Trench Party embraces Casio-fi with Vacation
Is this lo-fi? Kind of, but not really
- Photo by Noah Orisich
?
Trench Party crooner Jake Cook has a new 8-song mini album titled Vacation floating around the Internet this week. This time around Cook approaches his craft a bit differently in that he's plugged a Casio keyboard straight into a USB port on a PC laptop and just started playing. The result is a collection of new songs that are about as far away from the folk/singer-songwriter sound as he could possibly get, and it's a big change. There’s an element of pure pop and R&B going on in songs like “You Are The Perfect Tool,” “Baby That’s A Fact” and “Do The Nuclear Bomb.”
?
Each one comes together with an air of minimalism, which actually adds a little more weight to Cook’s woozy songwriting. Is this lo-fi? Kind of, but not really. It has an air of spontaneity to it, but we’re talking about a computer here, so there’s no tape his or anything effecting the songs. But there is some kind of unique quality to the recording. The vocals are dry and the slightest bit of reverb on the piano draws out a pure, untainted, and virtually unproduced sound. I guess you would call this Casio-fi.
?
Download Vacation