| Pharma | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Cover art by Keith Rankin [1] | ||||
| Studio album / Remix album by Nmesh | ||||
| Released | August 4, 2017 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Label | Orange Milk | |||
| Producer | Alex Koenig | |||
| Singles from Pharma | ||||
| Nmesh chronology | ||||
| ||||
Pharma is a double album by American vaporwave producer Alex Koenig,also known as Nmesh. It was released August 4,2017 on Orange Milk Records. It follows the same vaporwave style as other Nmesh albums like Nu.wav Hallucinations (2013) and Dream Sequins (2014).
Like other Nmesh records such as Nu.wav Hallucinations (2013) and Dream Sequins (2014),Pharma is an album [1] that is,as Bandcamp Daily stated,"a dazzling confluence of media:pitch-shifted barely-registered cultural phenomena turned into hallucinatory sequences,advertising trash enlivened through eccojam manipulation,audio warping that blurs eras like a pre-set Photoshop filter." [6] Where Pharma differs from other Nmesh albums is its more "off-kilter" and "slap-happy" tone (as described by Koenig) [6] and its source material,which includes samples of media from a "collective memory" instead of the content Koenig experienced in his childhood. [6]
The media Pharma samples includes the show The Baby-Sitters Club , [6] a Soul II Soul song, [6] the Yello song "Oh Yeah," [7] music from the game Pac-Man (1980), [7] the Sam Raimi cult film Army Of Darkness (1992), [7] the 1951 Disney animated film Alice in Wonderland and VHS tapes the producer's wife recorded as a kid on the songs "Vault Maintenance 700 CMC" and "cut scene 5230-4968 albatross 0923-1874." [6] Pharma also goes through genres such as big beat, [1] swing, [8] UK garage, [8] lounge, [8] exotica, [8] soul, [8] hip-hop, [8] ambient, [8] and drum 'n' bass. [7] Writer A. Noah Harrison labeled Pharma as a psychedelic record rather than a vaporwave album because,despite concerning nostalgic memories common in vaporwave,they're "indelibly glossed over,redacted,and memed into a higher dimension." [9]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Exclaim! | 8/10 [8] |
| Resident Advisor | 4/5 [10] |
| Tiny Mix Tapes |   [11] |
Resident Advisor praised Pharma as "an album so vast and confusing that,whenever you lose your bearings,you'll usually find something new to enjoy each time." [10] Fact magazine critic Miles Bowe called it the best record in Nmesh's discography,reasoning that "There’s too much to keep up with,but overstimulation is Nmesh’s comfort zone and it’ll be yours too once acclimated to Pharma's colorful chaos." [7] In describing the charm of the LP, Tiny Mix Tapes summarized that it "begins steeped in mystery,in government secrets,in phantasms,in hard-drives inside vaults immersed inside administrative centers,and ends as a node to the body." [11] The publication later placed it at number 47 on their list of the best releases of 2017,claiming that it "went beyond simulation,toward the tangible archaeological rescue of base cultural artifacts,offering a digital rendering of the remnants of human primitivity that felt especially appropriate in this historical moment." [12] Gorilla vs. Bear ranked the album number 58 on their list of the best albums of 2017, [13] while PopMatters put it at number ten on their year-end list regarding experimental and avant-garde albums. [9]
Derived from the official Orange Milk Records Bandcamp page. [1]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Understand" | 0:14 |
| 2. | "NΞ1✪NΞ1" | 3:37 |
| 3. | "Fall Any Vegetable" | 2:01 |
| 4. | "Rangdang Slapjab" | 1:25 |
| 5. | "BΛSS///COP™" | 3:40 |
| 6. | "Vault Maintenance 700 CMC (Black Swan Dub)" | 2:10 |
| 7. | "cut scene 5230-4968 albatross 0923-1874" | 0:20 |
| 8. | "White Lodge Simulation" | 8:24 |
| 9. | "High Speed Adjustable Broiler" | 1:12 |
| 10. | "Tiny Classified Ads" | 1:52 |
| 11. | "Acid Baby (narr. Tony Bamanaboni)" | 4:12 |
| 12. | "PBS Ancillary Rack Room" | 2:12 |
| 13. | "Cocktails In Space" | 3:21 |
