Virtua.zip

This album gives me such a sense of peace, but one of an inherently surreal fashion. As if I am floating in a void of dazzling colors. It is all empty, yet all filled: an endless, weightless mass of colorful gas. It is the very instantiation of nostalgia itself; as incomprehensible as it is overwhelming.

The closest comparison I can make is when Edward Elric sees “the truth” in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood after trying to reincarnate his mom. For those who haven’t seen the show – also, to clarify, I have only seen the first few episodes myself so far – the scene in question involves Edward going through what is looks like a tunnel of visions as his mind is filled to the point of nearly bursting with knowledge. It is unclear how long this lasts; it ostensibly is over in an instant, but it just as well could have felt like an eternity the way it is portrayed. The result is an intemporal quality that appears alien to any conventional understanding of the passage of time. The moment both lasts forever, and no time at all. It exists in a pocket that can be visited rather than being an event that happened in a linear sense of beginning and ending.

The reason I dedicate this amount of an album review to a scene from an anime that I have only just recently begun is because the nature of my fascination with said scene is the same as my fascination with the bizarre, sometimes eerie, sometimes comforting sense of nostalgia that Virtua.zip instills within me. This sense of nostalgia is specifically one for memories that are not mine, maybe no one’s. For a time and space parallel to our own: familiar, but inherently foreign.

This phenomena I am describing of nostalgia in a purely general capacity is simultaneously nonspecific, and paradoxically precise. It is clearly hearkening to something, but of unknown origin. It feels like the platonic ideal of nostalgia, such that the feeling conjured is much more significant than any specific memories evoked. It is nostalgia for a world that never was, for a time past that never happened. It is also one present not only in Virtua.zip, but much of the genre of vaporwave as a whole, which George Clanton has long been an influential participant of. The same is true for Clanton’s other music, such as his incredible 2023 release Ooh Rap I Ya.

Ultimately, this is a project that is every bit as transfixing now as I am sure it was 12 years ago when it dropped. I was already a great fan of Clanton’s work, and I am overjoyed to have just now discovered yet another stunning demonstration of his talents.

Favorite Song: gameover.wav