I come from the lo-fi era, so I know the ins and outs of lo-fi and that's why it sounds punk.
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For today's wannabe lo-fi artist the easiest way to sound lo-fi is to buy authentic, vintage equipment and work within the parameters they present.
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Urban Decay Lo-Fi Lip Mousse, $22, available at Urban Decay.
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This is a very lo-fi thing we have going on.
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The Laundress Sweater Comb is another good, lo-fi option, too.
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I, too, have enjoyed the lo-fi era of podcast creation.
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The lo-fi sound fit the songs because they were so simple.
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And accessing the lo-fi versions of your images is super easy.
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I like the lo-fi more, so I went back to it.
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The mix opens with Honey Radar's fractured, lo-fi brand of rock.
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Because this one was more lo-fi and a step back commercially.
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LO-FI While I'm doing that, I turn on my cassette player.
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What it is: You know lo-fi hip hop radio on YouTube?
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The lo-fi rap that thrives on SoundCloud teems with unruly energy.
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It was very lo-fi, like it was made in a bedroom.
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Is it lo-fi psych-rock with some spit and pop polish?
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Ferreira's lo-fi pop music digs almost recklessly, but necessarily, into your core.
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Watch it above and stay for the lo-fi, stomach-churning camera-work.
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"I personally like the lo-fi aesthetic a lot," Han Tani told me.
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The lo-fi nature of "Somewhere In Between" wasn't a specific stylistic choice.
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Maus's songs are dark, lo-fi, and unhinged—but they're still, somehow, pop.
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Maybe the fact that they were so lo-fi heightened the spook appeal.
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So the team are working on a much more lo-fi option too.
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They resemble lo-fi versions of the Zelda family of action-adventure games.
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"The Prize" sees him pondering life's meaning over a lo-fi blues waltz.
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In the near future, it's possible that lo-fi variants could border on disposable.
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There are angry YouTube "takedowns," fawning and lo-fi Instagram stickers, and GIFs galore.
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Using lo-fi abjection, transgressive humor, and campy theatricality, the artists in Bitch Slap!
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That's a good thing; the lo-fi look is undeniably part of Polaroid's charm.
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The 51st-century adventurer wasn't particularly impressed with the Doctor's lo-fi alien tech.
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Was it a conscious choice to go back to lo-fi on this release?
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With Cook on lead duties, there was a lo-fi bite to the soul.
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The lo-fi, bedroom-recording quality of these videos is often endearing and sweet.
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Sure, we poke fun at the track's lo-fi production values and bombastic sincerity.
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Oh, and did you think there wasn't a lo-fi hip-hop Moomin edition?
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Future toggles between cheerleader and deconstructionist, a lo-fi hitmaker and hi-test moodmaker.
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There is a lot of lo fi culture in Oslo, which I enjoy a lot.
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It looks incredibly lo-fi, but we knew that was what we had to do.
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But even in its really horribly lo-fi demo version, I'm really proud of it.
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When you get stuck in a lo-fi ghetto, you become a hard core snob.
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I just love the sound: the crunch, the snap, and the warmth of lo-fi.
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But is lo-fi house really just a sound pushed by patterns in video recommendations?
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Doja Cat's raps are amusing, and this video — lo-fi, hilariously salacious — is sharply executed.
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"The originals were rough and lo-fi and done with a punk immediacy," Leonard says.
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Trace Mountains' lo fi rock and Pop Smoke's gritty drill music both coexist is Brooklyn.
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If you want to go lo-fi, try the old phone-in-a-cup trick.
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Bands like Bathory and Hellhammer were also early influences, incorporating shrieking and lo-fi production.
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His tracks of blasted, lo-fi acid house were discovered later at a police auction.
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While some of the contraptions house wonderfully ornate mechanisms, plenty have knowingly lo-fi aesthetics.
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Theoretically the record is animated by the disparity between emotional hugeness and lo-fi sound.
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I was struck by that lo-fi acoustic sound, with its dark distortions and feathered samples.
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There was that slight patina of shoegaze, the same feathery sounds, the same lo-fi folk.
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These videos range from the charmingly lo-fi to outrageously wacky tributes to things like celery.
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At the time we had moved away from the lo-fi stuff, but Harmony wanted that.
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Listen to the elusive German producer's latest lo-fi house experiment in this THUMP exclusive stream.
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Sam's work in Death Stranding is a lo-fi version of the same series of tasks.
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In contrast, Party's music sticks out like a sore thumb, lo-fi and desiccated in feel.
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Now she performs her experimental lo-fi tunes about love and life all over the world.
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Coxon's response was to retreat into himself and start listening to more American, lo-fi music.
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Removed from its lo-fi origins, the song becomes majestic, sounding something like bluesy post-metal.
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The album is sparse and crystal clear; there's no mistaking it for a lo-fi record.
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Lo-fi, in-your-face black metal with punk elements and straight-to-the-point drumming.
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I shrugged it off as the pictorial equivalent of the lo-fi music I listened to.
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They both share the rituals of lo-fi productions, self-made labels, collectives, and fan zines.
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"I either make really hi-fi food or really lo-fi food," the younger Batmanglij says.
