In my virgin listen to Cosmic Sound's “Backyard Woods”, I admired the field recording textures and began assessing the duration of the record to be a pastoral lo-fi acoustic excursion. Imagine my surprise when the boom-bap shook all the flowers from my hair. As Stephen Farris, operating as Cosmic Sound, glitched up the vocals, my first impression was pleasantly shattered. Suddenly praise from acts like Com Truise made sense.
Originally released in 2010, VHS Vision caught a few ears, but it never caught the wildfire hype it probably deserved. I say deserved, based on my experience with “Backyard Woods” and the series of left turns that ensues until the closing moments of “Weird Trees”. Cosmic Sound stacks Damon Alborn disco fever tracks atop 80s new wave meditations atop ghostly synth pop over the duration of VHS Vision.
Thanks to Crash Symbols, VHS Vision is not forgotten and getting billed, respectfully, as a record two years ahead of its time. Originally self-released, the download and cassette are the record's formal re-introduction to a climate much more fitting for its content. “Backyard Woods” has a bit of Bibio's Ambivalence Avenue in its acoustic strum, meets boom bap vibe, but even that record was largely overlooked in its time. The duration of VHS Vision predates the VHS-sampling boom as well. Remember 2010? When we were all starting to shake off our tolerance for bastardized surf rock? A year later we whittled garage rock down to the essentials and made room for every weirdo-sample based project under the sun, but stiffled its progression by giving it a shitty genre name to overcome. Alas, VHS Visions arrived within a transitioning period. With the dust settled, it's time to get reacquainted (possibly for the firs time) with VHS Vision.
Cosmic Sound, “Backyard Woods”
Cosmic Sound's VHS Vision is available on cassette via Crash Symbols. It is streaming here.
