| Blank Banshee 0 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | September 1, 2012 | |||
| Recorded | 2010–2012 (Saint John, Canada) [1] | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 33:03 | |||
| Label | Hologram Bay | |||
| Producer | Patrick Driscoll | |||
| Blank Banshee chronology | ||||
| ||||
Blank Banshee 0 is the debut studio album by Canadian artist and producer Blank Banshee. It was released for free via Bandcamp on September 1, 2012.
In 2010 Patrick Driscoll and Curtis "Cormorant" Ferguson began performing live as Blank Banshees (previously Shinjuku MAD) which consisted of "predominantly instrumental" compositions. [2] By 2012 the duo had become a solo act, with Driscoll continuing to release instrumental music under the pseudonym Blank Banshee and Ferguson appearing as a recurrent guest vocalist.
Blank Banshee 0 was produced between 2011 and 2012 in Driscoll's hometown, Saint John, Canada. [3]
In the summer of 2012 Driscoll made a move for the West Coast, seeking to escape the "bubble of economic and demographic slump" plaguing the creative industry of his Maritimes hometown at the time; [4] he relocated to Vancouver, Canada, releasing Blank Banshee 0 shortly thereafter. [5]
The album was released as a pay what you want digital download via Bandcamp on September 1, 2012.
Blank Banshee 0 was composed with an Akai MPD26 using Ableton Live. [6] The album consists of largely 1980s and 1990s sourced samples layered over original beats, instrumentation and vocals. Several aspects of the album including song titles allude to computer technology. Many tracks blend trap style beats with elements of seapunk and vaporwave, such as OS start-up sounds and 1990s-era video game music. [7] [1] Exclaim magazine named "Teen Pregnancy" among notable songs featuring samples inspired by The Message by Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five. [8] Commenting on his use of sampling, Driscoll states it "stemmed from a desire to separate myself from the guitar driven music I was making and listening to at the time." [9]
Many songs on the album feature vocal and lyrical contributions by Cormorant, the stage name accredited to Curtis Ferguson. [5] The song "Dreamcast" features a vocal melody by Ferguson from a Shinjuku MAD song originally released in 2010. [10]
Blank Banshee 0 has been released on cassette tape, compact disc, vinyl, and USB flash drive independently through the online store Hologram Bay.
Blank Banshee 0's "vaportrap" production style helped popularize vaporwave in the 2010s. The album's influence has since been attributed to a shift in the direction of the genre. [11] [12] [13]
Esquire calls it "more approachable" than other vaporwave subgenres while building "on the basic premise". [14] In 2016 The Fader called Blank Banshee 0 a "definitive document of the vaporwave era." [15] Bandcamp Daily called the album "a progressive record, abandoning the often dissonant nature of vaporwave but emphasizing the more accessible elements, and incorporating beats characteristic of trap music." [1]
"Teen Pregnancy" became part of a viral video trend in 2016 called Simpsonwave. [16] [17]
Adapted from official liner notes. [3]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "B:/ Start Up" | 1:09 |
| 2. | "Wavestep" | 2:43 |
| 3. | "Bathsalts" | 2:49 |
| 4. | "Ammonia Clouds" | 2:43 |
| 5. | "Venus Death Trap" | 2:14 |
| 6. | "Hyper Object" | 2:45 |
| 7. | "Photosynthesis" | 2:51 |
| 8. | "Deep Space" | 2:17 |
| 9. | "Dreamcast" | 2:02 |
| 10. | "Cyber Zodiac" | 2:21 |
| 11. | "Teen Pregnancy" | 2:57 |
| 12. | "Purity Boys" | 1:42 |
| 13. | "Visualization" | 1:47 |
| 14. | "World Vision" | 1:54 |
| 15. | "B:/ Shut Down/Depression" | 0:52 |
| Total length: | 33:00 | |
Notes
Set Fire to Flames was a Canadian instrumental music ensemble consisting of thirteen musicians from Montreal, Quebec. The band was often considered a side project of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, as the two groups shared several members.
"This Wheel's on Fire" is a song written by Bob Dylan and Rick Danko. It was originally recorded by Dylan and the Band during their 1967 sessions, portions of which comprised the 1975 album, The Basement Tapes. The Band's own version appeared on their 1968 album, Music from Big Pink. Live versions by the Band appear on their 1972 live double album Rock of Ages, as well as the more complete four-CD-DVD version of that concert, Live at the Academy of Music 1971, and the 2002 Box Set of The Last Waltz.
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and a subgenre of hauntology, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s, and became well-known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970s elevator music, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, stylized Greek sculptures, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.
