A Vapourwave Nationalist Review of Street Smarts - VHS LOGOS

 

   Street Smarts - VHS LOGOS   

The next album VHS LOGOS released was 2020's "Street Smarts". A much more funky and groovy addition to VHS LOGOS' library. Coming out 6 years after his debut album, it was a welcomed entry. Street Smarts massively improves upon Mantra's usage of sample loops, and takes VHS LOGOS' sound in a direction of an authentic 80s funk style, while retaining all the aesthetics of vapourwave as a genre, with all the songs having that nice crunchy effect that makes it feel like you're listening from a cassette player.

-- Track 1 : Singularity --

Singularity starts off with a formula we're accustomed to with VHS LOGOS' style in Mantra. A simple sample loop, implementing the classic vapourwave techniques of the glitchy repeating, as if the tape has gotten stuck. The track having a peaceful and calm atmosphere to it, which gets blown away quite quickly by the next song.

-- Track 2 : Sony --

Sony shows how much VHS LOGOS evolved his style and craft from his first album release. While yes, it is another track that implements sample loops, it implements many of them to create a genuinely unique song that, because of the effects on it sounding perfect, and authentic to a VHS tape, gives the feeling of finding an old music tape from your parent's collection, and popping it into the tape player for the first time in years.

It's no wonder that this song is one of VHS LOGOS' most popular songs, with 2.6 million listens on Spotify.

-- Track 3 : Telefunkin --

Telefunkin then quickly transitions from Sony into this funky head bopping beat, showing that VHS LOGOS is truly leaning into his musical inspirations, and while being just one or two sample loops on repeat, it somehow feels very fresh and unique, and doesn't get boring or tiring. It also serves as a nice interlude into the next song, which is one of my personal favourites.

-- Track 4 : Chimerical --

Chimerical is a very calming song for the first half, using the classic techniques to crunch the song down and make it sound vintage, keeping it slow but funky as a build up for the second half, where the effects are dropped to speed up his sample of Heatwave's "Big Guns", and change the sound from being massively dampened and crushed to being "real" and like a live performance. As the track name implies, potentially the listener listening to the song through their sound system, and when the halfway point occurs, they begin to fantasise about the song in their head, internalising it and putting on a live performance.

-- Track 5 : Funk4Real --

Funk4Real is a very potent track, and I would argue falls more into Future Funk territory, which is not a complaint as it's exciting to see VHS LOGOS expand into other genres that obviously draw from his inspirations. The track starts sounding like the listener switching from the end of one song to another, which seems to be somewhat the story of the album. Where Mantra was someone watching late night TV, Street Smarts feels more like someone listening to the radio through a boombox.

-- Track 6 : L'Esprit --

Track 6 returns us to a brief calm respite once again more attuned to Mantra's style of song. The song features a man speaking intelligibly after the sound of a tape being loaded into a deck, which to me seems like moving on from the radio, to moving onto the listener's personal mixtape as from here on out, the songs get more varied in style and genre compared to the rest of the album thus far.

-- Track 7 : Night Bus --

Night bus is an interesting track as I would say it's extremely synthwave based, and is a new sound to VHS LOGOS. It contains the classic synthwave drums you'd expect and really stays true to the name of the track, as I could definitely imagine myself travelling on the last bus or train home while blasting this song. It gives a very melancholic but hopeful feel to the listener. This song samples Frank Ricotti's "Lonely Streets" and definitely took inspiration from the song's name. The lonely streets, empty as the final night bus for the day flies past them under the warm streetlights.

-- Track 8 : Savage 1997 --

Completely changes pace from Night Bus and takes us into a highly funky dance beat. As you can see, the breakneck difference from Night Bus gives the feeling of someone's personal mixtape, playing their favourite tunes. Savage 1997 samples Big Daddy Kane's "Set It Off", transforming it so much from a hip-hop tune to something authentic and you'd expect to hear in a nightclub in the 80s and 90s. It's completely commendable how powerful of a transformation this is, the original song is almost completely unrecognisable outside of a few lyrics that are barely noticeable.

-- Track 9 : Streets of 90's --

From funky dance beat, we go straight into a funky sample loop that then transforms and becomes more complex as the song goes on, changing tempo twice and committing to a head bopping vibe. The song samples Double You's "Looking At My Girl", but once again completely transforms it into something completely different to the original, to the point where it's, again, unrecognisable. Truly showing off the capability VHS LOGOS has to turn any sample he gets his hands on into something new and exciting.

-- Track 10 : Soulful --

Soulful is a much more "pop" track, that starts off simple, but becomes more complex as the song goes on, adding in more instruments and sounds, while also slowing down the song and dragging it out, and layering on the effects to make the song feel like the music player's batteries are running out, and warping the sound of the tape as it's unable to play at the correct speed.

-- Track 11 : Unreal --

Soulful directly leads into Unreal, which still continues the pop sound, but keeping the reduced tempo. Unreal samples The B.B. & Q. Band's "Time for Love", turning into from a disco funk tune, into a very calming, classic vapourwave tune, that's still very funky. While a very good song, it's not VHS LOGOS most impressive or complex song. 

-- Track 12 : The End --

As the song's title says, this is the final track in the album and starts us off with the sound of a cassette player either rolling forward or backward their tape, with the "click" side being them finding their desired place, landing on our final song. The final song gives me the vibes of an outro for a game show back in the 80s and 90s. The song gives us an upbeat and cheerful send off, and ends with the cassette player automatically shutting off, implying the listener's tape has reached the end.

   Summary   

Street Smarts is a HUGE improvement over Mantra in terms of musical ability and ambition. While Mantra is very true to vapourwave in terms of sheer aesthetics and the "lazy" nature of early vapourwave to simply, slow down, reverb, repeat, and bit crush songs, Street Smarts truly hits us with plenty of originality and brilliant tunes that VHS LOGOS obviously put plenty of passion into. While the album is very short, it's EXTREMELY memorable and you can remember every song after only a few listens. It also shows that VHS LOGOS is very open to experiment with his music and dabble with other genres, which will be evident in his latest album "FAST, RAW, LUV" when I get around to it.

The 6 years it took to get this release were definitely worth it, and truly put VHS LOGOS name on the vapourwave scene. The way VHS LOGOS manages to organically capture the feel of 80s and 90s street nostalgia with this album is commendable, with many songs feeling like they would sound completely natural playing from a boombox in the local hangout spot. Just as a side note too, this album sounds amazing on my Walkman, and sounds so genuinely raw and authentic, like as if came directly out of the 80s and 90s.