Review Summary: A look into the future through the lens of the past.
The 2010’s have been an interesting decade in music. Countless intriguing trends have risen up, and many because of the power of the internet - namely vaporwave. Vaporwave is an enigmatic trend spawning from the extremes of post-irony and supposed anti-capitalism. What vaporwave has all too often done, however, is attract lazy, uninteresting bandwagon riders.
Disconscious is one of the few to break the trend and create a truly interesting and totally original work. By taking the plunderphonic focus of many prior vaporwave releases and breaking it down to its core, Hologram Plaza provides a mesmerizing experience. It is the ultimate critique of the ADHD generation. It’s the smoothness and nostalgia of vaporwave but without the glitchy, chopped and screwed approach - it’s more like elevator music than anything. Disconscious almost single-handedly created what people call “mallsoft”, but it never took off. And that may be for the better.
That fact that no one else has been able to create a release quite like Hologram Plaza makes it just that much more interesting. While it certainly contains the elements common of vaporwave and utilizes various styles of it, Hologram Plaza simply has an atmosphere not captured by anyone else. It is not meant to be listened to directly. Disconscious purposefully creates sounds and atmosphere to replicate the illusion of background music in a mall, and you’ll later find yourself involuntarily humming and tapping your foot to multiple tracks from this album.
The wide reverb makes the listener feel completely content in a virtual shopping center, and it’s through this atmosphere that Disconscious critiques this generation - a generation made up of the shells of human beings with their souls sucked out through extreme materialism and consumerism. The art of sound is stripped down to an ambience made for one purpose, and Disconscious hits the nail perfectly on the head, making you bob your head without even knowing exactly what you're listening to. Yet it is irresistible and familiar.
Other times there are only vague remnants of anything keeping a beat. On tracks such as Lunar Food Court, Shopping Delirium and Midnight Specimen, Disconscious takes advantage of the echoey production to envelop the listener in a strangely comforting blanket of reverb. It’s perfect music for mindlessly surfing the web or passing time, but it’s still interesting to pay attention to. One of my favorite tracks, Fountain Plaza, is full of keyboards and delay that can suck the listener in. The thumping beats and wobbly basslines on Enter Through The Lobby and Endless Escalation have a nostalgic effect. So while mindlessness is at the core of the album, that doesn’t mean the samples aren't interesting.
Hologram Plaza is a landmark release in this explosion of internet-perpetuated music at the turn of the decade. Disconscious successfully takes plunderphonics in a totally different and creative direction. It’s catchy, it’s nostalgic, it's everything dangerously comfortable to us, and in a way it's poignant in its focus. Consumerism is consuming us.
