album I adore! If anyone out there is reading this, please listen from start to end if you haven’t already. Feel free to listen as you slowly go through this silly little piece of writing too.
Please let me be a corny little bitch and do a start to end overview of the tracks in v:d:c
Tekka v:d:c begins off with rushed cacophony. Images of static already overwhelming the listener from the start primes the listener to what may come next, and sets the foundation to this album. The phases of static in Tekka are noticeable and distinct, starting up with a kind of ethernet dial-up signal straight towards trying to find any place to connect to. Tekka is kind of like a travelog through many sorts of waves out there, and it is short-circuited to bring us to the next track.
Wet Sheets - Matta (1936).2 An exploration of domestic architectural form. It’s pretty cool how it visualizes a living space, motion, and an eerily prescient iconographic form of sound… all at the same time.
Dsco The poppiest track in the album, Dsco is deceivingly simple in its layering as it starts, which is quite a jump from Tekka. Still maintaining the tone of “upbeat shoegaze” from Tekka, Dsco allows for /cough running away to the comfort. To me, Dsco is kind of confusing in what it is trying to evoke. Does it aim to make you happy? Does it aim for you to wish for something? Honestly, it’s something worth contemplating while being whisked away by the melodic refrain with each time anyone listens to it.
Velocity A lush intermission of percussion welcomes a respite for release of energy from the two tracks prior. A familiar drone that.. if I can crudely put it.. like Aphex Twin - Peek 82454201 meets Beaumont Hannant - Utuba. Whatever this means. I haven’t really figured out the right words for it quite yet.
Fruitcake and Cookies This track wins my 2020 award for “song I have cried most to”, whether on purpose or not. Sweet, unsettling pain, and lyrics that mimic self-affirmations to feel more at ease.
Genius Mode.
A dreamlike image is interrupted by a growl (breakdown, baby) towards another dream to be swallowed in. A low-pass filter is there for reassurance, or instability, through 3+ minutes of vocalized sighing in the style of a ballad. In this space, “ahhhhh” can be a cue to breathe in and out, or a contained method of yelling into the void. What a funny coping mechanism!
Sept Sept is my favorite track on this album. Sept gives us a strange setting with a statement-cum-rhetorical-question. The same five words repeated throughout are quite haunting. An eerie followup after a song about coping mechanisms, the sequencing and the layering in Sept imho, is thee most beautiful in the album. Sept has quite an ‘organic’ feel to it, where it shows itself in the lack of constant ‘signal interference’, which then complicates itself as it mutates through genre. Sept invites you to slow dance in three acts that are dramatic in their respective shifts.
Sept to me feels like a Ricardo Basbaum Me-You Choreography. Basbaum’s work mainly deals with honest and playful exploration of social relations. Sept operates on the same level as these mind maps, linking together the same words with sound, the same loop, with different permutations scattered around. There is no real start nor end, and there is also a sense of grim awareness of constant change. In fact uh maybe the entirety of v:d:c is a Me-You Choreography. Aaaanyway this thought popped into my mind at this moment so I guess Sept really characterizes it.
diagrama (transatravessamento) — Ricardo Basbaum, 2002. 25ª Bienal de São Paulo.3 A waltz.
Pro : Lov : Ad ouh…… shoegaze, drum and bass……..ouh ouhhhhhhhh feels like I’m in that connection tube in the Digimon Movie. or Summer Wars.
Or this iconic moment from Tatami Galaxy (2010). I’ve been wanting to make a comparative reading of v:d:c and Tatami Galaxy for quite a while now, but I honestly do not have the intellect to see this through, out of respect.
Design : I Design : I has the feel of elevator music. You’re waiting to board an airplane. You’re put on hold until a representative is available. Design : I is an intermission of anticipation where a downtempo lounge loop is utilized like a weapon. It’s slightly menacing in how there’s mechanical disturbances (or aides?) in the track, and by this point it’s clear that this album is all about connectivity, signals, and clarity. Design : I marks the shift in this album where everything feels a bit more candid in expression, rather than dwelling in its own confusion.
International The feeling of floating away, bittersweet. Wistful and naked, fading into a tender instrumental with broken vocals. idk what else to say, it’s just so barebones and it hurts in the way it intends to.
Dedicated And you dive further.
Diagram of the Wiesencafé - Ricardo Basbaum, part of KUNSTPUNKTE DÜSSELDORF 2019. 4 Projections of a communication platform.
