Jaded Memory – Speck in the Sea
What was really the crime that the Yacht Rock crew committed? Why are those people mocked with such consistency that you’d think they were accomplices to the Manson Family murders who got away with it by writing post-hippie feel-good tunes?
Well, certainly a fine chunk of the listening public likes the music enough to keep it around. Hell, it’s even considered a bona fide musical style now that has modern adherents. And while I need more market research, I imagine people of a certain disposition collecting contemporary yacht rock albums.
However, you get the feeling that that kind of music was written from a place of material abundance and spiritual shallowness. What if we were to introduce some genuine anxiety on that boat ride? Jaded Memory, in many ways, provides just that.
“Speck in the Sea” is a meditative track, a kind of lullaby to whisper while floating on the waters. However, it’s not a mantra about how the world and everything in it is wonderful. There’s a dose of fighting off hopelessness that is part of Jaded Memory’s music, an idea that you might need to give yourself a hug if you need one. Now, that’s a convincing modern sea shanty, indeed.
Dejima – Camcorder
Listen, attention is the new currency. Even those stupid algorithms know it. For a few years, everyone, from your neighbour who does lipstick reviews to former U.S. presidents, was battling it out to accumulate as many followers as possible.
I’ll let you in on a secret that will, hopefully, mean you’ll waste less of your time keyword stuffing and getting the angle of the camera to be just right, and tell you that the next wave of stars are going to be the ones that can hold your attention the longest.
This involves setting up a whole new set of strategies. This means that music made for TikTok and fitted to 30-second songs may not be the way to go if you’re trying to build a career. This means that Dejima have a head start.
That’s because before you even know it, you’ve listened to most of “Camcorder” and have been wrapped up in the pleasant warmth that you want to play it right back again. Yeah, it’s a mood that Dejima is going for, and those retro production tricks and chord changes are just ways to set it up. But who can claim not to want to leave inside of this for as long as they can?