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GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Rex Orange County's lo-fi lounge music is soothing, sunny and slightly off-kilter.
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Its watery lo-fi reads like "moments" circulating on social media, the banal beside the significant.
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That cool, lo-fi minigame from Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is getting its own game!
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If you want a real far-out lo-fi classic, look no further than this gem.
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Like prior Instax Mini cameras, the Mini LiPlay takes lo-fi rectangular images that are developed instantly.
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Albini's advice and raw production methods would become a key ingredient to DFA's lo-fi dance sound.
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"It's how it is used and abused"—but it does suggest a fondness for lo-fi living.
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Though similar in sound to Apricot Princess, it's slightly more lo-fi and rough around the edges.
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If Once was a lo-fi crowd pleaser, Sing Street is a Dolby surround-sound dopamine rush.
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It became a lot more lo-fi, and had that sort of slacker-y sound to it.
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For small teams especially, lo-fi art is not only an artistic decision, but a practical one.
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The director Renata Gasiorowska's contribution, the Polish short "Pussy," is refreshing mainly for its lo-fi animation.
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There's a sound: blown-out and lo-fi, with enormous, thumping bass and explosive, percussive rap flows.
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There is a lo-fi feeling to the work that is in keeping with the subject matter.
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Yoshie Sakai's lo-fi, charmingly self-effacing video "Strip" (2008) plays on a monitor near the entrance.
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Palmbomen II's muddy and lo-fi percussion is perfectly matched to the weightless synthscapes dreamed up by Betonkust.
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But in the last few years, the lo-fi tech has reinvented itself in some weird new ways.
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While most lo-fi hip-hop music is based around instrumentals, songs with vocals are pretty popular too.
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Sophie Meiers, an 18-year-old SoundCloud artist, adds her own blues-y vocals over lo-fi beats.
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Eleven lo-fi jams laced with simple but thoroughly catchy hooks in the vein of the Marked Men.
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Her music, often cataloged as indie or lo-fi, sways with the wistfulness of groups like the Shins.
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Tirzah's slinky lo-fi beats found a footing back then, and she was a celebrated "one to watch".
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Immediately, a young woman in a blue shawl accompanied by a disarmingly lo-fi automaton dominates the screen.
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The production value is undoubtably "lo-fi" here, indicating a clear entry point into personal filmmaking for Reeder.
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Its lo-fi sensibility and understated vocal, though, add a new, unique twist that could take her anywhere.
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I'm also seriously interested in newsletters as a lo-fi way to form a deep relationship with readers.
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The YouTube comments show that many people are compelled by Sanders's anger over some lo-fi chill beats.
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Her early songs were guitar-based, inspired by lo-fi singer-songwriters like Frankie Cosmos and Calvin Johnson.
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You can see their process in the lo-fi video for "Right Now," shot by Paul Thomas Anderson.
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In the background, a series of martial, lo-fi instrumentals rumble menacingly, setting the tone for Orlowski's doomsaying.
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For years he has worked with a technology he unabashedly describes as lo-fi, gritty, one-bit sound.
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It's lo-fi and kind of dreamy but as you listen to it, it has such a depth.
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Throughout her first album, she mixes the fuzzy fragility of the lo-fi demo with epic teen melodrama.
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In typical contradictory fashion, millennials seem most comfortable existing in the gray area between lo-fi and high-tech.
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Ferreira was part of a shift that occurred in pop from 2012 to 2014—more lo-fi, indie(ish).
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Sports Coach's new album is here and we've got the exclusive stream from this rising, lo-fi Boston producer.
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This equipment, which he dubbed "the Package," allowed him to overdub instruments, and write and record lo-fi songs.
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Photo: Dan MacnishPhotographers who still shoot on film claim they like the lo-fi, grainy aesthetics of the medium.
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So I like the lo-fi approach because I feel like it's just an easier way to get there.
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And no, this is not the cheesy, lo-fi run simulator you've seen on the ellipticals at your gym.
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Its lo-fi vibe — just a narrator, a script and some music — is matched by its bizarre storytelling form.
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Lo-fi art sidesteps this problem and allows smaller teams the flexibility to work faster and often, more creatively.
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To call it raw or reduce it to lo-fi is to overlook Daniel's skill as an psalm-smith.
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The Clavins' first project, lo-fi quintet Mika Miko, became something of a staple in the local DIY scene.
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Update: VICE has been informed that a separate Bernie filibuster with lo-fi beats was created ten days earlier.
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"I think its pretty plain to see that lo-fi hip-hop has almost no meaning right now," they said.
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It was also a lightbulb moment for Byrne, who realized that lo-fi home recordings were no obstacle to collaboration.
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Using AR markers is the most lo-fi kind of augmented reality experience, but like... come on, this thing's $50.
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The new project sees Tilden delving into noise pop, his mercurial croon floating atop lo-fi orchestrations and lilting melodies.
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From this voice emerges an even greater depth of sound: part R&B, part ambient, part lo-fi love song.
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By the time they got to the clattering, lo-fi No Sleep EP in 2015, things had started to grow.
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Not that computers aren't cool—but for this album, the tape machine really changed the lo-fi game for me.
