Even the most enigmatic artist will stand out amid all the noise if they’re great. Perhaps mystique will lend them even more greatness. RAVEN, an alias associated with VAGUETRACKS, is one of these. (Or is it multiple artists? It’s hard to tell.)
From what I know of the VAGUETRACKS discography, their latest release is some anomaly. USER ILLUSION 2 features 10 solo piano performances of famous classical pieces, from the first movement of Vivaldi’s “Winter” concerto to Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess” to the more modern “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” by Ryuichi Sakomoto. These are not precise and crisp Deutsche Grammophon recordings, and that is part of their joy. They are human. But they are not just that either; they are also clearly produced by someone with an ear for the wide possibility of modern music.
The pieces on CODEX—released at the end of June but produced over several years—would not be performed at Davies Symphony Hall. If presented publicly at all, they would come through a massive soundsystem at some late night rave hosted in a dark basement of somebody’s house, the address you would only know via DM. Most likely of all, you would never stumble upon these sounds in person, but rather encounter them at that same late night hour while scouring Bandcamp on your headphones. At midnight, you had been listening to upbeat club music, which had led you to dub techno, which had for a moment led you to some strange hypnagogic vaporwave corner before somehow—you will never remember exactly—laying you at the doorstep of this devotional, deeply dubby, irresistible dance music for the brain.
BIRDLAND—released in May—is different still. It starts off like that hypnagogic vaporwave just mentioned, but halfway through side A you would be rudely awakened by something funky, which would then devolve into juke. USER ILLUSION 1—from the end of 2021—is solo piano like its sequel, but seems to be original compositions.
What is this music? Who is this artist or group of artists? Definitions be damned. Absolute truth is an illusion. They’re SF-based, and they sound incredible. All I need.
