Vaporelectronic Quickie- lofi by 猫 シ Corp

Intro

Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, a certain musical style has been an essential backgrounds element to various types of media. Whether its a stream devoted entirely to the music for studying, or is the backdrop to a well crafted YouTube video essay, this style of music is incredibly easy to identify as Lo-Fi.

Lo-Fi as a style

Quite literally being the opposite of "hi-fi", lo-fi is a style/music production quality that has been used as early as the 1990's. Lo-fi is less of a genre and more of a production style. Consisting of warm, analogue style synths and simplistic, radio-esc sounding percussion, lo-fi strives to be the pinnacle of "chill." Lo-fi in recent years has evolved to become more of a genre, having various "tropes" and consistencies through different artists. Its often used for livestreams that stretch for hours at a time to be used by students to study, writers to write and artists to draw. This can be attributed to its generally nonintrusive production, instrument choices and overall vibe, allowing for the blockage of background noise with enough feeling to keep the person involved with the task at hand. In 2017, lo-fi was at its peak, and our old mallsoft pal, catsystem corp., wanted in.
(Please refer to my Palm Mall post for a short biography on catsystem corp.)

lofi EP

I won't be covering this EP in much detail in terms of every single track, as lo-fi is known for its heavy use of sampling and cataloguing every sample from every track would be quite a daunting task to undertake. Instead, I'll just be giving an overview of what the album has to offer.

As a whole, lo-fi is not a standard catsys corp. release by any means. The description on the bandcamp for this album/EP reads as follows,

"Something different from the Corp HQ, after listening to some lofi tunes I thought I'd give it a shot to focus on something different. I bet most of it has already been used and done better, but I'd love to share this little side project with you guys anyway! ~<3"

This speaks for itself, it was more of a quick "for fun" project that Elzinga wanted to put out for the benefit of variety. The segment, "I bet most of it has already been used" makes me speculate that a lot of the samples cat used here have been used prior to this album, which sheds a very interesting light on the production of lo-fi music and beats in general. A lot of it is recycled, but not due to pure laziness, but because of the effectiveness of certain chord progressions, the certain analogue jingle of some synths and the overall "vibe" that some pieces give off are just immaculate for the goal that lo-fi strives to achieve.

The EP

Clocking in at a quick sixteen minutes and fourty-six seconds, the EP starts with a beautifully warm vinyl record fuzz and its repetitive, uncluttered production and chords that you can close your eyes and gather your thoughts to is immediately apparent. You can practically lay the percussion track of the first song over the rest of the album and it will still be just as effective. Most tracks on this EP sit around the 93-95 BPM area, the perfect tempo for clearing your head. Not too fast, like breakcore, but not too slow, like traditional vaporwave.
The warbly synths all throughout are glassy and sound almost broken, but in a beautiful way.
If you ever want to dedicate yourself to one lo-fi EP for whatever reason, this one is an absolutely solid choice. The ambient jingle of the keyboards, the downtempo beats and warm fuzz throughout makes any day feel like a calm, rainy experience to stay mentally cool and on top of things.

Conclusion

There's plenty of lo-fi music out there, and while none of it is particularly unique, that isn't its goal. Akin to something like muzak, it's purpose is to influence the listeners mood while they tackle whatever task they may have at hand.
This EP covers all the bases you would want from a lo-fi record. I highly recommend this the next time you find yourself ready to study, work, or just relax. My favorite track is definitely track 2, Amano.
Thanks for reading!

References:
lo-fi on BandCamp
Catsystem Corp on BandCamp