Palmbomen II – Memories of Cindy

Memories of Cindy passes like a soothing, aesthetically consistent train journey, with little detail standing out

Album Review by Ross Devlin | 02 Feb 2018
Album title: Memories of Cindy
Artist: Palmbomen II
Label: Beats in Space Records
Release date: 26 Jan

To be young in a world where phones and computers were dull office objects – and, primarily, the concern of adults – was to grow up where the TV was the center of a household. They were heavy things, with an irritating glow from the phosphor coating on the screen. The programming couldn't be controlled. You just turned it on and stared at whatever emerged. The image quality was saturated and often twitched with the weather, an imperfect rendering that producers like Kai Hugo seem to covet.

As Palmbomen II, Hugo creates an aesthetically consistent techno muzak, club-staple instrumentation at a languorous pace, with plenty of movement, but little climax. His music contains vintage drum sequencers and acid bass machines, waif-like vocal samples, tape hiss and warble. On Memories of Cindy, a double album – or quadruple vinyl EP, depending on how much you’re willing to spend on it – there is little ambiguity. Hiss, house beats, and hypnagogic pads is the name of the game.

The songs trumpet stylish repetition over complicated movements, and while Hugo demonstrates a considerable flair for catchy melodies and authentically nostalgic synth tones, after 90 minutes the overall cohesion is stifling. Hugo’s "memories", purported to tell the story of one deceased muse, Cindy, are paradoxical in this way: individual tracks remain emotionally resonant, like 145, IAO Industries, or Disappointment Island, but the overall album passes like a soothing, aesthetically consistent train journey, with little detail standing out. It plays like a SoundCloud playlist of study jams, all by the same artist.

The idea of creating something new that imitates a non-existent old, the musical manifestations of a Borgesian culture of catalogues and endless virtual archives, seems played out by now, taken to its self-referential extreme with vaporwave and an irony-resistant fashion cycle. The throes of 90’s nostalgia still linger: “wavey garms” is a source of eclectic fashion, people gather in front of a laptop to stream the original Twin Peaks and The X-Files.

Palmbomen II’s self-titled album was like the lost soundtrack to another West Coast, low-blood-pressure drama about teens in a confusing world. Memories of Cindy, a “eulogy” told in surrealist fashion, makes no qualm about emerging from the same headspace.

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