Quick album reviews 2016*

骨架的 - Holograms
If Chuck Person’s Eccojams established the idea of vaporwave as a genre, Holograms solidified it. Cheesy and severely dated music from the 70’s and 80’s is transformed (by basic looping and slowing down alone) into a sterile soundscape reminiscent of the internet, along with some original sound design, creating an uncanny valley feeling. While not a “perfect” album (some tracks are less interesting) it has several stretches of tracks that flow into each other perfectly, and several moments of perfection in those individual tracks. My favourite vaporwave album.
10/10 (Best tracks: breeze; skin glow; tones)

骨架的- Reflections
Some more moments of near-perfection, but with less of a flow when heard in sequence. It’s better to listen to these tracks individually than one after another. The best tracks are also at the beginning of the album rather than being spread out over its run time.
8/10 (Best tracks: music; homeless; long ride)

The Brave Little Abacus - Just got back from the discomfort, we’re alright
Progressive emo rock exists, and pretty good. The vocalist lisps and screeches half the time without dampening the effect of the music; if anything he enhances it. (He also acknowledges that he hates the way he talks towards the end of the album.) The first half of the album in particular is phenomenal, with inventive arrangements and song structures, and moments that never fail to hit my heart. This style carries on through the rest of the album, but it never quite elevates itself back up to those golden first 25 minutes.
9/10 (Best tracks: Please don’t cry, they stopped hours ago; pile! no pile! pile! pile!; the blah blah blahs)

João Gilberto - Chega de Saudade
This album has been very important for me throughout the past year or so, since it not only confirmed my love for Brazilian music but it also inspired me to start singing and playing guitar myself. (I’d never had the confidence to do that before.) It is also a collection of lovely little songs that could easily go on for twice as long; if anything each song is just a bit too short. As with other high-rated albums on this list, the best tracks are at the beginning, but that’s far from a problem when they could easily be heard in any order.
9/10 (Best tracks: Chega de Saudade; Saudade Fez um Samba; E Luxo So)

João Gilberto - João Gilberto (1973)
Unlike some eponymously-titled albums, this title is exactly right. You get just Gilberto by himself: guitar, voice and some very sparse percussion played by someone else. However, this is no setback as his talents at both are more than enough to sustain the listener’s attention. This stripped-back approach makes the best track on the album, Izaura, seem almost otherworldly when we finally hear another human voice join his (and a female one too!) at the end. But it does slightly diminish how much some of the other tracks can be enjoyed, regardless of how well-written they may be as songs in their own right.
7/10 (Best tracks: Izaura; Avarandado; Undiu)

Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Apparently it’s the first post-rock album. I don’t actually listen to post-rock much so that has little meaning to me, but I can testify to the quality of this music. It’s basically instrumental rock, with some influences from classic prog and minimalism. But that brief description doesn’t really live up to what this music really is. Djed in particular is an excellent series of variations which get continually more abstracted from the original idea until it’s practically electronic music by the end and no longer a rock band. Even that description doesn’t live up to what the music is; listen to it instead.
8/10 (Best tracks: Djed; A Survey; Glass Museum)

░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░ - ▣世界から解放され▣
The logical conclusion of vaporwave? Maybe. Especially for the early vaporwave sound. The loops deliberately don’t ‘loop’ properly, so the music sounds like an actual broken record or a glitched-out computer. This, for me at least, creates a very unnerving dissociation effect. For example: whenever I get very drunk and go to sleep and dream, I hear snippets of songs and conversation I just had which repeat incessantly. The music here sounds very similar to that psychological phenomenon, if I had perhaps been watching nothing but old Japanese TV adverts when drinking.
8/10 (Best tracks: ➜A NEW TIME IS IN YOUR HANDS「それを実現させる！」; プロミセス「▣世界から解放され▣」; ✭✰✭PRIMETIME今日のプログラミングLATENIGHT✭✰✭)

Joanna Newsom - Divers
Newsom is an artist who I respect greatly, but don’t listen to nearly as often as I should. Her music is beautiful but meandering, and it often takes a few listens for the music to ‘click’ with me. Therefore, patience with her music reaps great rewards. In fact, this is the only rating I’ll give that I believe is likely to change. I should probably listen to it again. Anyway, this album has more elaborate arrangements than the previous music of hers that I’ve heard, but it’s still centred around her usual vocal pyrotechnics. And yes, there are moments of true beauty too.
7/10 (Best tracks: Anecdotes; Time, as a Symptom)

death’s dynamic shroud.wmv - I’ll Try Living Like This
As one of the highest-rated new vaporwave albums, does it really live up to the hype? Yes and no. Make no mistake, some of the tracks on offer are very good indeed, but it’s inconsistent with its quality. It’s also possibly the hardest album on this list to listen to. When the ideas behind this music come together, they do so brilliantly. But despite this, the majority of the tracks go on for a bit too long without have done much to catch the listener’s interest in the first place. This album does, however, have the best cover art out of all those on this list. I liked dds’s next album, CLASSROOM SEXXTAPE, better.
6/10 (Best tracks: Loving Is Easy; 너 땜에 맘이 맘이 맘이 맘이 괴로워요)

*(2016 being the year I first listened to them, not the release date. Also, these aren't the only albums I listened to last year, they're just the ones that I wanted to write about.)