Aldo Calrissian - future shower thoughts

Aldo Calrissian

Future Shower Thoughts
self-released; 2015

3.9 out of 5

By J Simpson

Salem, Oregon's Aldo Calrissian delivers a short blast of ambient electronics and tight machine funk as an intended soundtrack for the schizophrenic cyberpunk reality in which we all dwell. Have you ever wondered what it might sound like to go to a forest rave in Castlevania? Or what the residents of Lavender Town listen to, to come down at night?

Aldo Calrissian describes Future Shower Thoughts as "a story about the cyberpunk, and largely schizophrenic, reality that we inhabit. Except funky." Every sound is expertly placed to lend to this central narrative. We are living in a world where we are surrounded by data, by signs and signifiers, cluttering our neural pathways like a fungal infection. It's too much; it's all too much. We must pick our battles, and decide for ourselves what reality we want to live in.

Aldo Calrissian orts through the data rubble and picks the choicest gems, which he then weaves into sterling sculptures of low slung hip hop beats, and 8-bit crystal synths. His process is a kind of alchemy that gives us hope that all is not lost, that we can still salvage this world and make great art by caring and paying attention, and having a cause to forward. The clue comes in that "except funky" at the end of the description. As a society, we are becoming more progressively neurotic, struggling to keep up with the data cache. But Calrissian makes it funky - he dances with the statistics, making big room trance rave anthems out of big data.

Aldo Calrissian is definitely part of the vaporwave continuum, which is to say digital art that has never existed in the real world usually meant to parody or comment on the corporate culture we live in. But where most vaporwave artists focus on making sickly synth odysseys that sound like a Microsoft training video from the late '90s, Carlesian puts those synths over a bedrock of tight, fluttering beats and dub reggae riddims. And while Calrissian's music may be indebted to hip-hop, it is still more jittery and rigid than the old school variety, while still being fluid and funky.

Calrissian gives us hope that we can take advantage of the technology that surrounds us, and use it to build a reality tunnel we want to inhabit. That heart and head can act together in harmony. 

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