Listen: 'The Peach Disc' By Ezzyland
25 October 2018
“The year is 3038 and humans have alienated themselves to the point where their only interactions are through the cosmic wide web...”
Honestly, the future that Ezzyland describes in the description of his new LP 'The Peach Disc' doesn't sound as far in the future as 3038. Looking at how things are going in 2018, alienation and a complete dependence on the world wide web (fine, maybe not cosmic) is where we seem to be headed within the next decade or two.
In the current global political climate, complete isolation doesn't sound like too bad a thing, does it? Especially when Ezzyland proposes that the imaginary future gives us the space to “do what we've always wanted to do from the dawn of modern civilisation – poorly express ourselves, eat fruit and f**k”.
Ezzyland made this proposition all too tempting, particularly when he topped it with his new album, which is inspired by 'The Golden Record' installed aboard the Voyager spacecraft. For context – the Golden Record is two phonographs launched into space in 1977 by NASA, which carried images, audio and musical selections from different cultures and era. They were launched into space with the hope that if the spacecraft was ever encountered by extraterrestrial forms or future humans, the records would work as time capsules to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
With the number of samples that are loaded onto this LP, it's easy to see where Ezzyland found inspiration. But if this really were the Golden Record, extraterrestrial forms would be duped into believing that the only music on Earth is from the Brainfeeder catalog – which seems to be becoming less a label and more a genre day by day (perhaps that will be one of the characteristics of the near future).
'The Peach Disc' has all the bassy noise and lo-fi glitchiness one has come to expect from Ezzyland – trickling melodies scattered by chunky, discordant beats; occasionally trading in the hip-hop for straight-up electronic. A beatless, atmospheric 'forever in my nightmares' launches the LP, quickly giving in to the lo-fi, glitchy samples of 'bubblegum pizza' (yum). 'soul calibre' stands out from the rest of the tracks, for Ezzyland's spaced out vocals and the nuanced contemplative quality of the track.
Cacophony and tempo build up in the album as we progress on to tracks like 'follow me space tumbleweed' and 'lotion', and the wet, sludgy bass of 'sludge bomb', before it abruptly ends on a cliffhanger. Was there a cosmic disturbance that interrupted the deluge of isolation? Did the world implode, or get warped into a black hole? Or did we jerk awake from our incredibly brief – less than 20 minutes long – outer space adventure, only to wake up and find ourselves drooling over the screen of the cosmic wide web?
I guess we'll never know. Maybe Ezzyland could have provided us answers had the LP been a bit longer, the tracks more fleshed out. Until then, all we can do is listen to 'The Peach Disc' (below) and sink back into the future:
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Words: Satvika Kundu