Videofashion presents: Channel Surfing

All the daytime and late night tv nostalgia from the 80s and 90s brought to you on VHS by Pepsi. 

A  V A P O R W A V E extravaganza.

Tonetta - Hitler

[2011?]

Everybody's favourite dodgy cross dressing Leonard Cohen meets Suicide jam. 

骨架的 - microwave

[2010]

When the cosmic ambient end of hypnagogia became vaporwave. If someone said this was a lost track from peak Oneohtrix Point Never from 15 years ago you'd believe them. The exhilarating shapeshifting sound design here is random and disorienting.

unknown caller + tesseractive(TV) Live @ LATE NIGHT LIGHTS II

[2022]

Plunderphonic sound and vision. This warped  hazy nostalgia of the 1980s in the 2020s is vaporwave to infinity. If you love surfing videos, garish and smeared neon synthwave video graphics, slow-mo 80s funk and stretched early 90s smooth jazz saxophones then this is for you. Degraded and deformed VHS psychedelia. 

Stand By - Videofashion

[2018]

A vaporwave video masterpiece. 

VHS memories.

Pop art.

氷床 Earth - 暗い自然 [Dark Nature]

[2016]

One of the best ambient albums from the last ten years. I guess 暗い自然 [Dark Nature] come at ambient from a vaporwave angle but there are sequences here that could have come straight out of the 90s Isolationism era of dark ambient. The recontextualised source material is chopped and slopped, slowed down, put through a hypnagogic echo chamber and into a fog machine creating superior dark ambience and sonic decay. Amongst the cold and murky terrain an eerie and sombre mood descends. 

Hank & Slim - The World Turned Gingham

[2000]

One of the great post-industrial dark ambient albums. This gets chucked into all sorts of categories now like ambient Americana and hauntology. Anyway this was an inspired collaboration between Zoviet France's Robin Storey and Nigel Ayers from Nocturnal Emissions, I mean that's industrial-ambient royalty innit. You've gotta think that this was probably influential on the likes of Moon Wiring Club, The Focus Group and IX-Tab.

The World Turned Gingham's got the lot it's pretty surreal, psychedelic and quite intense. Not really all that ambient in the "sonic wallpaper" sense as these sound collages have disorienting moments and jarring passages. It gets pretty eerie with all the disembodied voices and chopped and slopped slow motion backwards swarms of sound. There's all sorts of haunting reverberations, mysterious echoes, distant whistles, occult vibes, hallucinatory American radio transmissions, back-masked ghosts in the machines, hazy hypnotic loops, lonesome nocturnal atmospheres even an eldritch death ballad. 

Psychedelic musique concrète of the strangest kind. Far out. 

Starry Eyes · The Records

1979 baby!

 It's power-pop time.

Words are very unnecessary as the immediacy of Starry Eyes has sudden impact. 

This slice of youthful romantic pop rock is perfection. Everything is in the right place: Hooks, guitars, drums and bass all delivered with the right amount of insistent energy. A vibe in sound that is so idealised in my brain that it's the apex where my heart should always belong. 

It's a bit funny though as maybe my delusional nostalgia is hacking my mind because the song is actually a lot more cynical than the innocent boy meets girl bittersweet break-up feelings that this tune initially suggests. You can have your sacking the shonky band manger scenario, I'm sticking with the defiant exuberance of someone moving on because fish, sea and zesty temerity. 

Dracula - Christine Pilzer

[1966]

Back in the 90s kitschy Euro garage/psych/fuzz pop and easy-lounge gear from the 60s and 70s was all the rage and this was one of the great discoveries featured on a foxy ladies of French pop compilation. 

Groove-a-delic cinematic horns and fuzz with sultry french lady vocals put through some foggy echo chamber for a bit of fun horror pop.  

 

[2024]

60 years later: Another song called Dracula with a groove-a-delic beat with all sorts of wah-wah and fuzz reverbed to the max. This one's sung by a man dressed as a foxy lady with guitars, synths and vocals all put through a wonky hypnagogic echo chamber.  

Cosmic Neighbourhood - Tomte's Dream

Tomte's Dream - Cosmic Neighbourhood [2015]

Deliriously psychedelic like you dropped acid watching a kids show on the telly while an old 78 is stuck  on the gramophone. 

Gone Fishing - Cosmic Neighbourhood [2015]

On acid again while an old ice ream van is drowning joyously in a boggy and froggy pond.

Two Faces - Cosmic Neighbourhood [2015]

That mysterious swirling sound that's mildly euphoric in a daydeam-y kinda way. 

Owl - Cosmic Neighbourhood [2015]

A glistening dreamy carousal from the corner of your mind enters the kitchen. You probably need to be off your head to enjoy these tunes because they're probably way too annoying for a straight mind.