Fishscale/V/: New.Entry-Transmission.Whatever.Wetnightmares.
Screamscapes.and.corporal.malfunctions//The movie theater has gone dim. The Kodak camera has lost its reel. The Mall is shuttered. The video store is closed. The soundtrack plays on the tape deck, scrambled. The Pyrex takes a nap for the evening. The national anthem plays after dusk behind a scrambled pornographic transmission. The ICE is out tonight and the night is on fire. The sky looks like a dead screen. No stars in the sky. No whistling wind. No connection. No firmware in a pushup brazier to tune into the right nocturnal frequency. Just dead space and a static filter, not even the air could be trusted with authenticity. Media never sleeps. The television stays on. It’s always on and watching us, omnipresent and instigating, a rabble rouser and a shit talker galvanizing the masses into herds and stampedes at the press of a button. A planned reaction to the insurgency of law. What have I walked into? They say revolution is out in the streets but, it’s all a mixer, a munch, a social fellatio, what have I walked into, a gaggle of geeks, gooners, meat pacifiers and skin socks – repeating what the TV eye and the cardboard says. All in step and out of order. For sincere reasons and free will – although dictated in silent vibration from the overseers Morse code. Engineered resistance to a problem that will be solved and locked down with dystopia and monitored by A.I. screws. Then. Here come the star fuckers and the vampires the celebrities and leeches. Lead by the pimps. The publicists. Celebrity cameo appearances in the back rows of protest. Kissing babies. Shakin’ hands. Only there for the photo-op and never joining rank at the frontline. Pretenders; actors; slaves to corporate rations and privilege; no gunplay, no backbone, just a game in the end. A hologram of a leg-wit-ammo, a box of blanks, rambling his gums into the void for a star on the avenue. Not here. It’s just another dead night and about this same dead time every night. They reenact and replay the same playlist and cosplay their childhood dreams. A boulevard of vapid dreamers, chipping away at the surfaces and hurling the city like feces at pigs, drones, naysayers and the npc. Nothing more but performance art against the machine. Showroom Dancers. With color commentary by your favorite content creators; jesters and critics feeding off the algorithm. Crossing their palms with silver traded in from your attention and likes; bunch of Svengalis and pied pipers in the new preachers clothes not like them but living a karaoke life in sheeple skin. A generation nursed on instant gratification through an umbilical usb cord detached from the contaminated coarse weather of reality and living one TikTok moment after another in some perverse REM sleepwalk. All copyrighted and sponsored by your elitist fascist overlords full-throttling their plans into a doomsday reset scenario and the birth of the new religion. Sponsored by oligarchs. You are all sleeping. Make it a better dreaming. Get into your phalanx formations. Red Dawn. Bravehearts. Look to your brother-in-arms. And behold leading the ranks. Not random protagonists. Imagine, just imagine under those hoods in the front. A fantasy.  – unveiled is the avengers or at least those that play them. Imagine yourselves rejuvenated with angst and righteous rage as those performers now possessed by the spirits of the IP that propelled their public image holding the line. As Christ Evans with trash lid in one hand and the stars & stripes in the other raised high; RDJrD2 in his aluminum foil iron armor inspiring courage in you. As descending from the rooftops with karambit gloves and fury in his teeth screaming to the heavens that “this is our ENDGAME!” is Hugh Jackalman too. Tears in your eyes and love swelling up in your frail chest and throats, “They’re here!” “The Avengers are here”. ”This is it!” A moment of our lifetimes when all men can lock shields and crush the oppressors under the tidal wave of change. freedom. and a better tomorrow. Something Aragonidus would say. What a dream that could be, Teen Wolves. Fleeting. Transitioning. Remixing. Getting carried away on a channel surf. The sequence again scrambled. The channel switched on everyone. All because the common man has lost his remote control. It’s been in the hand of the bad men this whole time. The bloody bag men. The usurpers. The adversary. The ones who remake, mutilate and remaster our memories and script our futures. The sky is a dead screen. The stars are blacked out. It’s just us in here and the movie rolls on. The show goes on. The empire strikes back. As everyone plays Sophie’s Choice every week on which Hot Topic to rally behind next. From the killing fields to local inconvenience. These aren’t freedom fighters this is the mob. And Rome knows its mob. How to fatten them up and keep them occupied with spectacle and gossip. The enemy knows the system. And the only responsible response is too crash the system. Crash N’ Burn. Hack the dream and make it yours.
Then. Then, I woke up. And the theaters were screening, the video store was open, the soundtrack restarted and the sky was in high resolution. What a beautiful sunset. The TV dinner smells amazing. That’s when I woke up. And forgot what I was dreaming about. //////….then WW3 began.
SamHaiNe

• Bonus: Chinatown (visual video) HaiNesVille:

Glitchy, funky and drenched in 80s’ corporate culture kitsch, ‘On the Telephone’ will have you dancing then drooling all over the living room floor as your friends call for an ambulance. Chasing down the sounds of that sweet after-work drink gone off the rails, ‘Preferred Stock’ feels like a dosed-up trip across the city night, lit by the ambulance warning lights flaring across the neon-paved landscape.

