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Discovery Zone: Quantum Web review – expertly rendered synth fantasias
While at times it brings to mind the hold music for a healing-crystal company, there is plenty of brilliantly retro songwriting
The nostalgic 80s sound of vaporwave, the nocturnal funk-pop of Nite Jewel, the blissful Balearic songs of the Mood Hut label and the kind of balladry heard between bouts of dimension-crossing depravity at a Twin Peaks bar combine on the second album by US singer and producer JJ Weihl, AKA Discovery Zone. Discovery Zone: Quantum Web album artThe period detail is expertly rendered, from Fairlight-style ersatz choral vocals to the same upward-zooming synth sound used by Alice Coltrane on her meditation tapes to evoke an expanding mind – and, inevitably, there are sax solos. There’s also a touch of Julia Holter to Test, echoing as if in a long-vacated cabaret venue, and again the lyrics carry you out of the everyday: “Heaven is a place where there’s nothing you can buy / tomorrow waits for you, infinite surprise.” At her best, Weihl conjures the pasts we choose to remember but perhaps never even lived through – the collective fantasias of a culture in retreat from the horror of now.
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