Album Review : 猫 シ Corp. - A Class in.... CRYPTO CURRENCY (2018)

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Today, it’s difficult to believe that television was once blamed for every cultural problem smartphones and computers are blamed for today: superficiality, inattention, moral corruption, etc. It was the big, bad wolf that found its way into our houses. That era came and went. The world changed, but we didn’t. The music of vaporwave icon 猫 シ Corp. (if you can call it music) is a testament to such moments in history where everything felt already figured out.

In his project A Class in… CRYPTO CURRENCY, re-released on vinyl by Geometric Lullaby earlier this month, 猫 シ Corp. blends our arrogant present with sounds from the past to remind us that time is built from memories waiting to fade away.

猫 シ Corp. is my favorite vapowave arist. His music is uniquely haunting because it is barely music. It’s just a jagged collage of sounds from the past meant to trigger long lost memories. A Class in… CRYPTO CURRENCY is no different except for one point: it’s about the present. Digital currency, to be more precise. It’s a very short project (a little over twelve minutes) that blends crypto currency evangelism and muzak like a fucked up, haunting memory of late night paid programming.

In its own way, A Class in… CRYPTO CURRENCY is a concept album. The length and track listing are meant to mirror the installation process of a bitcoin mining program on an obsolete Windows operating system and the subsequent waiting period. You know exactly what I’m talking about: when you have nothing to do, but look at the little blue bar going up. It makes you invest your attention consciously into that period of time where you used to stare emptily at your computer.

Introduction and Installation Music, A Class in… CRYPTO CURRENCY, WonderWallet.exe and the others bleed into each other to create a rich blend of faded, slowed-down elevator music, distorted infomercial-style spurts of information about cryptocurrency (which I believe were sampled from the news), static and reverbed mall noises. The spoken interludes really felt like I was sitting in front of my computer and watching videos on RealPlayer. This is a very exquisite thrill.

So, what is the point of listening to such an ephemeral, disposable experience? Glad you asked. The very point of listening to 猫 シ Corp. is to look through the distorted lens of your own memories and on A Class in… CRYPTO CURRENCY he invites you to look at the present as if it were the past. It’s a very disorienting process that puts something we’re currently experiencing on the same pedestal as things we’ve already collectively lived and understood.

Whether he’s right on not about cryptocurrency evengelists being the Sham-wow salesmen of the twenty-first century is beside the point. 猫 シ Corp. wants to make you think of current events through a distorted historical lens. Not many musics do that. Not while evoking the feeling of lost, zen relaxation that you once felt while installing programs on your PC.

I really liked A Class in… CRYPTO CURRENCY. Perhaps not as much as News at 11 (it’s not as long or immersive), but it made me feel things I used to feel in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I believe the new vinyls are already sold out, but you can listen to Jornt Eliznga, also known as 猫 シ Corp. on bandcamp and let yourself fall into a rabbit hole of things you used to feel, but won’t be feeling in the world anymore. Not unless you listen to his music.

8.1/10

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