Giant Claw "Soft Channel No. 1" [single] (Heligator Records)

[$1 to Download // https://heligatorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/soft-channel-no-1]

If you are not a fan of Giant Claw already then I feel rather badly for you because you must be missing out on some rather great music.   Most times, I like to put artists in genres that are general for any number of them.   Giant Claw, as proven on "Soft Channel No. 1", is just a genre within itself.    It's not "vaporwave" or "electronic" or "chillwave" or any of those things.    Giant Claw is its own genre.

Interestingly enough, the proceeds from this song will be donated to maintaining a library at the Malindza Refugee Camp in Swaziland, Africa.    You don't have to know anything else about that other than the fact that libraries are good and this music is good so show your support.   Most people within the United States have public libraries they can access for free so any way you can support a library- in my opinion- is a good cause.

      I would probably say you should put your money down for this even if the song was by a most horrible artist or at least someone I didn't enjoy.  But now you can hear great music while feeling like you're doing something good for humanity.    There is really no reason for you not to do this.

QuiVive "Astral Gatecrashing"

[Name Your Price Download // http://quivive.bandcamp.com/album/astral-gatecrashing]

This is my first time hearing QuiVive not on cassette and it's the first release after the cassette I reviewed, so with all of the statistics out of the way let's get into the music.    It begins with these dark sort of rock n roll guitars and then drums come in as well.   The first song just has this overall tribal feel to it as there are ahh's and what also sounds like bongos and steel drum rhythms.     The second song changes it up into these bell tone patterns that skip and then the drum machine kicks in with them.

Within the second song that is this certain rhythm that although instrumental makes you want to sing still.   It goes do-do-do-doo-do-do-doot-doo and unless you hear it then it might not make sense to you.    This is key because the next song has female vocals of sorts over it as hip hop beats are spliced into it as well.    The hip hop beats do become a theme during some of the other songs as well, so it's hard for me to say that this is a specific genre but rather an exploration of several genres.

Really slick guitar notes come out on a song that is fittingly called "fast.cars" while some sort of frequency changes groove with the beats on the last track.    I have different perceptions of what vaporwave is but I can tell you that this is probably not that.   It could be chillwave, but that seems like such a broad term to me and I only want to use it because a) this music is chill and b) I feel like it should be in a genre that ends in "wave".

      As much as I always tend to think about how that is that and this is this, I want to sit around one day and really get a true understanding of not only what all of these different genre names mean (look at the tags on Bandcamp if you genre search) but just how if we take a certain number of them and cross them over into one another what that could be.   (What is chillwave + hip hop + the guitars + etc.)    The trouble is I simply don't have time because instead of attempting anything of that sort I would much rather listen to music such as this.