006 - Tower of the Sun - Reset

I make it no secret that I am not a fan of classic vaporwave.  For myself, the style is inconsistent in its quality, is rarely engaging, and has few redeeming traits.  But, one of the standout characteristics it does possess is its hypnotic vibe.  Modern vaporwave sees artists capturing that mesmerizing essence of the early releases and transposing it into original compositions.  That is exactly what Tower of the Sun (TotS) has done on Reset.

The sound that TotS is able to achieve on this album is a combination of the surreal and real, the ordinary and the extraordinary.  A majority of the album was created using a Fender Strat, vst synths, samples from Nintendo 64 games, and a metric ton of digital effects.  These effects transform the music through the use of phasers and reverb.  

This is in stark contrast to the percussion, which has minimal processing and is clear as day throughout the album. The melodies take us to oceans of imagination while the percussion reminds us that we are still on Earth.  While this seems paradoxical, the songs were written with this in mind and are all the better for it.  

The opener, Guilt is the best example of this dichotomy.  The song begins with a simple guitar riff that is heavily processed with phasers and reverb.  Close your eyes and imagine floating in an endless sea, that is how this sounds.  The percussion makes a pronounced entrance containing no processing outside of the snare.  That same feeling of being at sea is present but now there are solid objects to hold on to rather than just floating aimlessly.  This contrast is what the album establishes as its core sound.  The rest of the album takes us on a journey to see how these seemingly opposing forces can be explored together.

Sometimes these explorations take us to the ambient end of the spectrum.  Ground Zero and Fill the Void are both prime examples of small interlude tracks where the listener is allowed to breathe between the more pronounced songs.  Other times these explorations take us to the truly otherworldly.  Life in Death takes the listener to a completely different plane of existence with its absolutely haunting vocals and minimalist architecture.  

So many of the songs on the album highlight the compositional strength of TotS, but none quite as well as the combination of tracks Dilapidated Heart and Lost.  This duo of songs showcase a 13 minute masterwork of music composition and narrative without using a single word.  Dilapidated Heart takes all of the melody that has occurred to this point in the album and deconstructs it until only a whimper of any melodic trace exists in a sea of ambience.

Lost returns the album back to melody and structure, but in a very slow and deliberate style.  A simple piano melody repeats throughout the track and with every repetition the album takes a new turn, adds another layer to its ever growing swell.  By the end of the song the composition has grown so massive, with so many layers that it's nearly overwhelming.  A stark contrast to both how it started and how Dilapidated Heart ended.

Over the runtime of these songs the listener is taken through a journey.  A journey where everything is stripped away and then slowly built back stronger than it ever was before.  The songs lay out a musical analogy that I'm certain many people can relate to.  Having something tear away at you until there is nearly nothing left - rock bottom.  What is there to do from that point?  You can only ascend, often stronger than we ever were before.

TotS describes his writing process as starting with a single element and using that as a foundation to build everything else on top of.  This is evidenced in Escape and the Reset, where a motif is established early and maintained throughout the track.  When samples are used, he equated them to a canvas that he is free to paint his original compositions over.  Finally he stressed that timbre is one of the most important aspects of producing his music, spending a lot of time tweaking the sounds until they feel right.  

It needs to be noted that some of the tracks on this review have been omitted from the vinyl release.  Guilt, Escape, and Come to Terms have all been cut. These cuts were made by VILL4IN to fit the album onto one record.  In his own words: “I was honestly really happy with the end result, it feels more cohesive than the original release.  I felt that Guilt and Come to Terms did not really meet the vision I had wanted to create in terms of mixing.”

The moniker of “Tower of the Sun” is based on a dream he had when he was a young teen.  The dream came at a dark time in his life, where dreams offered an escape from reality.  He dreamt of being on top of a large tower, the sun shining brightly without a cloud in the sky.  A large pool of water lay below with a myriad of people in it.  On the tower lay an insignia of a sun, looking like a compass.  This imagery is the perfect analogy for the sound present on Reset.  A solid mass in the middle of a vast body of water with the sun and its warmth pointing us in a direction of where to go.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tower of the Sun for taking the time to discuss his album at length with me as well as give details about the origins of the project.  As always thank you to Blissmonkey for editing and promotion.