ALPHA CHROME YAYO - Dead Air
Review by KIZUNAUT
Alpha Chrome Yayo is North Ireland’s brightest synth star who has been winning the hearts and minds of listeners far and near since 2018. His style is difficult to pin down, offering an absolutely unique mix of retrowave, jazz fusion, video game music, ambient and new age influences with a decent sprinkle of humor. More than a singular sound or style, his prolific output has been defined by his love of conceptual releases. He has made EPs and albums dedicated to lighter themes such as cooking and golf, but also themes such as ghosts and an (allegedly) true local legend of a “suburban sorceress”.
Dead Air continues his tradition of thematic releases, this time with a darker theme that is a perfect fit for the spooky season. Described as “brain-boiling radio waves, cathode ray nightmares and low poly panic“ on Bandcamp, Dead Air seems to draw equal amounts of influence from ghoulish media of the past and the newer art of analog horror, a faux-documentary style of horror storytelling building myths of lost broadcasts and unearthed tapes telling of terrible things.
Alpha Chrome Yayo has been historically talented at conjuring up very particular vibes for his releases, and Dead Air is not different. The occasionally cartoony, occasionally somber, sometimes hair raising, sometimes surreal vibe of the album is extremely unique. It feels at times like the UK concept of “video nasty” given life, a digitized homunculus of a cultural concept, retromancy of the best sort, music that looks into the past with a vision to articulate. Beyond finding fun, horror and strangeness in past media, there is perhaps also a bit of a subtheme of media addiction to it all. This sort of conceptual work in music is reminiscent of the vaporwave scene's best offerings.
The style of production is about as diverse as the music found on the album, offering a mix of digital neo-retro tunes, a few more atmospheric numbers and some murkier and stranger sound explorations. A halloween snack buffet of digi-synths populate the album, from the potent FM basslines and shrill beeps and clicks to video game sounds, hypnagogic synth pads, washes of digi-noise and bright keys. It’s all a fair bit more energetic, even danceable than some of his earlier, more ambient offerings.
Nevertheless, the production has a bit of a carefree, atmosphere-oriented vibe to it even at its hardest, though it’s not as lush or ambient as some of his earlier work. This isn’t for people looking for earth-shattering optimized kicks or eardrum bursting snares, but there is a kind of early 90s clarity to it all. The instruments feel very well placed in the sonic range most of the time and there is purity and precision to even the gnarliest of tones. Taken at its context, the production choices work well, but perhaps a production style that really embraced the analog horror aspect with a few sprinkles of tape hiss, VHS distortion and grave dust could have elevated the work even more.
Alpha Chrome Yayo has had a knack for finding vibrant, unusual visuals for his music. The artwork for Dead Air isn’t as colorful as some of his other albums, featuring a demonic entity emerging from TV static, presented as a physical album cover wrapped in plastic. While there is nothing wrong with the artwork per sé, I feel like it doesn’t quite encapsulate the deliriously colorful range of music in the album, feeling a bit more like something fit for more traditional darksynth.
When it comes to the actual music on offer, the album has 18 tracks of ghosty and gobliny synth toe-tappers, creepy twisted city pop-infused weird-out pieces and unusual graverobbed adaptations of pre-existing songs with a couple of pieces sitting outside of these categories.
The album opens with Intro//The Sigil, a quick atmospheric burst of terror, before moving into the title track Dead Air. The title track offers a very satisfying mix of sinister churning basslines, a strange but addictive beepy synthline and a variety of creepy atmospheric synth lines, topped off with distorted voice samples talking about strange broadcasts.
Drowned in 120ft of Suffocating Static offers a strangely chill take on the digi-morbid subject matter, offering shimmering synth pads, swirly atmospherics and breathy vocoder lines over deep basslines and driving beats.
The next track Cathode Ray Chewed sounds almost like a piece of music from some kind of horror-themed Sega action game with it’s bouncy FM basslines and rad but ghoulish leads. Alpha Chrome Yayo also demonstrates his lead guitar chops on this track. A big favorite from the album and I wish it was longer!
Dissolver is a curious piece of hypnagogic horror pop, offering morbid vocoder lyrics over a rather relaxing instrumental of bright yet chill synths, passes of electric piano and a laid-back digital beat, an ode to rotting away in front of your TV.
The next song is first of the covers on offer, a reverb-drenched piano rendition of Franz Liszt's Liebesträume No. 3, here subtitled the Gut Machine, perhaps a nod to analog horror’s tendency of using twisted versions of past music as an element.
The next track, Bloodthirsty Little Imp picks up the pace and offers a mix of deep, groovy basslines, deranged arps, distorted spoken lyrics and straight up screaming over a nice house-influenced beat. One of my favorites from the album for it’s off kilter vibe and powerful energy.
Black Noise offers a mix of deep basslines, sad bells, a slow beat and a shrill lead, painting a mournful, serious atmosphere. Radio Smack lightens up the mood a bit with it’s fun mix of pulsing basslines, chiptune leads, groovy beats and Alpha Chrome Yayo rapping(!) about the titular radio smack. Both of these rank among my favorites from the album, for polar opposite reasons.
Tectonic March is a synth rendition of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Slavonic March, Op. 31, played on a variety of digital synths that make it sound straight out of the soundtrack of some archaic horror game.
Next comes Funeral In My Brain which is a performance of I Felt A Funeral in my Brain by Emily Dickinson, offering a very ambient piece dominated by hypnotic, swirly pads and vocoded lyrics that allude to an almost comic kind of horror.
P0rtcullis is almost more of a sound effect than a song, offering a rapid-fire chiptune transition into the next track. Coffin Full of Cables offers a fun, very videogame-esque mix of rapid arps, organs and melodies mournful and curious alike. It would not sound out of place in some kind of a halloween themed platformer. Another favorite from the album.
Shards offers a mix of bright, percussive keyboards and strange digital noises that sit somewhere between liquid and crystal, the whole painting a curious yet somber mood. Rhapsody in Black is is a reimagining of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, offering a mix of tectonic piano lines, creepy whistling sounds and chiming keyboards that paint the soundtrack of a black and white horror movie.
Bunker 47 is pure analog horror in it’s mix of sinister ambient sounds and computer generated dialogue between two characters, talking about power failures and the need to complete a ritual. The next track Last Transmission offers an uncanny juxtaposition of a kind of relaxed, jazzy instrumental with organs that occasionally slip into dissonance and a computerized voice spilling out gruesome lyrics. Notable for its inclusion of acoustic drums.
The Last Transmission is however not the last track of the album, as that honor belongs to The Black Broadcast. It offers a mix of driving rhythms, creepy arps, swirly pads, sharp keyboards and a thumping beat that goes into double-time during the latter half of the song. Breathy vocoded lyrics talk about flowing with electricity and seeing the future and the past. Sonically and thematically it feels like the album summed up, and it is a very fine way to end the album.
Dead Air offers a fun and varied mix of music for the Halloween season that however also has substance beyond the first bite. Some may find the very eclectic nature of the album off-putting, but for me, it created an atmosphere quite like nothing else. Alpha Chrome Yayo has shown himself to be once again an artist capable of conjuring up interesting, fresh concepts. For those not familiar with his work and who have an appetite for lost horror game soundtracks, errant broadcasts and exhumed video tapes, the album is well worth checking out.
