Biography
Cult hero James Ferraro has issued hundreds of wildly unpredictable recordings across countless styles ever since emerging in the mid-2000s as one half of the experimental noise duo the Skaters. Alongside Spencer Clark, he flooded the underground with dozens of heavily hissy cassettes, CD-Rs, and LPs whose raw primitivism made the Residents seem like chart-targeted pop. Ferraro launched his own imprint, New Age Tapes—distinct from his bandmate’s New Age Cassettes—to house solo material issued under his own name and aliases including Lamborghini Crystal and Teotihuacan. Those sessions ranged through gamelan, drone, and lo-fi Casio pop, earning the press tag “hypnagogic pop” alongside works by Ducktails and Pocahaunted. Although most early titles circulated only in tiny cassette or CD-R runs, a handful reached vinyl via Clear and Discovery on Holy Mountain, the double LP Citrac on Arbor, and Last American Hero on Olde English Spelling Bee.
By around 2010 his approach had shifted toward a jarring hybrid of glam rock and musique concrète in which geeky power-pop songs were repeatedly fractured by abrupt tape splices. Olde English Spelling Bee released the eccentric, grotesque high-school-themed pinnacle Night Dolls with Hairspray late that year, then followed it with a double-LP reissue of the more abstract, spacy CD-R On Air. In 2011 Rvng Intl. presented FRKWYS 7, an ambient collaboration between Ferraro, David Borden of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, Sam Godin, Laurel Halo, and Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never.
Once he began issuing material on Hippos in Tanks, Ferraro’s palette underwent another abrupt overhaul. The 2011 digital EP Condo Pets and the album Far Side Virtual foregrounded corporate Muzak and MIDI timbres reminiscent of ringtones while offering a postmodern commentary on consumer culture, retro-futurism, and hyperreality. The polarizing record drew widespread acclaim and criticism alike, ultimately being chosen album of the year by experimental music magazine The Wire. Together with Lopatin’s Eccojams, Vol. 1—issued as a limited cassette under the Chuck Person alias—Far Side Virtual helped seed the Internet-born vaporwave genre and its shared interest in postmodern, surrealist themes.
Thereafter his work drew increasing inspiration from commercial hip-hop and R&B. Digital projects credited to Bebetune$ (Inhale C-4 $$$$$) and Bodyguard (Silica Gel), along with the proper album Sushi, continued merging stylized abstractions of those idioms with his signature MIDI-like textures. The 2013 full-lengths Cold and NYC, Hell 3:00 AM moved closer to the sound of Atlanta rapper Future, featuring Ferraro’s Auto-Tuned vocals over trap-derived beats. On 2015’s Skid Row, released by Break World Records, he delivered a stark response to the racial friction and violence of his adopted city Los Angeles—his most overtly political and socially conscious statement to date. In 2016 he appeared to revisit earlier phases with the Far Side Virtual-styled cassette Human Story 3, his first tape since the New Age Tapes era, while Belgian label Aguirre Records issued Rerex, a triple LP assembling two limited 2009 CD-R albums.
By around 2010 his approach had shifted toward a jarring hybrid of glam rock and musique concrète in which geeky power-pop songs were repeatedly fractured by abrupt tape splices. Olde English Spelling Bee released the eccentric, grotesque high-school-themed pinnacle Night Dolls with Hairspray late that year, then followed it with a double-LP reissue of the more abstract, spacy CD-R On Air. In 2011 Rvng Intl. presented FRKWYS 7, an ambient collaboration between Ferraro, David Borden of Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, Sam Godin, Laurel Halo, and Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never.
Once he began issuing material on Hippos in Tanks, Ferraro’s palette underwent another abrupt overhaul. The 2011 digital EP Condo Pets and the album Far Side Virtual foregrounded corporate Muzak and MIDI timbres reminiscent of ringtones while offering a postmodern commentary on consumer culture, retro-futurism, and hyperreality. The polarizing record drew widespread acclaim and criticism alike, ultimately being chosen album of the year by experimental music magazine The Wire. Together with Lopatin’s Eccojams, Vol. 1—issued as a limited cassette under the Chuck Person alias—Far Side Virtual helped seed the Internet-born vaporwave genre and its shared interest in postmodern, surrealist themes.
Thereafter his work drew increasing inspiration from commercial hip-hop and R&B. Digital projects credited to Bebetune$ (Inhale C-4 $$$$$) and Bodyguard (Silica Gel), along with the proper album Sushi, continued merging stylized abstractions of those idioms with his signature MIDI-like textures. The 2013 full-lengths Cold and NYC, Hell 3:00 AM moved closer to the sound of Atlanta rapper Future, featuring Ferraro’s Auto-Tuned vocals over trap-derived beats. On 2015’s Skid Row, released by Break World Records, he delivered a stark response to the racial friction and violence of his adopted city Los Angeles—his most overtly political and socially conscious statement to date. In 2016 he appeared to revisit earlier phases with the Far Side Virtual-styled cassette Human Story 3, his first tape since the New Age Tapes era, while Belgian label Aguirre Records issued Rerex, a triple LP assembling two limited 2009 CD-R albums.
Albums
