Far Side Virtual

Far Side Virtual
Studio album by James Ferraro
Released October 25, 2011
Genre Vaporwave, electronic, avant-garde
Length 45:29
Label Hippos in Tanks
James Ferraro chronology
Night Dolls With Hairspray
(2010)		 Far Side Virtual
(2011)		 Sushi
(2012)

Far Side Virtual is a 2011 album by James Ferraro, released digitally and on vinyl by the label Hippos in Tanks. The album marked Ferraro's transition from his previous style of lo-fi drone music toward a sharply produced electronic aesthetic. Far Side Virtual is inspired by and deliberately evokes elevator music and sound design found in obsolete computer sound effects. Ferraro said he first conceived of the album for release as a series of ringtones, but later extended them to full songs with short pop structures.

The album engages with themes like hyperreality, simulacra, disposable consumer culture, 1990s retro-futurism, advertising and branding, pop art, and musical kitsch. Critics have found Ferraro's attitude toward his themes ambiguous, depicting the modern world as both bleak dystopia and uncanny utopia.

The album received generally favorable reviews, with many critics admiring its conceptual underpinnings as much as, or more than, the quality of the music itself. The album also had its vocal detractors; particularly, its position as UK music magazine The Wire's number one release of the year was met with contention from some readers. Far Side Virtual has been cited as one of the original catalysts of vaporwave, an underground electronic music movement that covers much of the same sonic and conceptual territory.

Release

James Ferraro (pictured in 2012) changed to a clearer, electronic sound for Far Side Virtual while continuing to explore themes from his previous work.[1][2][3]

Far Side Virtual was announced in May 2011 as Ferraro's first LP for the label Hippos in Tanks.[4] The label first released the digital EP Condo Pets, intended to preview the sound of the forthcoming LP. Karen Ka Ying Chan, writer for Dummy, identified the theme of the two releases as Ferraro's "fascination of the surreal side of American living".[1] Amber Bravo of The Fader said Far Side Virtual had been "billed somewhat as a cultural critique as told through MIDI-synths."[5]

Ferraro's satirically written announcement for the album read, in part; "all the proceeds from Far Side Virtual are going towards my facial reconstructive plastic surgery, my new face will be fashioned after CCTV's satellite queen, Princess Diana. and you will be able to see it live in concert on the Far Side Virtual World Tour.. Always coca cola."[4] The tracks "Adventures in Green Foot Printing" and "Earth Minutes" were released in advance of the album.[6] Far Side Virtual was released on October 25, 2011, as a digital download and a 1000-copy run of transparent vinyl records.[7]

Ferraro later explained that his original idea had been to release the sixteen compositions on the album as a set of downloadable ringtones,[8] but wanted the songs to have the impact of a complete album[9] but felt that few would want to purchase the music as a set of ringtones.[8] Ferraro said, "Hopefully these songs [will be] made available for ringtone and the album will be condensed into ringtone format so the album won't be the centerpiece, it will just dissipate into the infrastructure. The record is just the contained gallery space of these ringtone compositions."[10] Ferraro said that listeners using the songs from Far Side Virtual as ringtones is the realization of Far Side Virtual as a performance art installation.[11]

Music and critical interpretation

The cover of the album displays a pair of two iPads displaying abstract designs, laid over a low resolution image of 6th Avenue viewed through Google Street View.[12] Explaining the title in an interview, Ferraro said:

Far Side Virtual mainly designates a space in society, or a mode of behaving. All of these things operating in synchronicity: like ringtones, flat-screens, theater, cuisine, fashion, sushi. I don't want to call it "virtual reality," so I call it Far Side Virtual. If you really want to understand Far Side, first off, listen to [Claude] Debussy, and secondly, go into a frozen yogurt shop. Afterwards, go into an Apple store and just fool around, hang out in there. Afterwards, go to Starbucks and get a gift card. They have a book there on the history of Starbucks—buy this book and go home. If you do all these things you'll understand what Far Side Virtual is — because people kind of live in it already.[13]
"Adventures in Green Foot Printing"
The first song released from the album, "Adventures in Green Foot Printing" is an example of Ferraro's use of clean production and keyboards inspired by 1990s era computer sounds.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

