♫♪  ventla - ultraviolet / somethingness

Japanese bedroom savant ventla is back at it, having released two free new albums in the past week: somethingness and ultraviolet. These are the 24th and 25th installments of a planned 100 that began in July 2011, incrementally advancing ventla’s ongoing “fuck you” to the distractibility of big-mouthed woulda-beens like Sufjan Stevens. Welcome to the bleeding edge of today’s serialized pop, everybody. (“Fuck you” implicit, and dubiously inferred.)

Often associated with vaporware by sheer dint of his fantastic fansubbed last words, ventla has little to do with those sample-wholesale sounds: a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and master of analog home recording, he explores a creative process more akin to an R. Stevie Moore, a Chris Knox, or an Ariel Pink of yore.

ultraviolet is perhaps the more robust offering, but my favorite track of the crop stems from somethingness. Like many of ventla’s songs, “ushihama” borrows its name from one of the suburban train stations in his fair city Tokyo. And indeed, the quaint marimba melody, sunstroked guitar, and low drums sound like an old 16-bit master composing a podunk theme between swigs of Francis Bebey or some other Ghanain homebrew from the 70s.

• ventla: http://ventla.tumblr.com

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

Most Read



Etc.