Audiopile Review: A few months back we highlighted New Mexican Stargazers’s double cassette issued on Not Not Fun, Casino 2223, a throwback to the hypnagogic ambient albums that made Not Not Fun one of thee most hyped imprints of the 00’s blog era. For a hot minute there, it seemed like every month there was a new bedroom producer popping up out of nowhere, expelling bouncy alien landscapes through rudimentary dream machines. Acts like Rangers, Matrix Metals and Sun Araw took the early aesthetic of the Skaters/Ferraro/Clark blueprint and pushed those warbly xerox soundscapes into slightly more accessible territory. Like all micro-genres of the 21st century, it didn’t last long, eventually consumed by its subsequent permutation, vaporwave. Coming out of the extensive vaporwave world is US producer Carter Eggert, who explored it through the ‘10s with several projects, including c², cartrox, Penthouse Suite and Reversed Reference, to name just a few. He has since circled back to its origins in hypnagogic pop with his New Mexican Stargazers project, self releasing tapes, vinyl and digital downloads over the past few years, as well as running the Retrac Recordings label, which includes a release from the legend himself, James Ferraro. NMS plays in the same interzone as the above-mentioned acts, doubling down on the lo-fi aesthetic with an even heavier hand of tape saturation. Exotic melodies, chirping synths, rubbery bass loops and muffled drum machines criss-cross each other in a swirling soundtrack of intergalactic travel strewn with space trash. There is a very fourth-world vibe here too, his woozy synths and bopping tropical percussion have the effect of a Jon Hassell tape left in a hot car too long, everything coated in a later of heat-warped ferric oxide. We’ve got two NMS vinyl releases for ya this week, both ordered direct from the artist himself. Subterranean Flash Game, which is a 2xLP reissue of a cassette released back in 2021, and we also have 2022’s Aqua Temple, both pressed in an edition of 100. We also have his 2023 cassette Return 2 White Sands Arcade alongside a couple releases on his Retrac imprint.

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