The sources of most of the album's sounds were described as "perversely commonplace" by a music critic,[14] and include the Skype log-in sound, the Windows XP shut-down melody and synthesized voices interacting with the listener.[15] Ferraro created Far Side Virtual with the Apple audio software GarageBand,[8] which brought out the "cheap digital sound" he desired, and called it a "[r]ubbery plastic symphony for global warming, dedicated to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is ringtone music meant to be experienced on the post-structuralist medium, the smartphone."[11] Ferraro frequently described it as a musical still life of the 21st century, specifically the year it was released.[10][11][16] Far Side Virtual was retrospectively tagged as one of the first, and most influential, releases in vaporwave, a genre mostly spread via the Internet and identified by its adoption of dated electronic "corporate mood music" and ambiguously ironic attitude.[17][18][19]

Andy Battaglia compared the feeling of the music to the online virtual world Second Life, the city-building game SimCity and the work of experimental filmmaker Ryan Trecartin.[12] Adam Harper of Dummy called it a "pastiche [of] a kind of music you never knew you knew existed: techno-capitalist stock promotional music for the era of the personal computer ... Each track is bristling with the maximalist promise of a world of possibilities waiting behind the screen for your double-click, and evokes a time when we were much less familiar with and cynical about the virtual world technology has brought us into."[20] Bomb writer Luke Degnan wrote, "This is what Far Side Virtual does for 45 minutes—it reminds the listener that these sounds were born digitally and will die digitally. This is a digital album for a digital age."[21]

Critics have compared Far Side Virtual to the works of video artist Ryan Trecartin, cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, and the virtual world of Second Life.[12][22]

Ferraro said, "When I made Far Side Virtual, I was really into grime. I lived in Leeds for a year and I used to hear to kids listening to instrumentals on their phones, rapping over the top. I love the way that sounds: the texture of super compressed digital beats coming out of a cellphone and just a voice over it. Far Side Virtual was inspired by hearing music like that."[23] Electronic musician Dan Deacon praised the album for its unaltered, standard MIDI sound.[24] Commenting on the production style, Joseph Stannard of The Wire wrote, "In contrast to the audio soup of Ferraro's earlier recordings, these tracks have a spacious, architectural feel that recalls Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass and Rush."[3]

Critics noted that the album abandons the veneer of noise that coats Ferraro's previous releases while retaining—and reimagining—the form and ethos of noise music. Ferraro said "it's still in the tradition of noise."[8] According to Bomb magazine writer Luke Degan, the album is unlike the "reverbed-out, feedback-laden noise music" of Ferraro's earlier music, but instead represents the noise of the "digital age."[21] A Fact writer said, "there's no distortion, no tape-hiss, no obvious underground signifiers... [but] this new cleanness and clarity to the Ferraro aesthetic hasn't diminished the hallucinatory power of his music... [the songs] will terrify you to the core even as they evoke the soundtrack of a third-tier Melanie Griffith rom-com or a forgotten Phil Collins B-side."[17] Another critic said, "while Ferraro is interested in issues of distance and impermanence, there is no lo-fi fuzz or warm nostalgic haze to temper how flat and ugly the music he's referencing on Far Side Virtual is."[2]

Like Ferraro's previous albums Night Dolls with Hairspray[22] and Last American Hero,[1] Far Side Virtual explores American culture of the present and recent past. A writer from French music blog The Drone described Far Side Virtual as a concept album inspired by the ideas of hyperreality and simulacra from the post-modern cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard.[22] Harper wrote, "Up until Far Side Virtual, many of James Ferraro's albums were impressionistic lo-fi portraits of bygone eras – perhaps on Far Side Virtual he decided to represent the present as is and then let nature take its course, over time, and do the aging for him. Returning to it in ten or twenty years time, we might discover that it was ironically a victim of its own futurist acceleration, and is now about as up-to-date as a ten-year-old carton of milk."[17]

English music critic Simon Reynolds said that while the album's song titles allude to the 21st century, the album is sonically reminiscent of the 1990s and that Ferraro shares interest in that time period with contemporaries like Oneohtrix Point Never. Reynolds wrote, "Far Side Virtual seems to undertake an archaeology of the recent past, conjuring the onset of the internet revolution and 90s optimism about information technology. But that recent past could equally be a case of 'the long present' in so far as the digiculture ideology of convenience/instant access/maximization of options now permeates everyday life and is arguably where faint residues of utopianism persist in an otherwise gloomy and anxious culture."[25]

Reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic77/100[26]
Review scores
SourceRating
Drowned in Sound7/10[27]
Fact[15]
Pitchfork Media7.6/10[28]
Spin6/10[29]
Tiny Mix Tapes[30]

Far Side Virtual was met with greater critical attention than Ferraro's previous releases. Just over a year after its release, Marc Masters at Pitchfork wrote that "Far Side Virtual became Ferraro's most discussed and divisive effort, landing on year-end best-of lists as often as it got dismissed as a joke."[31] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 77, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", based on seven reviews.[26] Critics tended to agree that Far Side Virtual takes the state of 21st-century consumerism as its subject, but there was no consensus regarding whether Ferraro intended to satirize, criticize or embrace this condition.[32] Brandon Soderberg said that the album's concept "seemed critic-proof, which was frustrating ... Negative reviews could be dismissed as the listener's simply not getting the joke."[33]

The Wire published a favorable review by Joseph Stannard, in which he wrote "If it is an elaborate put-on—and I suspect Ferraro isn't averse to a chuckle at the expense of his audience—Far Side Virtual still feels like the culmination of numerous releases' worth of research and development. ... Whether or not its creator is giggling through a bong smoke haze, Far Side Virtual is a convincing evocation of the digital dreamtime."[3] Stefan Wharton of Tiny Mix Tapes' took the album as a statement about blurred boundaries between consumers and their technologies, citing the writing of Markus Giesler as a precedent. Wharton said, "Far Side Virtual succeeds in exciting the collective memory of that generation now so conjoined to its technological appendages."[30] In Pitchfork's review, Soderberg wrote, "the songs here are exactly the same as what they're ostensibly parodying, which is bold and maybe even the point. ... You suddenly realize you're listening to 45 minutes of utilitarian music that doesn't really have a purpose. Can something be utopian and dystopian at the same time? Probably. Maybe even always."[28]

Steve Shaw of Fact called the album "an intense immersive listening experience that is both deeply comforting and unsettling at the same time" and said "arguably, it is more a piece of art than a collection of music. ... Compositionally, Far Side Virtual is truly frenetic, nothing safe from Ferraro’s meddling, all elements completely malleable and at the mercy of his eccentric imagination."[15] Spin gave the album a three-star review, and the staff reviewer wrote that Ferraro "makes a glowing, glossy album out of everyday digital detritus. If you can wade through the excruciating sitar-synths, bank-lobby melodies, home-fitness techno, and infomercial drum breaks, Ferraro's playfulness blips into view."[29]

End-of-year acclaim and The Wire controversy

Far Side Virtual appeared on several best of 2011 lists and features. In Tiny Mix Tapes's end-of-year wrap-up column on nostalgia in pop music, Jonathan Dean wrote, "You may want to throw Far Side Virtual against a wall upon hearing its relentlessly arch, kitschy blandness, but it manages to successfully turn pop against itself, which, like it or not, is a politically progressive project. Its pure, bold conceptualism stood out in a year that was dominated by the 'febrile sterility' of post-internet microgenres and tail-swallowing postmodernism."[34] Music critic Jonah Weiner cited Far Side Virtual for his end-of-year article on contemporary protest songs, and called it "antagonizingly, alienatingly, wondrously bland."[2] Fact named Hippos in Tanks the best label of the year, listing the signing of Ferraro and subsequent release of Far Side Virtual as one of its finest accomplishments.[35]

Tiny Mix Tapes included the album as its 21st-best album of the year, and summarized the album as "hyperreal... frivolous... eerily familiar and scarily comfortable: pop structures moving one step closer toward the 'synthetic music box' from Huxley's Brave New World."[36] Fact ranked Far Side Virtual as its sixth-best album of the year, and called it "[t]he finest, most accessible example yet of James Ferraro’s ability to turn the detritus and dreck of US pop/commercial culture into gold – or, at any rate, something stomach-turningly psychedelic, mentally disturbing yet oddly celebratory."[37] Dummy named the album one of its "12 albums for 2011," and Ruth Saxelby concluded that Ferraro "neither celebrates nor critiques the internet's reign but simply observes it with deep fascination. Andy Warhol style, it reflects the ambiguity of consumer culture in the digital age back at us with a Pixar-animated wink."[38] The album placed at 316 on The Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll, with votes from four critics.[39]

