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Far Side Virtual
Far Side Virtual is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on October 25, 2011 by Hippos in Tanks. Conceived as a series of ringtones, the album marked Ferraro's transition from his previous lo-fi recording approach to a sharply produced, electronic aesthetic that deliberately evokes sources such as elevator music, corporate mood music, easy listening, and early computer sound design. The album has been interpreted as engaging with themes such as hyperreality, disposable consumer culture, 1990s retrofuturism, advertising, and musical kitsch.
Far Side Virtual was met with polarizing but generally positive reviews, with most critics commending its conceptual underpinnings and noting its ambiguous relationship to its subject. It was named album of the year by British magazine The Wire, a decision which was met with contention from some journalists and readers. The album has since been cited as one of the forerunners to the internet microgenre vaporwave as well as its offshoot utopian virtual.
Ferraro explained that his original idea had been to release the sixteen compositions on Far Side Virtual as a set of downloadable ringtones, but wanted the songs to have the impact of a complete album. He felt that few would want to purchase the music as a set of ringtones, but said, "Hopefully these songs [will be] made available for ringtone[s] 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." Ferraro said that listeners using songs from Far Side Virtual as ringtones was the realization of the album as "a performance art installation".
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."
Ferraro created Far Side Virtual with the Apple audio software GarageBand, 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". He said, "This is ringtone music meant to be experienced on the post-structuralist medium, the smartphone." Ferraro frequently described it as a musical still life of the 21st century, specifically the year it was released. Electronic musician Dan Deacon praised the album for its unaltered, standard MIDI sound. The sources of most of the album's found sounds have been described as "perversely commonplace", and include the Skype log-in sound and synthesized voices that appear to mimic interactivity.
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." 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."
The album was retrospectively tagged as one of the most influential releases to vaporwave, a genre mostly spread via the Internet and identified by its adoption of dated electronic "corporate mood music" and ambiguously ironic attitude.
The album's cover artwork displays a pair of iPads displaying abstract designs (with one placed as a head on a tuxedo), superimposed over a low-resolution image of 5th Avenue in Manhattan as viewed in Google Street View. Explaining the title in an interview, Ferraro said:
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Far Side Virtual
Far Side Virtual is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on October 25, 2011 by Hippos in Tanks. Conceived as a series of ringtones, the album marked Ferraro's transition from his previous lo-fi recording approach to a sharply produced, electronic aesthetic that deliberately evokes sources such as elevator music, corporate mood music, easy listening, and early computer sound design. The album has been interpreted as engaging with themes such as hyperreality, disposable consumer culture, 1990s retrofuturism, advertising, and musical kitsch.
Far Side Virtual was met with polarizing but generally positive reviews, with most critics commending its conceptual underpinnings and noting its ambiguous relationship to its subject. It was named album of the year by British magazine The Wire, a decision which was met with contention from some journalists and readers. The album has since been cited as one of the forerunners to the internet microgenre vaporwave as well as its offshoot utopian virtual.
Ferraro explained that his original idea had been to release the sixteen compositions on Far Side Virtual as a set of downloadable ringtones, but wanted the songs to have the impact of a complete album. He felt that few would want to purchase the music as a set of ringtones, but said, "Hopefully these songs [will be] made available for ringtone[s] 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." Ferraro said that listeners using songs from Far Side Virtual as ringtones was the realization of the album as "a performance art installation".
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."
Ferraro created Far Side Virtual with the Apple audio software GarageBand, 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". He said, "This is ringtone music meant to be experienced on the post-structuralist medium, the smartphone." Ferraro frequently described it as a musical still life of the 21st century, specifically the year it was released. Electronic musician Dan Deacon praised the album for its unaltered, standard MIDI sound. The sources of most of the album's found sounds have been described as "perversely commonplace", and include the Skype log-in sound and synthesized voices that appear to mimic interactivity.
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." 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."
The album was retrospectively tagged as one of the most influential releases to vaporwave, a genre mostly spread via the Internet and identified by its adoption of dated electronic "corporate mood music" and ambiguously ironic attitude.
The album's cover artwork displays a pair of iPads displaying abstract designs (with one placed as a head on a tuxedo), superimposed over a low-resolution image of 5th Avenue in Manhattan as viewed in Google Street View. Explaining the title in an interview, Ferraro said: