FINISHED PRODUCT

I'm finally doneeeeeeee

Just finished the music video and I'm content with the result :) I also uploaded my finished EP, consisting of the newest song as well as the 5 others I made for this project, onto Bandcamp and Soundcloud. This was definitely a learning experience and for the first time I can say I'm fully pleased with and proud of my work in terms of the song itself -- and I guess the video too.

Google Drive link with digipak artwork and the music video file:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fq2HNcqdtAXLNxKZOPEWP2Ah9A_dqlLm?usp=sharing

Music video upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXzRce8yyLI

Social media page: https://www.instagram.com/898v898/ & website: https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/

REVIEW!! WOW

My friend Tyler is pretty involved in the witch house / underground music scene (and makes music himself which is very good in my humble opinion) and he offered to review my track! I'm super grateful for his input and he wrote a really good piece that encompassed both my branding and the song itself, as well as hinting at future output. It's awesome to hear from someone who shares my passion for this scene and understands its unique approaches to marketing and aesthetics :) Here's a link to the post itself, but it's private on his Tumblr so I'm not sure if other people can see it, so I'll also paste the text. 

    VPVVVPV is a new music act coming out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their SoundCloud and Bandcamp hosts songs with a variety of genres, so far being Witch House, Ambient, Breakcore, and Footwork. The track in particular I’m here to discuss today is of the Witch House genre, the song’s titled ‘ABU GHRAIB.’ The name being a reference to the war crimes committed by the United States to detainees in the early stages of the Iraqi War. VPVVVPV mentions on the front page of their website; “VPVVVPV IS MADE IN AMERICA AND CALLING ATTENTION TO THE AWFUL CRIMES OCCURING AS A RESULT OF US OCCUPATION IN IRAQI PRISONS!”

    Now, onto the music. The song and whole aesthetic of VPVVVPV seems to invoke nostalgia in the listeners, whether that’s intentional or not is not up to me to decide but the website presentation (https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/), the haunting synths, the gifs that hang proudly on the website, all give the familiar feeling to 2000s teens of coming fresh off of craigslist and checking up on your favorite, probably considered weird by your friend group, niche music act. I’ve said enough about the vibe/aesthetic, the sound itself is, like stated before, very witch house-y. While my knowledge of witch house is extremely limited, I can see similarities to the style of sound that made groups such as CRIM3S and SALEM attract a cult fanbase. With the resurgence of witch house thanks to artists such as Sematary, the aforementioned SALEMs return in 2020, and a bunch of hungry, talented kids trying to make art inspired by the greats of the past, it’ll be interesting to see where VPVVVPV cements themselves in the current witch house landscape if they continue their journey in the sound. As I mentioned before, they have a plethora of genres already listed on their pages in the short time they’ve been active, so it’s hard to pinpoint what VPVVVPV will sound like going from here.

You can keep up with VPVVVPV and their future releases by clicking any of these links:

https://vpvvvpv.bandcamp.com/music

https://soundcloud.com/vpvvvpv

https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/

https://www.instagram.com/898v898/

“- [ COMING SOON ] 'SERPENTINE DREAM THEORY’ Extended play 

- [ COMING SOON ] 'ABU GHRAIB’ MUSIC VIDEO”

WEBSITE REDESIGN

I mentioned a few posts back that I wanted to redesign the site to better reflect the kind of 2000s aesthetic I wanted to achieve with the branding. I've developed a pretty strong idea for the song I'm using for the video in that it's going to be surrounding the American invasion of Iraq because I've always found Bush era Internet aesthetics soooo so so interesting, and also I think that era is very captivating in and of itself so I'd like to feature it in my art.

Here it is !! Yay. Pretty happy with how it turned out, initially I wanted to incorporate a sidebar like I have on my main website but it was too annoying trying to line up the logo and everything. I think this simplistic layout works pretty well anyways since I'm not presenting much content on the site anyways. I linked to a separate page including links to all my released songs as well as the Instagram page, and I put a little announcement about cassettes and CDs going up on the Bandcamp page soon (which I will be making the designs for but not actually putting them up for purchase lol).

I almost kind of built up some lore about the artist? Like in the little copyright footer I transferred over from my main site I put the year as 2004 to match the song's theme. I'm also using some news footage from 2003-04 in the music video so I think it lines up well along with the dated design of the site?? I'm aware my branding is getting kind of silly but I think this is still pretty evocative of the witch house era and its DIY esotericism.

DIGIPAK RESEASRCH

I could take several routes with the digipak. The one that first comes to mind is a CD: it's definitely the most common and accessible form of physical music that I've seen be distributed by independent artists within this scene, including some of my own musician friends. Bigger projects have also distributed on vinyl, and some have even done cassette tapes. I'm really interested in that last option. Cassette designs are always so cool to me, and I feel like I could do something really nice with the art.

Here's a photo my friend (shoutout Alice) sent me of her Sematary CDs. They all seem to follow a similar format inside, with some kind of related alternate artwork following the theme of the front cover on the inner slip and behind the disc, and the disc itself either being a black and white version of the front cover, the cover itself (for RB1), or a single cover (HAW). I've seen the backs and they all follow similar themes as well, with more artwork following the theme and a tracklist / production credits. I really like how cohesive and thematically distinct these designs are and if I were to go with a CD I would also try to emulate my branding through the design choices in this way. I was also thinking about making a little booklet to put in the inner front slip, since this is a common feature for lots of physical media.

Sematary has also put out cassettes for two releases, Rainbow Bridge 2 and 3. These cassettes are similar in branding to the CDs and include additional special logos and designs to fit the cassette structure.

Here I'll put some more examples of cassette inspiration:

Left to right: Machine Girl - ...BECAUSE I'M YOUNG...,
Puzzle - Laying in the Sand, SALEM - STAY DOWN (DJ MIX)