Cassette Review: Cosmic Son "Moon Surf" (prettyallright)

[$5 // Edition of 60 // https://prettyallright.bandcamp.com/album/moon-surf]

I want you to think about everything you know and think of ambient music as being.   For me, ambient music is about something that has this sort of tranquil sound and can put you at ease.   It's like listening to the doctor count backwards from 10 as the gas kicks in.    Your mind begins to form images of its own and the audio begins to produce visual stimulation.   I've heard this particular concept crafted many times now but this cassette by Cosmic Son is my first time actually hearing it being done with these qualities.   Even if it is not the accurate tag or if it doesn't exist, I can't help but think of Cosmic Son now as being ambientwave which means exactly what you think it does.

At first this has a definite synthpop sound to it.   The vocals come through in that whispering way and I am thinking of it as being like Observer Drift.   It's R&B and funky but also with those wah-wah guitars.   I begin to hear rhythms and melodies that make me think of that "Land Down Under" song and then there are these beats... and yet it's new wave as well.   Robotic vocals come out when I'm thinking it's synthwave and then it grows quieter, ambient.   This is where I begin to think of it as becoming ambientwave.   It's slower paced now but it still comes back in like Tropics, for example.    Electronic guitar solos and big space wah leave this just feeling smoov.

The flip side is wave still and I do believe I hear some female vocals.  Lasers come out in bewps and then I do begin to think of it as chillwave.   Through Knight Rider space landscape sounds it's both instrumental and electronic such as Yves Malone and Makeup and Vanity Set.   There is even a slight bit of Atari sounds coming out in here and though it doesn't get as quiet and ambient feeling as it did on Side A, I'm still thinking about this as just being the -wave part of that concept.

See, it's strange but for me when you have all of these other genres coming together that's when you create new genres.    If this was straight up chillwave then it'd be easy enough to just think of it as such.    But you can't put it into any of those single genres I mentioned so you have to kind of combine them all and come up with what I would refer to as ambientwave.    That might not seem like a big deal and you might not be impressed because you think genres are only used by record stores or whatever but the fact is that Cosmic Son is redefining music and that is pretty damn impressive to me.