RQ GUEST MIX 015: ADAM HARPER (Rouge's Foam) - THE BLUE LIQUID MIX

MIX: RQ Mix 015 - Rouge's Foam - The Blue Liquid Mix

In the increasingly fast-moving post-critical landscape of online music culture, Adam Harper's writing provides an opportunity to take stock by its willingness to engage a serious critical discourse around the unwieldy post-everything churn. He's put together a mix for us under the name Rouge's Foam. And honestly, he's one of our favourite music writers around right now, so have a look at his pieces on Dummy, especially the excellent recent two-part feature on "Vaporwave" and "Distroid", as well as his blog Rouge's Foam.

Here's what Adam had to say about his mix:

The Blue Liquid Mix explores a recent hi-tech / future feel, but one that goes beyond vaporwave and dystopian pop art. The tracks here are bizarre, beguiling and sometimes disturbing, and yet they’re also remarkably subtle, detailed, and beautiful in genuinely alien ways that might hardly seem to make sense at first.

It’s so named because many of the artists on the mix have some connection to the idea of water, be it in their name (‘I AM WATER’, ‘Lōtic’ – whose name means ‘inhabiting or situated in rapidly moving fresh water’), the title of tracks they’ve done on the mix (‘Aquilateral’) or elsewhere, or their record label’s ocean imagery (Indigo Bunting, on Coral Records). More broadly, it’s part of this corner of web culture’s recent interest in elemental matter and its formal properties, in the science of flow, fluidity and freshness – the stuff of life, but not the old, gnarled Nature of yesterday. This blue liquid courses through the elegant engineering of tomorrow’s ecosystems, where organics merge seamlessly with strange new machines: a water-based but future biology.

The mix is divided into three parts – two outer parts mostly in a dance or dance-like mode and an inner section, focused on downtempo beats, that steadily increases in speed and crystalline complexity. Two sound collages by Diamond Black Hearted Boy bridge the inner section changes. Shout out to the labels Fluorescent Records, Sewage Tapes, Aural Sects, UNO NYC, Coral Records, Zoology Records, Mishka NYC, Nightcore Records and #Feelings. To Tiny Mix Tapes, to the Tumblrs of Coolmemoryz and Ghoststream, and of course to Rose Quartz.

Tracklist:

00:00 - I AM WATER: ‘DREAMB0Y’ (from DREAMB0Y - http://auralsects.bandcamp.com/album/dreamb0y)

4:11 - Lōtic: 'Rendez-vous' (from More than Friends EP - http://feelingseverywhere.bandcamp.com/album/more-than-friends-ep)

7:17 - Nguzunguzu: 'Drop Cage' (from Warm Pulse EP)

10:09 - Karmelloz: 'Kirstin's Song' (from ArchaiC - http://sewagetapes.bandcamp.com/album/archaic)

12:21 - Arca: 'Meditation' (from Stretch 2)

14:40 - Diamond Black Hearted Boy: 'Playstation Monk™' (from SoundCloud - http://soundcloud.com/diamondblackheartedboy)

16:00 - BLK SMK: 'Goodnight Everyone' (from Nuggets to Dunk EP - http://flurex.org/album/nuggets-2-dunk-ep)

18:10 - 私はやせすぎだったら: 'Palace' (from 私はやせすぎだったら - http://sewagetapes.bandcamp.com/album/--2)

20:05 - a i r s p o r t s: 'Dont Need U' (from a i r s p o r t s - http://sewagetapes.bandcamp.com/album/a-i-r-s-p-o-r-t-s)

22:21 - O L D M O M S: 'SWAMP LIFE' (from MELT JAMS EP - http://oldmoms.bandcamp.com/)

24:43 - Glass Eyes: 'Makes New Life' (from Approval - http://zoologyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/approval)

26:52 - The-Drum: '/BZE' (from Sense Net EP - http://mishkanyc.bandcamp.com/album/sense-net-ep)

30:19 - Diamond Black Hearted Boy: 'e², (Formulation of the Female Species)' (from SoundCloud - http://soundcloud.com/diamondblackheartedboy)

31:14 - Shisa and Choongum: 'Hearts (GH Remix)' (from Hearts - http://shisa.bandcamp.com/album/hearts)

35:43 - Indigo Bunting: 'Fhlostan Paradise' (from #Seapunk Volume 1 - http://coralrecords.bandcamp.com/album/seapunk-volume-1-limited-edition-cd-r-splash001)

38:50 - HONEYCOMA: 'Disconnect' (from HONEYCOMA - http://nightcorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/honeycoma)

42:13 - Khan Kurra: 'Aquilateral' (from World View EP - http://flurex.org/album/world-view-ep)

45:49 - Pepsi7up: 'Over the Rainbow 1' (from Soundcloud - http://soundcloud.com/pepsi7up)