Album Review : 猫 シ Corp. - Luxury Girls (2017)
Although it had receded from the cultural discourse in recent years, vaporwave music and the underground subculture it created have been quietly thriving in the margins. There’s a clear reason for that. It’s the most honest nostalgia-driven art form. Because it isn't preoccupied with how fun and carefree the past was, but it is rather interested mapping an even more fun and carefree past based on your own memories of it. That is what's so much fun about vaporwave. It makes you nostalgic for stuff that didn't happen.
猫 シ Corp.'s new album Luxury Girls is a nineteen minutes masterclass in the luscious eighties you think you remember.
Now, like most 猫 シ Corp. and vaporwave in general, Luxury Girls isn't about individual songs as it is about sound and the mood it cultivates. The opener PALMS&PERSIANS makes a thunderous statement on that topic, starting with an interview sample with a model who claims she's required to climb coconut trees for photoshoots before transitioning into a booming, overblown synthline and 猫 シ Corp.'s trademark reverb-drenched percussion that feel like an auditory hallucination.
The music is lurid and repetitive, but it is played at such an aggressive speed and volume, it fills you up. It makes it difficult to think. That’s why I find mallsoft and Mr. 猫 シ Corp. himself Jornt Elzinga so good at enringeering this carefree, nostalgic feeling. His music is trapping you in the moment. It gives you two choices. You either have fun or cease to exist until the song is over. This crushing positivity is both sardonic and by design, which makes it satisfying on a visceral and cerebral level.
Long-time fans of 猫 シ Corp. like myself will find recurring ideas from other albums such as the anachronistic popping bass on the follow-up LIP&LASHES or the aggressive, punishing repetition like on CASH&CARS (a ridiculously long song by the album standards at 2:41). It's the creative context that changes the signification of his musical choices. In this case, the music is meant to emulate the deafening soundtrack of a fashion runway. You’re trapped out of your head, looking at beautiful girls walking in and out.
In contrast, the song JAGS&JETS slowly fades in to provide a funky, dreamy melody that makes absolutely zero sense without the suggested visual support, but that’s exactly the point of Luxury Girls. In puts you in charge of providing that visual support. Jornt Elzinga’s asking you what do YOUR luxury girls look like. What are you dreaming about when you dream of success and luxury? It’s heavily conceptual music, so you have to be alright with the program to enjoy, but the inherent co-creation exercise is real here.
The deeper you get into Luxury Girls, the more sultry and lurid the soundtrack gets, like it is taking you into an eternal party evening aboard a rich man’s yacht. On PINK&PEARLS, the booming basslines and melodies start receding to leave place to slower, dreamlike synth melodies. FRUITS&FEATHERS is another tempo slower meant to relax your mood without leaving you the privilege to access your own thoughts still. It just triggers a greater numbness with its high notes lingering around you like jacuzzi bubbles.
TEAL&TONIC starts with a sample of someone opening a can and pouring a drink, which is a perfect encapsulation of that late night drunken haze you’re supposed to feel at the moment. The melody is simple and friendly enough for you to dance to. The final number NIGHTS&NIKON, one of the two collaborations with waterfront dining on Luxury Girls, is the only ballad on the record and to my knowledge the only 猫 シ Corp. ballade I know, which is a fitting way to send you off into oblivion.
A quick words about the interludes on the record, which I think are important. Outro in particular features a sample features a sample from Donald Trump, which I don’t think motivated only by aesthetic concerns. This sendoff of meant to be the final layer allowing you to understand what kind of hollow, decadent journey you went through. Jornt Elzinga is never outwardly angry, but he sometimes makes these sardonic winks allowing you to distance yourself from these manufactured emotions.
*
猫 シ Corp. is a grandmaster at what he does and Luxury Girls is one of my favourite recordings of his, so far. It is so in your face and overbearing. It really embodies the crushing nature of the superficiality of the eighties. This all-encompassing, omnipotent consumerism that had a weird soothing effect on the mind. I am myself enraptured for nineteen minutes every time I put it on and oddly liberated from my distractions by the fullness and simplicity of his manufactured dreams. Another masterpiece.
