Bandcamp’s outer limits continue to be a rewarding place for psychedelia, experimental club music, noise, vaporwave, and other sounds that are wholly uncategorizable. In each edition of Acid Test, Miles Bowe explores its far reaches to dig up hidden gems and obscure oddities. This November, we explore a breathtaking album recorded by a delivery driver waiting on fast-food orders, aleatoric music with a tabletop RPG twist, and a dance compilation for a genre discovered in a dream.
Gavin Vanaelst
Takeaway Loops
Cassette
Across barely 20 minutes, and through seven quietly flickering tracks, Gavin Vanaelst’s Takeaway Loops feels gargantuan. Channeling the stuttering commercialism of Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica and the intimacy of Grouper’s Ruins, the Antwerp-based Vanaelst based each track on a phone recording made while waiting to pick up fast-food orders for a delivery app he worked for, then adding additional keyboards later. Tracks like the heartrending opener “Falafel King†or “Dunkin Donuts†offer quiet respite, while “Quick†and “Wok & Walk†skip and jitter with brittle electronics. The result is a series of musical snapshots as perfectly framed as Edward Hopper paintings, where each transient moment feels so fleeting, yet still creates a powerful sense of place—whether it’s the 50-second “McDonalds,†backed by a distant 4/4 pulse, to the largely unedited “Searching for Kentucky Fried Chicken at Wijnegem Shopping Center,†which wanders for eight minutes, or the weary, lullaby-like closer of “Pizzeria La Lanterna.†Takeaway Loops is a remarkable album, one that finds tremendous beauty in the harsh light of some lonely places.
Various Artists
Thank You, Dream Girl.
Whether working as The Soft Pink Truth or in Matmos alongside Martin Schmidt, Drew Daniel has made a career following through on his wildest ideas. The compilation Thank You, Dream Girl. conjures a fantasy genre into reality—its producers were inspired by Daniel’s viral tweet recalling a dream where a girl at a rave described a genre called “hit ‘em.†Her loose description—“5/4 time, 212 BPM, super crunched-out soundsâ€â€”provides just enough framing to hold everything together here while letting producers follow their imaginations. Some go all-in on crunchiness, while others make bright, speedy workouts. Dehm’s “Plugged†makes room for luxurious horns, while DJ Cheesepizza & Yung Skrrt’s “I Want You To Hit ‘Em†is like gabber made by DJ Mustard. It all feels like a celebration not only of Daniel’s dream, but also his well-documented commitment to go out on a limb for a good idea. On this wonderful compilation, a lot of people go out on a limb with him—and the result is one hell of a good party.
White Poppy
Paradise Regained
Cassette
Earlier this year, Crystal Dorval brought her Paradise Gardens trilogy to a powerful, peaceful close with the wordless Ataraxia. Paradise Regained collects unreleased material from the last three White Poppy albums, providing an essential postscript. New tracks include the lovely, jangling “Fade†and the playfully percussive “Portrait Of A Parrot,†which sit nicely alongside alternate mixes of earlier tracks. “Memories,†a highlight from 2020’s Paradise Gardens, transforms entirely over three mixes—“Acoustic,†“Surf,†and maybe best of all, “Smoothâ€â€”each of which bring rewarding new perspectives. Paradise Regained is a welcome stroll back through some of White Poppy’s best work—and a few of this decade’s finest albums.
Monopoly Child Star Searchers
This Year In Coconuts Vol. 2
Vinyl LP
After an immensely prolific year releasing his own music and others on Pacific City Sound Visions, Spencer Clark finds a perfect time to revisit an early idea for a compilation idea. This Year In Coconuts Vol. 2 jumbles, edits and rearranges tracks from three albums this year: From The Caves and Jungles of Apulia, Kowloon Spider Temples. and Tempio D’iside. Clark’s releases are such potent, transporting things—each one feels hand-made to communicate with another dimension through alien synths and impossibly processed vocals—and jumping across several at once in a single compilation becomes its own fascinating journey. Tracks gain a new power in this sequencing, as “The Disappearance Through A Stargate By Guiseppe Borri†becomes a heady centerpiece, the excerpt “From The Caves and Jungles of Apulia 3†is even more lively on its own, and the ornate, dance-like “Poltergeist Forms of Praying Mantis†makes for a dramatic closer. This Year In Coconuts Vol. 2 makes you appreciate Clark’s singular musical visions on a particularly wide scale, while offering exciting off-ramps to other releases.