| 14. | "Pants-A-Thon @ SQUAREBASE" | 1:25 |
| 15. | "Mall Full Of Drugs" | 9:13 |
| 16. | "Phase 1 Lvl Snap Chill" | 0:30 |
| 17. | "Everyone Will Flake Out" | 0:55 |
| 18. | "The Program (You Are Stars)" | 1:36 |
| 19. | "Workalude" | 1:26 |
| 20. | "/////LD-99/////" | 3:57 |
| 21. | "Weed Jesus" | 4:24 |
| 22. | "Twilight Meridian" | 2:21 |
| 23. | "Milk Channel" | 3:05 |
| 24. | "NΞW JΛCK CITY" | 1:27 |
| 25. | "Hepatic Portal" | 5:47 |
| 26. | "Left Alone In A Blue Room" | 1:40 |
| Total length: | 72:22 | |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "White Lodge Simulation" (Odd Nosdam Remix) | 4:52 |
| 2. | "Fall Any Vegetable" (食品まつり a.k.a. foodman remix) | 3:43 |
| 3. | "NΞ1✪NΞ1" (Jacob 2-2 RMX) | 3:50 |
| 4. | "Mall Full Of Drugs" (Traxman's high as hell remixx) | 4:31 |
| 5. | "Weed Jesus" (Giganta Remix) | 3:39 |
| 6. | "Mall Full Of Drugs" (Rebuilt by Humanoid) | 5:20 |
| 7. | "Twilight Meridian" (GOLDEN LIVING ROOM Remix) | 3:22 |
| 8. | "Tiny Classified Ads" (FIRE-TOOLZ Effexor Withdrawal Remix) | 9:43 |
| 9. | "White Lodge Simulation" (VAPERROR Remix) | 2:37 |
| 10. | "PBS Ancillary Rack Room" (Diamondstein Remix) | 7:37 |
| 11. | "Twilight Meridian" (Jade Statues Remix) | 4:20 |
| 12. | "Hepatic Portal" (death dynamic shroud.wmv's NUWRLD Version) | 4:15 |
| 13. | "Mall Full Of Drugs" (HKE Remix) | 3:42 |
| 14. | "Acid Baby" (Hyphyskazerbox's Trippy Mane Mix) | 4:11 |
| 15. | "/////LD-99/////" (djwwww Remix) | 4:31 |
| 16. | "Left Alone In A Blue Room" (Obama420 SCHALk ReM1XXX) | 4:44 |
| Total length: | 74:57 | |
| Region | Date | Format(s) | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Worldwide [1] | August 4, 2017 | Orange Milk |
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, 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 Vektroid under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It is her ninth full-length album and 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.
Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 is an album by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the pseudonym Chuck Person. An album of plunderphonic chopped and screwed remixes, Eccojams Vol. 1 features songs that consist of looped samples from popular songs from the 1980s and 1990s, with effects such as reverb and pitch shifting being applied. The results tend to highlight mournful or existential lyrics from its sampled sources.
No Stairway is the debut studio album of Glassine, the musical project of Danny Greenwald, first released online and later issued on cassette worldwide by the label Patient Sounds, in April and August 2015, respectively. The title is a reference to a line from the 1992 film Wayne's World. The album garnered significant attention from music journalists for its compositional and production technique. In two Guitar Center stores, Greenwald tapped people playing instruments on his iPhone, and used snippets of these low-quality trackings as loops or synth patches, playing some of them through effects pedals or 4-track machines. The "dystopian" environment of Guitar Center shops and his desire to record something without a budget while in New York City is what inspired his idea to use samples of recordings of people playing instruments and build compositions out of them. On Fact's year-end list of best Bandcamp releases, No Stairway came in at number 19.
Birth of a New Day is the second studio album by English-American electronic music duo of dreampunk producers Hong Kong Express and Telepath, both collaborating under the alias 2814, released on January 21, 2015, by HKE's record label Dream Catalogue. With the popularity of vaporwave in the early to mid-2010s, the duo experimented with the genre by not using any form of samples to compose the album, thus becoming notable for being one of the first vaporwave releases not to include such production techniques. 2814 stated that they wanted it to "have a strong sense of place"; its themes reflect the dark worldviews of HKE.
