Wistfulness + Dreampop x Y2K Aesthetic =

October 11, 2020 4:23 PM

2020 getting you down? Future of the Earth looking too bleak? Are you (or someone you love) a Millennial aching to relive the lost optimism of your youth? Come over to my home world, Planet 1999. There’s a Party in your ears and it sounds like a sad AI trained on every Cocteau Twins album at once.

Interview

Another Interview

Devotion (Video)

Live At Appleville

Devotion (album, 2020)

Official Homepage

posted by Lonnrot (6 comments total)

This one's a little sparser because they haven't released a whole lot yet, but Planet 1999 have been my favorite newer artist this year. They've perfected a sound that captures the pang of nostalgia for a dream world that never quite existed except in the collective subconscious of pop culture. It's super pretty.
posted by Lonnrot at 4:26 PM on October 11, 2020

It sounds like shopping at The Limited at White Oaks Mall ca 1990
posted by fluttering hellfire at 4:57 PM on October 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Caro: I guess it’s always a bit sad.
Charles: Yes, sad but hopeful too. Most of the music we listen to is melancholic.

The effect is, to me, a middle-aged man, extremely uncanny; it's like listening to Air's Moon Safari for the first time again, sweating in an unairconditioned car, but my own melancholy is that that past is gone. The video is a fascinating jumble of signifiers, waving for the audience's attention at unremarkable things like 3.5" disks and tiny backpacks, where what would have been absolutely mind-blowing in 1999—the endless piling-up of people on dollying cameras with green screens, with dynamic transitions—is just presented there like it's no big thing.

Melancholy shoe gaze synth pop from a never-realised 1999 is as close to being haunted by Mark Fisher's ghost as we're ever going to get.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:04 PM on October 11, 2020 [9 favorites]

This is great - I'm always looking for more in the chillwave/vaporwave vibe. Reminds me a little of George Clanton/Esprit: Bleed, Livin' Loose, Trip II the OC.

It sounds like shopping at The Limited at White Oaks Mall ca 1990
It does - I always hung out at Aladdin's Castle, though
posted by Otherwise at 5:35 PM on October 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

it sounds like a sad AI trained on every Cocteau Twins album at once.

Hmm, as a Cocteau Twins fan -- a couple of their albums can almost always fix whatever is wrong with my mood -- I'm not getting that at all. But then, I am not a Millennial either.
posted by Foosnark at 6:19 PM on October 11, 2020 [3 favorites]

jeez i genuinely though Bleed was '80s not mid '2010s vaporware! that's some fidelity!
posted by lalochezia at 7:21 PM on October 11, 2020