Eyeliner – Buy Now, 2015

synth pop / sequencer & MIDI / vaporwave / synth funk

More like this – Eyeliner’s High Fashion Mood Music + Larp Of Luxury; Kobayashi Yamoto’s 商業的な仕事 1993 – 2004 + 快い亡霊 OST; Luxury Elite’s Fantasy

Eyeliner’s crystal-clear sound revitalizes late 80s/early 90s electronic music with optimal charm and without reducing it to another snarky joke. Instead, Buy Now takes you to an easy-going virtual world of polka-dots and pastels. Like the giddy cover art, the album doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it doesn’t need to when we’ve had this many vaporwave projects sulking in cyberpunk/ambient gloom.

That said, his research of this music is serious, interpreting a full rainbow of sounds and moods with accuracy. These include ambitious electro-disco (“Pinot Noir”), hold music, hints to library music, new jack swing (“Sneakers For Men”), a cross between The Knife and 80s funk (“Showbiz”), and Miami Vice tension (“Pictionary”).

Some striking cool-down moments (”Payphone”, “Venetian Blinds”) and soulful flutters aside, Buy Now highlights the toy-like gloss of digital synths over more accepted analog tropes (to most amusing effect on “Toy Dog”).  Oh, and if that drunken Seinfeld intro had you doubting the powers of slap bass, this is the album to convert you.

♥︎ – “Toy Dog”, “Showbiz”, “Payphone”, “Private Hospital”, “Pictionary”