Far Side Virtual topped The Wire's top 50 releases of 2011[40]—a choice that proved to be polarizing among readers.[33][41][42][43] Writing to elucidate the "low mandate" for the album, editor-in-chief Tony Herrington noted that only seven of 60 voters included Far Side Virtual on their lists, and no voters chose it as their personal favorite. Herrington said the choice was "entirely appropriate in a year in which the abundance of choice brought on by digital technology reached such a tipping point as to make genuine consensus impossible. ... you either swoon over the conceptual audacity of its deadpan appropriation of late capitalist-era corporate mood Muzak, or you think it's the worst record Dave Grusin never made."[43] Tiny Mix Tapes' Dean wrote that after Far Side Virtual topped The Wire's list, "discerning music nerds have felt the imperative to step to either side of a line," and that Herrington's column "amounted to a retraction."[42] While praising the magazine for its diverse taste, Seattle Weekly's Eric Grandy jokingly commented that it was "no surprise" that the "willfully obscurantist" magazine would top their list with a "winking Windows '97 soft-rock hellscape".[44]

Track listing

  1. "Linden Dollars" – 1:57
  2. "Global Lunch" – 2:13
  3. "Dubai Dream Tone" – 1:49
  4. "Sim" – 2:53
  5. "Bags" – 3:25
  6. "PIXARnia and the Future of Norman Rockwell" – 1:44
  7. "Palm Trees, Wi-Fi and Dream Sushi" – 2:39
  8. "Fro Yo and Cellular Bits" – 2:19
  9. "Google Poeises" – 3:51
  10. "Starbucks, Dr. Seussism, and While Your Mac Is Sleeping" – 2:25
  11. "Adventures in Green Foot Printing" – 3:28
  12. "Dream On" – 3:07
  13. "Earth Minutes" – 4:17
  14. "Tomorrow's Baby of the Year" – 1:49
  15. "Condo Pets" – 3:31
  16. "Solar Panel Smile" – 4:08