Lifted
Trellis
Vinyl LP
The new album from Washington, D.C. duo Lifted (Max D of Beautiful Swimmers and Matt Papich, aka Co La) expands to include the trio of Dustin Wong, Mezey, and Jeremy Hyman, as well as contributions from Motion Graphics, Earthen Sea, Jordan GCZ, and Tim Kinsella. But the magic of Trellis is the way you can never quite tell where those live collaborations begin and the main duo’s CDJ manipulation ends. The resulting vibe is featherlight and dreamy, but also gently propulsive, as pastel synths, brushed percussion, and drifting guitar and sax swirl into each other on highlights like “Specials†and “The Latecomer.†True to its name, Trellis is spacious yet structurally solid as Lifted let these sounds grow in surprising ways.
Ben Varian
SNIP
Cassette, Compact Disc (CD)
Songwriter Ben Varian has always threaded humor, heart, and existential anxiety through eclectic and elastic jazz-pop tunes. Much like David Berman or Jens Lekman, Varian’s specificity is one of his greatest strengths, and that shines on this new album, in sharp lyrics and lush arrangements filled with horns, strings, and back-up singers. Opener “Break Up Call By The River†paints a vivid picture of humor and heartache, as frogs, birds, and interrupting kayakers drift by, all of it converging in lines like “I’m lounging against a log/ I hope that I still get to sometimes see our dog.†“Through Your Eyes†builds an entire scene of tiny, memory-conjuring details—“the Marx Brothers movie,†“the Soviet poster,†“the Budweiser coasterâ€â€”while “Florida (My Hometown)†does the opposite in the unfamiliarity of a visit home, boasting the painfully funny opening line: “They put a Chipotle where there was a live oak tree/ They put a Sunglass Hut where the old Chipotle used to be.†SNIP is full of moments where Varian touches on the small and personal, only to hit something that feels profoundly universal.
Andy Loebs
Cercopithecoid
Cassette
Producer Andy Loebs ties a palette of bright, steely MIDI instruments into knots on the dazzling Cercopithecoid. The album’s playful, distinct timbres are matched by a liquid production style in which tracks constantly melt and reform into something new. Bringing to mind JRPG scores (“In The Sculpture Gardenâ€), jazz-fusion (“Ameliorationâ€), heavy metal (“CD Burnerâ€), and dance music (“Tracking Mud Into The House Againâ€)—sometimes all at once—every micro-moment of chaos feels like an opportunity for Loeb to leap into a new mode. But rather than feeling like an overload, Loebs seems to consider every twist and turn of Cercopithecoid, making for an album as seamless as it is thrilling.
Katharina Ernst & Schne
Kranetude
Vinyl LP
Kranetude collects Katharina Ernst and Stefan “Schne†Schneider’s score to choreographer Florentina Holzinger’s performance piece of the same name. Though the most dramatic element of the original—Holzinger and other dancers’ performance while suspended by a crane over the ocean—cannot be captured here, it does let us focus in on the gripping sounds of Ernst and Schne’s music. Multiple percussionists, thunderclapping sheets of metal, stones and swarms of electronics across these four movements make Kranetude immensely gripping even as a purely auditory experience.
Merchants
Marrow
Cassette
Marrow, the new album by Italian duo Merchants (aka Alberto Ricca and Davide Amici) takes a unique approach to chance-based composition by drawing inspiration and rules from tabletop RPGs—even going so far as to include a literal campaign map. “Aleatoric†might derive from an early word for “dice,†but nobody said you can’t use a D20. Ricca and Amici match this idea with otherworldly instrumentation by blurring synthesized virtual instruments with intense percussion, ancient horns, and more. This combination takes surreal forms—like the anvil-like clank merging with processed vocals on opener “The Council Below,†the hypnotic motorik rush of “Weaving of the Snakes†or the sprawling “Honey Birds†where synths twinkle across an inky atmosphere over nine minutes. Musically and conceptually, Marrow makes for a thrilling adventure.
