James Ferraro paints a 21st century still life on his debut album for Hippos In Tanks. The record is called Far Side Virtual. Each song, a melodious reflection of the moment NOW, comes shrink-wrapped in HD fidelity as glossy as a 2012 Toyota Prius. Ferraro’s muse is some enigmatic modern metropolis, where the streets are as slick as i-Pads, and where the symphonies ring with Macbook message alerts. Through the steam rising from our latte mocha chinos, he invites us to gaze out at the dreamy disorientation of our digital lives. Imagine a Darius Milhuad-guided tour of 5th Avenue. Imagine a Whole Foods bakery that sells only cakes emblazoned with frosting replicas of Camille Pissarro's “Haying at Eragny.” These are the surreal utopias Ferraro brings to life with sixteen swirly-pop concoctions sure to sell out at the candy stores.

Music Reviews: Far Side Virtual by James Ferraro released in 2011 via Hippos in Tanks. Garmin Unlocker Alternative Downloader. Genre: Vaporwave.

So slip in your ear buds, and welcome to Far Side Virtual. ITunes: For online orders please order from one of the following record stores: Genre Contains tracks by published on 2011-12-12T02:54:16Z • • • • License: all-rights-reserved.

Boomkat Product Review: For the past seven years or more James Ferraro has been mapping out the MTV-reared, internet-scrambled parapsychology of an entire f*cked up generation, releasing countless tapes, CD-Rs and LPs to expound and expand his pungently postmodern vision. Recently that slew has abated a little while he's been preparing this full-length for Hippos In Tanks, and now we can see why: Far Side Virtual is by far the most evolved, immersive, accessible and acute Ferraro offering to date, at once a major departure from his previous work and a perfect distillation of his long-standing themes. On first contact, the shedding of his long-standing lowest-fi aesthetic in favour of punchy, pin-sharp production is a bit of a shock, but ultimately this strategy proves all the more subversive; rather than simply commenting on the beast of hyper-consumerism, he's now broadcasting from within it its Gatorade-lined belly. With titular references to Google, Mac, wi-fi, Pixar and Starbucks, conceptually it's an attempt to capture something of the vulgar way we live now; sonically the whole thing is a psychedelic fantasia on the kind of music you hear when on hold to a dodgy insurance agent, or soundtracking a TV ad for dial-0800-GET-THIN diet pills - all cheap synths, glitzy chimes and oversexed saxophones, melodies deeply sinister in their utopian promise. There's still that all-important tape-bounced, hypnagogic distance to proceedings, but for the most part what we have hear is a kind of unheimlich techno-pop that's like nothing else out there, and yet instantly, eerily familiar - thanks to its roots in the audio-visual shrapnel of the everyday.