Ramona Andra Langley is an American electronic musician from Portland, Oregon. She has released music under her primary Vektroid alias, as well as others, such as dstnt, Laserdisc Visions, New Dreams Ltd., Virtual Information Desk, and PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises. Langley played a prominent role in the popularization of the vaporwave subgenre with the release of her ninth studio album, Floral Shoppe, under the alias Macintosh Plus. The album helped popularize the vaporwave genre throughout the Internet. Since then, she has continued to release music through Bandcamp and other online platforms.
Floral Shoppe is the ninth studio album by the American electronic musician Ramona Andra Langley under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It was one of the first releases of the 2010s microgenre known as vaporwave to gain popular recognition on the Internet. Since then, Floral Shoppe has been considered by some critics to be the defining album of the style.
Girlpool was an indie rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed by friends Avery Tucker and Harmony Tividad. Their debut self-titled EP Girlpool was released on Bandcamp in 2014 and re-released on Wichita Recordings later that year. They released their debut album Before the World Was Big in 2015, followed by Powerplant (2017) and What Chaos Is Imaginary (2019). Their fourth and final studio album, Forgiveness (2022), was released on April 29. In August 2022, the duo announced that they will be taking an indefinite break from the band.
Douglas Jack Agu, better known by his stage name Runtown, is a Nigerian singer, songwriter and producer.
Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 is a 2010 album of remixes by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the pseudonym Chuck Person. Its tracks consist of chopped, looped samples of various songs—including popular songs from the 1980s and 1990s—processed with effects such as delay, reverb, and pitch shifting; the results highlight mournful or existential moments from the sources. It was used as an initial template for the vaporwave internet microgenre.
Motion Graphics is the self-titled debut studio album of American musician Joe Williams' project Motion Graphics. Williams initially planned it to be "a synth pop record without any nostalgia," and this plan turned into an ambient album about the feeling of being able to go to limitless places due to technology. In achieving this feel, Williams used the visual programming language Max for Live to create a virtual instrument that scrolled through 100 patches at random; when a note was inputed, the instrument froze at a patch. The record's overall sound palette is a combination of organic and non-organic elements; when using software instruments that replicated real-life instruments, such as clarinets and marimbas, Williams wanted to take advantage of the “quirks and glitches within them" that lead to the instruments making sounds that they could not possibly make if performed acoustically.
Hardvapour is an Internet-based microgenre of music that emerged in late 2015 as a tongue-in-cheek response to vaporwave, departing from the calm, muzak-sampling capitalist utopia concept of the latter in favor of a gabber- and punk-influenced sound. Canadian music producer Wolfenstein OS X album End of World Rave (2015) and the Antifur record label are credited with having first defined the hardvapour sound.
Blank Banshee 1 is the second studio album by Canadian musician and producer Blank Banshee. It was released as a free digital download via Bandcamp on October 20, 2013.
Mega, is the third studio album by Canadian musician and producer Blank Banshee. It was released via Bandcamp on October 10, 2016.
Patrick Driscoll, known professionally as Blank Banshee, is a Canadian artist, musician and producer from Saint John, New Brunswick. He rose to popularity in 2012 with his album Blank Banshee 0, which combined traditional elements of vaporwave with trap music, a style now known as vaportrap. Blank Banshee's music has been described as a "balance of abstract ambience and dance-able trap".
Mallsoft is a vaporwave subgenre centered around shopping malls.
Primo! are an Australian indie rock band from Melbourne, which formed in the early 2010s. By 2018 the line-up was Violetta DelConte Race, Xanthe Waite, Suzanne Walker and Amy Hill.
Jornt Elzinga, commonly known as Cat System Corp., is a Dutch musician regarded as a vaporwave figure that originated the mallsoft subgenre. He also previously recorded as Mesektet for his dark ambient releases.
News at 11 is the fourteenth studio album by Cat System Corp., the alias of Dutch electronic musician Jornt Elzinga. Released on September 11, 2016, it samples smooth jazz songs and excerpts from TV talk shows and commercials as a tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks. Inspired by a vaporwave mix featuring a picture of the burning Twin Towers, Elzinga produced News at 11 as a portrayal of "a parallel universe where it never happened." Initially intended to be a Weather Channel-themed release, the album was produced over the course of nine months, and drew comparisons to the themes of author Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018).
Death's Dynamic Shroud is an American electronic and vaporwave trio consisting of James Webster, Tech Honors, and Keith Rankin. The band releases a large amount of music regularly as sample-driven mixtapes under the .wmv moniker, in addition to releasing more standard mainline albums.
Luke Laurila, better known as Telepath, is an American musician notable for his considerable impact within the vaporwave scene. During the mid-2010s, his ambient sound and dream-like presentation turned him into the main originator of the slushwave subgenre. He also released albums under the alias Virtual Dream Plaza, and he currently releases music under the pseudonym Tianhuojian.