Chocolate Matter The other pop hit of the album, and an upbeat break from the ‘ambient’ sort of pain-feel heard in International and Dedicated. It’s cool to realize that the album also goes on a journey of its own, asking rhetorical questions and then going through a process of forgiving [your]self. Chocolate Matter takes that familiar swell heard in Fruitcake and Cookies to meet with wanting to change.
To All The Dancers In The World, A Round Form Of Fantasy Cutie song, and it’s clear that the song is based on “a crush and a wish”. There’s a lot going on in this track beyond its stuttering. Like going through a gallery of dreams, and experiencing a crush, there’s a sense of pacing that feels like it cannot be controlled. It swallows you in but cushions you in the same time, allowing for yourself to experience vulnerability.
Design : 2 : 3 A wake-up call, and the track with the least signal interference. Design 2: 3 wonderfully ties a knot to the whole package, echoing similar melodies and instrument choices. Lyrics as bittersweet as International, but are of a final goodbye. It’s rhetorical to what anyone can interpret the noticeable absence of static as.
Anyway, v:d:c is strung together with constant attempts for smooth rhythm through the mimicking of static in its percussion. It can be said that this sort of disconnect (haha) provoked by the use of familiar instruments is what is most powerful about v:d:c. The nuances of ‘overwhelming’ and ‘lush’ is explored much as this album is attempting to find comfort, and making do with all the tools available at the current moment.
Max Lamb, “Exercises in Seating”. Exhibited in Milan, 2015.5 Lamb works with any materials around to make chairs.
Maybe v:d:c is an incarnation of chamber music of the 21st century, intended to be played through weak signals, on bluetooth, streaming, while certain messages or sound artifacts are omitted without intention.6 If I can go all generic review mode: the building in the album art is an apartment structure built in the 60’s, aimed to reimagine what apartment living can be like in the future.7 If this weren’t on the goddamn album cover, it would completely change everything towards an interpretation of v:d:c. At the least, v:d:c is a sketch of what comfort would look like, and how one finds comfort. Each round of listening provokes a different sort of feeling within me, but ultimately resolves in dwelling around the sense of wonder that it projects. Anyway, v:d:c makes me feel like I’m accessing a higher plane to know and play around with what I know and feel, and what comfort is.
[…]if there is a connection to be made between the music and the artwork for VDC, is that maybe there is a theme of consumerism, comfort, and modern living, that sort of glides through the album. VDC also has sort of a recurring theme of convincing someone you love to leave it all behind, fall in love with you, and run away to an ideal world, and that ideal could also be reflected on the ideal of a modern, modular building that is supposed to make lives better.8(emphasis mine)
It’s awfully strange writing this knowing that this album will soon be 20 years old. It honestly doesn’t feel that way. anyway uh v:d:c is a powerful masterpiece, this is only a jumbled and messy fragment of what i can conjure up at the current moment, and i am not doing it enough justice in this writeup.
Tatami Galaxy (2010), Episode 6. A caricature of our dear protagonist’s libido.
Habitat 67 in the wild.9 Built for the 1967 Montreal “World’s Fair”, an event typically held in major cities to display human ingenuity and progress. The structure is modular, and residents are free to modify their dwellings, following the interest of respecting its Canadian National Heritage Building status.
Tatami Galaxy (2010), Ending Credits. The 4.5 tatami mat rooms shift and mutate.
https://rateyourmusic.com/feature/sonemic-interview-sweet-trip/↩︎
https://www.wikiart.org/en/roberto-matta/wet-sheets-1936, erotically charged and disregards dimension. another form of machine fetishism is here to be eventually written about, but i don’t have smooth enough words to link the ideas of static and stutter with that.↩︎
http://revistacarbono.com/artigos/02carbono-entrevista-ricardo-basbaum/attachment/006/↩︎
https://zentrum-fuer-peripherie.org/en/startseite-test/projekte/artists-in-wittenberger-weg/kunstpunkte-september-2019/↩︎
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/t-magazine/design/max-lamb-furniture-design.html, sorry for paywall cuck (i did too, dw). i just wanted to use the image from here. (ﾉ≧ڡ≦)↩︎
https://www.britannica.com/art/chamber-music, Some part of me wants to make this connection but I feel like I’m so terribly wrong. In my defense, v:d:c possesses similar characteristics, re: intimacy and how I feel like it is music for the interior. I’d write more on this but maybe some other time…too.↩︎
ibid., Footnote 1. rly fucking got me yoorning 🤟😔 absolutely d e s t r o y e d.↩︎