Stackeology 101-2: Sweet Trip - Velocity ; Design : Comfort
The main creative force behind Sweet Trip is Roberto Burgos, a semi-professional music producer who seems to spend most of his time these days as a Silicon Valley software engineer, according to his LinkedIn. The album he created along with band members Valerie Reyes, Viet Le, and guest artists Aaron Porter and Sue Mee, released in 2003, is the second of three LPs in Sweet Trip's run. It's a great first listen. It's one of those albums that simply doesn't sound like anything else. The album takes shoegaze, IDM, dream pop and glitch and smashes them all together to create a sound equal parts analog and synthetic. Indeed, this is a concept album specifically addressing such matters. It purports to be the sound of a human and a computer gradually beginning to understand each other. The first two tracks "Tekka" and "Dsco", can be interpreted as establishing these two characters. "Tekka" overwhelms with its torrid, razor-sharp glitchy blasts, while "Dsco" is a syrupy, poppy, shoegaze-y tune where we first encounter Valerie Reyes' delicate vocals. From then on, these two sounds begin to intertwine, until they each become essential components of the whole. It's a really cool concept on paper.
As for the execution? Despite a 73-minute run-time, there's little in the way of filler or ideas played out too long. That being said, I can definitely see this album being criticized for going too far in the other direction -- for moving too quickly from one idea to the next. There are many times on this record where a delicate melody and or groovy progression will emerge, only to be smashed into oblivion by a wave of glitch electronics, never to return. This would be a problem, if Sweet Trip weren't so good at one-upping themselves with each successive section. Repetitive, structured songs don't much emerge as much as wonderful, poppy, technicolor soundscapes.
Most importantly, I really, really love this record. It's just gorgeous. It can evoke emotion with metallic electronics, catchy melodies, walls of guitar noise, or all three at once. It's at times very danceable, and it is always buoyantly cheerful. If Velocity : Design : Comfort is about the growing interrelations of man and machine, it is thoroughly optimistic about the outcome. I hope you find it in the stacks and give it a listen. I think it'll be worth your time.
Noah Stafford
Note: I recommend against listening to this with cheap earbuds. Some of the glitchy parts of this album can be nearly painful to listen to if you're listening through speakers with very tinny high-end.