Various - Paradise Is A Frequency: The Style Of Life

The Style Of Life is a collection of songs we’ve assembled in the wake of an examination beyond the acknowledged history of popular music and other high points in cultural achievement, and through the obscure bits and bytes of digital synthesis. Found on records, cassettes, CDs & sound files, these charming memory-objects have been hiding out in homes and online, waiting to be found and re:membered through the lens of future music movements springing forth from a new virtual world. One that’s increasingly interiorized, where thought is part of the dance, you exist in the background, and new sound combinations can open up portals of perception to inner-dimensional sonic landscapes.

Aesthetically, these compositions are substantially digital and predominantly instrumental, originating from no place in particular and skimming the outer edges of almost everything: 80s-90s smooth jazz, 90s/2000s video game music, library music, pop, house, new age, R&B, soul, and even classical. It freely and playfully bounces between these home-bases but never actually touches down anywhere. That is to say, it wasn’t created for fans of any genre in particular. Too digital to be jazz, not from any actual OST, absent from the archives of major library labels, lacking the lyricism of “pop” poetics, and too rhythmically fresh for the meditative new age personality. Instead, they were realized for the sake of the composers themselves; artifacts brought back from journeys through the inner-worlds of their own creation meant to adorn the soundscapes of their own lives. There was no audience until one was created by slow shifts in our collective interests. This is not just private press music, but personal press; a musical space in search of a place to be heard. Not in symphony halls or rock arenas by the swarming, concert going masses, but a pure sound emanating from a more domestic setting. A music beyond entertainment.

This wasn't recorded in a fancy studio; some large, collective, acoustic space. Rather, it was assembled on consumer grade tape machines or inside a computer by a single composer. The “acoustic space” only materializes when you listen to it. Introverted and intimate, these hermetically sealed, toy-like sounds, could have only ever emerged from the inertia of a sharp turn in the course of human history. A moment so near to our present that it’s still-unfurling-significance is often taken for granted, under investigated, or overlooked altogether. The Great Digitization is upon us.