Human Story 3 is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, self-released on June 14, 2016. Displaying a turn towards the style and aesthetic of modern classical, the album's concept revolves philosophically and structurally on how technology that can be used meaningfully is often used less usefully for commerce and, as a result, how the technology may eventually end up subverting humanness. The record garnered critical acclaim and landed at number seven on Tiny Mix Tapes' year-end list of the best albums of 2016.
Olin Caprison, better known as Violence, is an American experimental musician, composer, performance artist, and producer.
Sleepline is the fifteenth studio album by electronic and vaporwave artist Vektroid under the alias New Dreams Ltd., released on February 14, 2016.
Rainbow Mirror is a triple album by the American musical project Prurient, the performing name of the artist Dominick Fernow. It was released on December 1, 2017 through Profound Lore Records. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Prurient project, Rainbow Mirror was released as a 4xCD and as a 7xLP, which was distributed by Hospital Productions. This Hospital Productions release bundled Rainbow Mirror with a limited cassette version of Godflesh's 2017 album, Post Self. The 8-panel digipak version of the album includes a short story by Fernow and Scott Bryan Wilson.
Ez Minzoku is a studio album by Japanese electronic music producer Takahide Higuchi, known in the United States as Foodman. Two tracks on the album, "Mid Summer Night" and "Minzoku," are from a previous record by Foodman titled Are Kore (2013). Ez Minzoku is a "MIDI glitch" record that follows the same experimental style of Higuchi's other releases and consists of minimal arrangements of clean MIDI instruments such as horns, woodwinds, and human samples. It was released on May 13, 2016 by Orange Milk Records and Noumenal Loom to favorable reviews from critics and landed on numerous year-end lists.
Dark Web is a studio album by American producer Keith Rankin, known by his stage name Giant Claw, released in September 2014 worldwide by the labels Orange Milk Records, Noumenal Loom, and in Japan by Virgin Babylon. Dark Web depicts the idea of existing cultures and music coming together to form, in the words of Orange Milk, "new compositional tools." As such, its melodies are executed from a combination of half-second-length snippets of vocal samples from pop and R&B songs. Dark Web follows Giant Claw's typical style of samples and MIDI compositions but with more influences of modern music than Rankin's previous records. Dark Web garnered a favorable critical response for its odd tone and landed in the year-end lists of publications such as Tiny Mix Tapes and CMJ.
Keith Rankin is an American electronic musician and visual artist who records under the alias Giant Claw, a largely vaporwave and psychedelic music project. He is known for the vaporwave project Death's Dynamic Shroud, which he joined in 2014.
Rain Temple is the third studio album by English-American electronic music duo of dreampunk musicians Hong Kong Express and Telepath, both collaborating under the alias 2814, released on July 26, 2016, by their record label Dream Catalogue. After the success of Birth of a New Day, one of the members stated that he wanted to "leave 2814 to rest", but he couldn't as he states that the project "just works so well for us both."
100% Electronica is the debut album by American electronic musician George Clanton, released on September 25, 2015 by his independent record label 100% Electronica.
Everywhere at the End of Time is the eleventh and final recording by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician Leyland Kirby. Released between 2016 and 2019, its six studio albums use degrading loops of sampled ballroom music to portray the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by the success of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011), Kirby produced Everywhere as his final major work under the alias. The albums were produced in Kraków and released over six-month periods to "give a sense of time passing", with abstract album covers by his friend Ivan Seal. The series drew comparisons to the works of composer William Basinski and electronic musician Burial, while the later stages were influenced by avant-gardist composer John Cage.
Dreampunk is a microgenre of electronic music characterized by its focus on cinematic ambience and field recordings, combined with various traits and techniques from electronic genres such as techno, jungle, electro, and dubstep.
PTP, also known as Purple Tape Pedigree, is an American artist collective and independent record label based in New York City. PTP has been called "New York’s experimental incubator", and the collective has released recordings named among the best in new experimental, hip hop, metal, avant-garde, and electronic music. Pitchfork noted that "PTP's mission seems to be to annihilate genre boundaries and revel in the brilliant debris", and VICE has called PTP "home to some of the most boundary pushing music being made".
Jornt Elzinga, commonly known as Cat System Corp., is a Dutch musician regarded as a vaporwave musician 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).