Tagged onto the release is the announcement of an upcoming EP and Album for the coming year, and we couldn’t be more chuffed to hear what Nmesh has in store for us.

On The Telephone / Preferred Stock by Nmesh

Nmesh ‘On the Telephone/Preferred Stock’ is out now on bandcamp.

Favorite tracks : Homepage, Downtown, Lonely Heart

Corrupt Save ‘Ethernet Cafe’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Favorite tracks : Escaping the Void, Signals

Timecop1983 ‘Multiverse’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Expanding upon the sounds of their self-released 2020 single ‘Lunar’, Ultrasound is a vivid portrait of sonic serenity delivered with true passion oozing out of every track.

Favorite tracks : Lifted, Spiral, Murmurs

A.L.I.S.O.N & Hotel Pools ‘Ultrasound’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Favorite tracks : Heartache!, Date Night Deluxe, Love Language

Pan!c Pop ‘Goodbye, 5o 5oon…’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Disc System ‘In Silico’ is out now on Bandcamp.

Virtual Vega by Evertt

Evertt ‘Virtual Vega’ is out now via Puget Sound Collective on Bandcamp.

This is the story of 2 rogue scientists on a space travelling adventure to save mankind…err, wait, this seems familiar, haven’t we seen this before? Rewind.

Somehow Dr. Mantis Quade survived the VECTORWOLF attack of 1988. He retreated to Venus where he spent the following decades rebuilding his galactic empire. He maintains a totalitarian control through a sentient A.I. known as the Hypervisor which has society locked into an algorithm grid of mindless servitude. This A.I. is housed in a virtual cyberspace known as The Battle Program. Despite this, Quaid is left unfulfilled and wants his old life back. He plans to build a time travel machine that will enable him to return to 1988, rewrite history, restore his beloved original empire, and reconnect with his lost love, Syntrina, an android, who unbeknownst to him is a double agent. In reality, this is an extremely risky endeavor that will likely cause the destruction of the universe.

To power his time travel device, Quaid will need to amass a large quantity of one of the universe’s most powerful resources, Nostalgia Crystals. Quaid’s chosen base, the planet Venus, just happens to be home to the largest Nostalgia mines in the known galaxy.

Our heroes from the last story, the 2 rogue scientists, have spent this time under the control of the Hypervisor and have grown jaded and disillusioned. Thankfully, Syntrina underwent a stealth mission to enter The Battle Program and untether them from the algorithm grid and alert them to Quaid’s potentially catastrophic plan. Unfortunately, their key weapon, the mysterious and immensely powerful “VECTORWOLF” device was badly damaged during the first attack on Quaid back in 1988. To repair this device, the rogue scientists will also need to get their hands on some Nostalgia Crystals. They must travel to Venus and infiltrate Quaid’s base and its Nostalgia mines. Once the weapon is repowered, our heroes can use it to unleash an oscillating wave beam that will annihilate Quaid and his empire once and for all.

Can our heroes mine enough Nostalgia to save mankind, again?

If the band’s plot summary isn’t enough to sell you onto the wild ride that is Forgotten Future 2, I don’t know what is. Perhaps… the fact that the album even features Darksynth-lord Gost and Highway Superstar? Though the album will undoubtedly polarize Retrowave purists, VECTORWOLF’s latest will definitely go down as 2022’s boldest most noteworthy releases. For those about to embark on the rollercoaster ride: strap in tight.

VECTORWOLF ‘Forgotten Future 2’ is out now via Rosso Corsa Records on Bandcamp.

Favourite tracks: Silvia, For You Baby

BarbWalters ‘Apex’ is out now via Business Casual on Bandcamp.

Late Arcane ‘non-canon’ is out now via Business Casual on Bandcamp.

Engaged by 80s Stallone

80s Stallone ‘Engaged’ is out now on Bandcamp via TimeSlave Recordings