TVAM is the project of bedroom producer Joe Oxley and his debut ‘Psychic Data’ is already being seen as a cult classic in some quarters despite only being released in 2018. Now four long-seeming years later we get ‘High Art Lite’ – an album that is even brighter and bolder than the debut – it’s all squelchy, dystopian basslines, vintage synth soundtrack vibes and haunting atmospherics.
TVAM returns aboard a Starline tourbus, peeping through the privets and leering over the fences of the rich and famous with a suspicious, cynical eye. “High Art Lite” is his first long-player for Invada Records. TVAM self-released his much-acclaimed debut “Psychic Data” in the autumn of 2018, something of a cult-classic, the album joined the dots between Suicide’s deconstructed rock ’n’ roll, Boards of Canada’s irresistible nostalgia and My Bloody Valentine’s infinite noise.
Featuring 11 brand new tracks inc. ‘Double Lucifer’, ‘Piz Buin’ and ‘Semantics’, “High Art Lite” takes a different tilt to its predecessor by emphasising the immediate and the personal. The colours are blown-out and the brightness is cranked up. TVAM’s take on such things as role models, fictional movie character tropes, and fables of good and evil, are all tackled with the same suspicious cynicism but this time with an urgent belief in the human condition. A heady mix of Black Mirror’s modern fables, JG Ballard’s gated communities of sun-drenched wealth, and Mulholland Drive’s boulevard of broken daydreams, “High Art Lite” offers an all-inclusive package of redemption. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes – the pop music sweet spot – “High Art Lite” treads a beguiling line between blissful harmonies, crunching noise pop and childlike innocence .
“High Art Lite” takes a different tilt to its predecessor by emphasising the immediate and the personal.The colours are blown-out and the brightness is cranked up.TVAM’s High Art Lite offers an all-inclusive package of redemption.
The album is both visceral and melancholic, drifting wonderfully across dream pop, shoegaze and synth-pop without ever permanently calling one camp its home.
Taken from the album ‘High Art Lite’, out 28th October 2022
The Fat Angel Sings 