Diskette Park – Radiant Covenant
Radiant Covenant
Diskette Park
Album
Signalwave
Liam Murphy
November 20, 2024
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A nightwalk can go two different ways, dependent on your surroundings. It could be a calming meander, full of faint lights, wind breezes and empty landscapes. Or it could be bustling roads alive with people or cars, even shops and boutiques catering to all sorts of needs and desires. For EPSON & CHANNEL SELECT, however, the listener has a walk down both directions, with their distinct brand of lo-fi VHS music and vaporwave. This collaborative split EP ventures through EPSON’s calming night walks, passing by and picking up with CHANNEL SELECT at the midpoint before it eventually focuses on the artist’s funk-laced city nightwalk.
NITEWALK (INTRO) gives a sultry but smooth introduction to the nightwalk, one primarily made of a saturated Steely Dan sample, which many will associate with a swinging city vibe. This tone doesn’t bloom into a more crowded sound, however. The thrumming 808s on DRIFTIN and GEMINI dive more into a classic smooth vaporwave sound. Both tracks provide cool synth pads, the former also featuring sharp funk guitar.
Bubbly adventure MOONSIDE is a short bubbly adventure, conjuring visions of a walk with no real destination. SUZIE BLUE ends EPSON’s journey as the choppy soul samples are coiled around with quicker 808 loops, before cutting out for the soul sample to sift through completely.
After ending his part, we then head off with CHANNEL SELECT’s midnight jaunt. While a little shorter than EPSON’s, CHANNEL SELECT compensates for that briefness with looser compositions and booming beats. slam dunk instantly conveys what CHANNEL SELECT’s tone will be for the rest of the night, all shuffling beat loops with spiky vocal samples around it. cruise follows a similar formula within its three-minute runtime, with the chunky percussion lines digging in quickly between the vocal snippets peeking through. The infrequent vocal samples that float to the top, ‘nothing left to say’ are crooned passionately, like some lingering thought in the walker’s mind.. made glimmery and bright by the city lights.
Alright has a slower groove, owing to the evident R&B sample used, shifting the focus on the vocal samples that simmer on the top of the percussive bombast. After recovering through the nimbler loops of next day, CHANNEL SELECT ends off his path with heavy (outro), shaking apart the soundscape to the point that it starts to break down completely.
Starting off with grace and ending with instability, EPSON & CHANNEL SELECT wondrously convey this nighttime arc. EPSON’s chillier textures and tones on tracks with brief runtimes cap off what soothing embrace there is in the softer, quieter moonlight, while CHANNEL SELECT gives it their all with booming, sometimes future funk-style beats with chunky percussion and spasmodic sampling compositions that represent the bustling soundscape parallel to the hushed neighbourhood. EPSON & CHANNEL SELECT is a two-toned yin and yang night walk experience.
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