Macintosh Plus - Floral Shoppe review

As an album, Floral Shoppe (2011) from Macintosh Plus (who also goes by the name Vektroid), is a relaxing mix of ambient dissonance and many manipulated samples from the past. It's for many among the 'mainstream' or 'netstream' the flagship seminal Vaporwave piece that represents the visual and sonic aesthetic of the genre. The album contains works that are loaded with, if not entirely composed of, samples from 80s/90s audio media and 80s/90s technology (such as computer start up and old program sounds.) This post is going to follow through and evaluate each track on Floral Shoppe, from its sonic elements to how those interior elements fall into and represent the audio qualities of Vaporwave.

1:ブート (Booting)
First off, in terms of length of the song in the context as an opener track we're looking at around three minutes. This isn't nearly the longest track on here but isn't one of the shorter ones either. The song is made entirely out a manipulated, heavily slowed down version of "Tar Baby" from the artist Sade's 1985 album "Promise." It's mostly the song playing out without much interruption, just slowed down. It feels passive and unaggressive. Periodically the artist does go back and loop some sections and play previous sections over the current, prominent sounds. At the most you have three different points in the track playing at the same time. Some people say this isn't very creative while others say it leans more experimental or playful.

2: リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (Lisa Frank 420/ Modern Computing)
If you've only ever heard one Vaporwave track, odds are high that it's this one. Seriously, this is The Vaporwave track from anything to simple examples, but mainly, to jokes and the 'meme culture' that surrounds the genre. This track is in its entirety a slowed down version of Diana Ross' 1984 track "It's Your Move" off of the album "Swept Away." The same comments about creativity on the opener track can definitely extend to this one. This is a heavily ambient sound created here.

3: 花の専門店 (Flower Shoppe)
At this point you may be noticing a pattern of not just sampling, but making tracks almost entirely out of a sample. The sample in this track is "If I Saw You Again" off the self-titles album from Pages in 1978. In terms of editing, it's a bit more on the Booting side of things with a bit more actual editing and manipulation of the sample in the track. Opening guitar and drums are stopped and repeated at regular intervals that great a dissonant atmosphere, but a smooth one that then contrasts the slowed down version of the track when the repeating stops. It almost feels like a sci-fi neo-jazz type sound at the speed it has.

4:ライブラリ (Library)
The sample here is the track "You Need a Hero" from Pages off of their 1981 self-titled album. What we get here is a 2 minute 43 second track that is a slowed down version of the song. The only other edits that are up front made to the sample are some points where one of the main melodies is repeated and played on top of the ongoing track. Because of the slow down, the jazz vibes are made even smoother. You could say, even less crispy.

5: 地理 (Geography)
This is really interesting because this song's main sample is the underwater level theme from the 1997 Turok videogame. It's mostly just once again a slowed down version with some selective track layering but that doesn't mean that the sound isn't super entrancing and relaxing, because it is. It takes something that I assume was to add to the action elements of an action game and makes it dreamlike.  
6:  ECCOと悪寒ダイビング (Chill Divin' with ECCO)
If the previous song was calm and dreamlike, this track is actually a dream, or at least, that's the feeling it seems to be going for and comes off with. Using the sample of "Deja Vu" from Dancing Fantasy's album "Worldwide" (1993) the song comes off as a sleeping ocean of sound, and by that i mean it's an extremely ambient and slow song. Think elevator music or the background sound in a spa. It's calm with the goal of calming. Though once again, from a creative standpoint, this track is another within the "slow down and introduce repetition at some points" formula of this album. Though in the end, the path to get to the piece doesn't affect the piece of music itself. 

7: 数学 (Mathematics)
This track once again takes a piece from Dancing Fantasy's 1993 album "Worldwide", this time heavily utilizing the self titled track. The track is very transformative with this sample though. It all opens up really ambient, noisy, and fuzzy, bordering on glitch noise and continues into an insert of the sample's saxophones. As the track continues the background glitch noise fades into the background somewhat and the horns take more foreground space. A very passive and positive track at an over 6 minute runtime.

8: 外ギン Aviation (Foreign Banks Aviation)
This track adds onto Flower Shoppe's list of songs that use Dancing fantasy's "Worldwide." The sample here is Carioca Groove. The track feels like the title implies. It feels like you're relaxing at a swanky tropical airport, early for your flight, spending your time lounging around and taking in the fresh air and upscale scenery. Out of all the tracks here, this one sounds the most entirely positive. By that I mean consonant, most of, if not all, the other tracks on Floral Shoppe utilize a lot of crunchy, or dissonant, harmonies that create a constant surreal atmosphere, but "外ギン Aviation" is sticking itself firmly in a serene actuality.

9: て (Te)
No matter where you may look, it seems like it might be impossible to find a proper source sample(s?) for this song. It seems every noise in this is original, or it's such a deep mix of multiple samples that you can't identify an original. At face value, the feeling that falls out of this song is like the game save screen of an old JRPG, which is fitting considering the Vaporwave mold of old technology and media. The track cracks at peak high notes with the fuzz of an older SD television and creates an atmospheric that seems fitting to the realm of witches and wizards or Final Fantasy.

10: 月 (Moon)
This track makes fantastic use of the song "I Only Have Eyes for You" from Zapp's 1988 album The New Zapp IVU. It's simultaneously disorienting and a banger. The main thing this track does is slow down the main sample, but doing that really transforms it. It's an otherworldly ambient atmosphere that is really easy to get your body into thanks to the thudding repetitious bass and long vocal notes being stretched out for so long due to the slow down. This is one of the top tracks on the album. It's dizzying and almost on the verge of danceable at the same time. 

11: 海底 (Seabed)
This song breaks the established mold of this album and the general definition of Vaporwave to some extent by featuring a very contemporary sample of Jamie Foxx's "Sleeping Pill" from the album Best Night of My Life (2010). Imagine the previous track, but more poppy.  It's the same general approach, but the pleasant atmosphere is promoted to something mainly in the dissonant space that causes the track to sit mostly in the "uncomfortable" ambient range. And in a very Vaporwave move, this track just sort of ends at 2:18. 

What we can take away from this album is that it's an incredibly unique ambient piece that can satisfy somebody looking for something on the experimental side. There are known qualms in regards to the creativity, or lack there of, related to Floral Shoppe and whether or not Macintosh Plus is really producing new work here because they pull so heavily from each sample. I think those comments are pretty quickly dismissed once you see how Macintosh Plus is so transformative with every sample used. Floral Shoppe takes something familiar and turns into something that is simultaneously still familiar and absolutely different at the same time.