Regardless of PC Music’s high-concept visuals, shapeshifting manufacturing, and bold collaborations with multinational beverage firms, the goals of the label are modest. For founder A. G. Prepare dinner, working the boundary-pushing file label has at all times been about releasing music that feels sincere and intimate, initially. He informed Interview Journal that when he makes tracks, it’s as if his laptop is an extension of himself. “My mind is simply working on a distinct degree,” he mentioned. “[My computer] looks like part of me.” Through the years, he’s made it clear that if he and his collaborators are making “private laptop music,” the emphasis is initially on the “private.”
PC Music Quantity 3—a mixture of new tracks and songs launched since 2016’s Quantity 2—is the primary of the label’s compilations to totally ship on that promise. Within the label’s earliest days, it may really feel like there was a home model of kinds—particularly since Prepare dinner had his palms in so lots of the label’s most memorable plasticine productions—however Quantity 3 obliterates the notion that there’s anyone PC Music sound. Regardless of the style—from cyborg radio refractions to acid-burned rave recollections—every observe feels intensely detailed and emotionally wealthy, the work of producers as serious about self-expression as they’re targeted on shifting notions of what pop music can sound like.
Within the case of a few of the artists collected on Quantity 3, which means edging ever nearer to music that’d genuinely be match for the Billboard charts. A. G. Prepare dinner’s “Xcxoplex,” for instance, welcomes Charli XCX for a euphoric rework of one among his solo songs, and it sounds, in locations, just like the form of euphoric EDM observe that may have as soon as soundtracked children grinding their tooth at Electrical Zoo. However Prepare dinner’s by no means been the form of artist to embrace pure pleasure; probably the most ecstatic moments are lower with digital noise, rhythmic contortions, and pitch-shifted harmonies. Even because the timbre of pop music shifts towards extra outré sounds—the head-spinning sonics of hyperpop, digicore, and plugg have emerged from the web underground for the reason that final PC Music compilation—Prepare dinner’s productions are nonetheless splendidly jarring. Different dreamy efforts like caro♡’s “over u” and Namasenda’s “☆” (which options French singer-producer Oklou) are rather less difficult. This method generally is a advantage for pop music, however a few of these moments really feel a bit weightless within the context of a PC Music compilation that’s stuffed with complicated, wealthy takes on in any other case recognizable sounds.