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ka Ying Chan, Karen (September 14, 2011), "James Ferraro - Condo Pets [stream]", Dummy, retrieved March 10, 2013
  2. 1 2 3 Weiner, Jonah (December 19, 2011), "Best Music 2011: The year's best and weirdest protest songs", Slate, retrieved March 10, 2013
  3. 1 2 3 Stannard, Joseph (November 2011), "James Ferraro Far Side Virtual Hippos In Tanks LP", The Wire, no. 333, p. 58
  4. 1 2 "James Ferraro preps new album for Hippos in Tanks", Fact, May 3, 2011, retrieved March 10, 2013
  5. ↑ Bravo, Amber (September 13, 2011), "Stream: James Ferraro, 'Eco-Tot' + 'Text Bubbles'", The Fader, retrieved March 10, 2013
  6. ↑ Fitzmaurice, Larry (October 18, 2011), "James Ferraro: "Earth Minutes"", Pitchfork, retrieved March 10, 2013
  7. ↑ Lynch, Will (September 27, 2011), "James Ferraro preps Far Side Virtual", Resident Advisor, retrieved March 10, 2013
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Interview: James Ferraro And His Music Multiverse", Red Bull Music Academy, March 6, 2012, retrieved March 10, 2013
  9. ↑ Chan, Julia B. (March 1, 2012), "Ring up the curtain for James Ferraro", San Francisco Examiner, retrieved March 10, 2013
  10. 1 2 Hoffman, Kelley (October 25, 2011), "James Ferraro's Versace Dreams", Elle, retrieved March 10, 2013
  11. 1 2 3 Gibb, Rory (December 15, 2012), "Adventures on the Far Side: An Interview With James Ferraro", The Quietus, retrieved March 10, 2013
  12. 1 2 3 Battaglia, Andy (December 8, 2011), "James Ferraro and Ryan Trecartin: 21st-century creatures", The National, retrieved March 10, 2013
  13. ↑ Friedlander, Emilie (November 30, 2011), "Artist Profile: James Ferraro", Altered Zones, retrieved March 10, 2013
  14. ↑ Corrigan, Zac (September 4, 2012), "Music review: Replica from Oneohtrix Point Never and James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual", World Socialist Web Site, retrieved March 10, 2013
  15. 1 2 3 Shaw, Steve (November 11, 2011), "James Ferraro: Far Side Virtual", Fact, retrieved March 10, 2013
  16. ↑ Hockley-Smith, Sam (December 14, 2011), "Interview: James Ferraro", The Fader, retrieved March 10, 2013
  17. 1 2 3 Harper, Adam (June 12, 2012), "Comment: Vaporwave and the pop-art of the virtual plaza", Dummy, retrieved March 10, 2013
  18. ↑ Gibb, Rory (November 8, 2012), "The Month's Electronic Music: Through The Looking Glass", The Quietus, retrieved March 10, 2013
  19. ↑ Lhooq, Michelle (June 24, 2013), "Is Vaporwave The Next Seapunk?", Vice, retrieved November 27, 2013
  20. ↑ Harper, Adam (September 15, 2011), "Borne into the 90s [pt.2]", Dummy, retrieved March 10, 2013
  21. 1 2 Degnan, Luke (Spring 2012), "James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual", Bomb, retrieved March 10, 2013
  22. 1 2 3 Lamm, Olivier (March 12, 2012), "James Ferraro Interview", The Drone (in French), retrieved March 10, 2013
  23. ↑ "James Ferraro: Bodyguard", Dazed & Confused, July 6, 2012, retrieved March 10, 2013
  24. ↑ "Guest List: Best of 2011", Pitchfork, December 21, 2011, retrieved November 17, 2013
  25. ↑ Reynolds, Simon (December 6, 2011), "Maximal Nation", Pitchfork, retrieved March 10, 2013
  26. 1 2 Far Side Virtual Reviews, Metacritic, retrieved March 10, 2013
  27. ↑ Gardner, Noel (November 2, 2011). "Album Review: James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual". Drowned in Sound. Silentway. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
  28. 1 2 Soderberg, Brandon (November 4, 2011), James Ferraro: Far Side Virtual, Pitchfork Media, retrieved March 10, 2013
  29. 1 2 "James Ferraro, 'Far Side Virtual' (Hippos in Tanks)", Spin, October 25, 2011, retrieved March 10, 2013
  30. 1 2 Wharton, Stefan, James Ferraro: Far Side Virtual, Tiny Mix Tapes, retrieved March 10, 2013
  31. ↑ Masters, Marc (November 27, 2012), "James Ferraro: Sushi", Pitchfork Media, retrieved March 10, 2013
  32. ↑ Krimper, Michael (January 5, 2012), "Revisiting the Music of 2011: Dissent, Censorship, and Apocalypse", Hydra Magazine, retrieved March 10, 2013
  33. 1 2 Soderberg, Brandon (January 13, 2012), "Bebetune@: Inhale C-4 $$$$$", Pitchfork Media, retrieved March 18, 2013
  34. ↑ Dean, Jonathan (December 2011), 2011: Dispatches from the Pop Museum, Tiny Mix Tapes, retrieved March 10, 2013
  35. ↑ "10 Best: Labels of 2011", Fact, November 22, 2011, retrieved March 14, 2013
  36. ↑ Román, Carlos (December 2011), 2011: Favorite 50 Albums of 2011: 21. James Ferraro Far Side Virtual [Hippos in Tanks], Tiny Mix Tapes, retrieved March 10, 2013
  37. ↑ "50 best: albums of 2011", Fact, November 30, 2011, retrieved March 10, 2013
  38. ↑ Saxelby, Ruth (December 16, 2011), "12 albums for 2011 - James Ferraro's 'Far Side Virtual'", Dummy, retrieved March 10, 2013
  39. ↑ "New York Pazz and Jop Albums", The Village Voice, retrieved March 10, 2013
  40. ↑ "2011 Rewind Chart: Top 50 Releases of the Year", The Wire, December 2011, retrieved March 10, 2013
  41. ↑ Ewing, Tom (December 23, 2011), "Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, Part Eight: What Happened When Skrillex Helped America Discover Rave", The Village Voice, retrieved March 10, 2013
  42. 1 2 Dean, Jonathan, BEBETUNE$ - inhale C-4 $$$$$, Tiny Mix Tapes, retrieved March 10, 2013
  43. 1 2 Herrington, Tony (December 9, 2011), "Suffering through suffrage: Compiling The Wire's Rewind charts", The Wire, retrieved March 10, 2013
  44. ↑ Grandy, Eric (December 21, 2011), "My Top 5 "Best of 2011" Lists: NPR Muzak, Mendacious Consensus, and More", Seattle Weekly, retrieved March 10, 2013

External links

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