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Cornershop were thrilling, punk, and lo-fi at the same time, and never sidestepped the fact they were British Asians.
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Or, Bluetooth could be used to hook up a keyboard, turning the Oasis into a lo-fi note taking machine.
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"The combination of lo-fi production, synth pads, and an exaggerated reverb effect creates a menacing, claustrophobic quality," said Pandora.
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In this day and age, a lo-fi record costs just as much to make as a "hi-fi" record.
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Compared to Tomorrow's Hits, the self-released 2016 follow-up Devil Music was almost impossibly lo-fi and bare bones.
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Chicago's Clearance specialise in the kind of easy lo-fi pop that makes your world seem a little less troublesome.
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The lo-fi grain of Greer's handheld camcorder helps maintain that nostalgic and timeless feel that romanticizes New York grit.
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Lo-fi and cutesy with a garage pop fizz, they sounded like girls who'd been chasing shots with cheap beers.
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For example, I love heddy feedback, lo-fi breakbeats, 8-bit tones, fucked up vocal fx, and thicccc high hats.
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Sound: Play certain music only while working and not while doing anything else, like Spotify's Lo-fi Cafe playlist, asoftmurmur.
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In a charmingly lo-fi skit posted to the singer's social media channels, Carey falls asleep at 11:59 p.m.
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FEIST "Pleasure" (Interscope) Tense, raw, lo-fi and asymmetrical, "Pleasure" is both a plea and a self-interrogation about desire.
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Although they were into lo-fi noise, psychedelic, and drone music, the two were hesitant about checking out black metal.
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Spotify, for example, has been rolling out originals like behind-the-scenes documentaries, cartoons, biographies, lo-fi studio recordings and more.
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It's a dramatic contrast to MakerBot's first printers, which were open-source wooden kits inspired by the lo-fi RepRap project.
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I like this a lot, and if you dig chilly, lo-fi, charmingly fuzzed-out black metal scrapings, you will too.
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The perfectly placed piano chords are a nice touch, but it's Stiltz's restless, lo-fi percussion that keeps things really interesting.
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We live in a land of composed, polished food porn, and Tran's work is the lo-fi, raw content we crave.
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I'm able to incorporate a lot of my 'taste' in 3D spaces/photography/lighting/mood more easily in lo-fi 3D.
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The set-up they show us is surprisingly lo-fi looking considering the neon-soaked daydream that the team eventually made.
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Their animation for typing on the keyboards is a big, exaggerated arm-flail (lo-fi like the blocky character models themselves).
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The music video is also Cascardo's interpretation of this saga in the form of collaging various lo-fi visual components together.
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It was made on a 16-bit computer; it was very lo-fi and not the dynamics we would want nowadays.
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"Drivers"—lifted from his EP of the same name—is lo-fi electronica-pop that's so warm you'll wanna kiss it.
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Almost ten years later, the filibuster has been given the lo-fi-chill-beats-to-study-to-treatment, for some reason.
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Grimes emerged from the arty side of electronic pop on her early albums, mingling her voice with lo-fi electroacoustic constructions.
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TRISTAN PERICH, MARCH 17 Tristan Perich writes inventive works that combine gritty, lo-fi, one-bit electronic sounds with live music.
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It's a mini-showcase of house music in its many forms, from acid-tinged lo-fi to spaced-out synth work.
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But if you listen to some old Jamaican tracks, they use lo-fi as well, like the old dance hall tracks.
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In an age where digital animation featuring cute anthropomorphic animals dominates, the crude, chaotic, and lo-fi Strata-cut is refreshing.
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Monetization seduces everyone on the web, and if these lo-fi hip-hop streams remain popular, the offers will inevitably get bigger.
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The result is an interface called Pic2Recipe that's reminiscent of the lo-fi goofy TensorFlow projects we've seen, like edges2cats or Pix2Pix.
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They're lo-fi haikus from a singular voice, charmingly irreverent in a world of games so heavily focused on pathos and grandeur.
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It's all so gloriously lo-fi, and yet this was what personal computing looked like for most during the Stranger Things decade.
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Indeed, the lo-fi conditions at Russell lend it an appealingly scrappy, off-the-grid aesthetic, but have potential real-world consequences.
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The main problem I have with the Sofort is that by its very nature it is a lo-fi-tastic product. Fun?
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Whether you're a fan of lo-fi country, ramshackle punk, or piano-heavy dance music, there's a Teen Suicide song for everyone.
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Those tapes gave the stage to his hyperactive anthems about club brawls, gangbanging, and letting shots off over lo-fi trap production.
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The first EP was really just kind of a demo, but a lot of people liked the lo-fi image of it.
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The self-titled album was very of its time, capturing the lo-fi, Casio keyboard-heavy style popular among the band's peers.
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Follow-up Nocturne polished up the lo-fi, debuting at number 1 on the Billboard New Artist and Alternative New Artist chart.
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In between the uber lo-fi sound of the cassette tapes and the seamless sound of digital, Phillips found his sweet spot.
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Because of its lo-fi style, it's likely to blur facial imperfections, and makes vivid lipstick and clothing look even more striking.
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This list is also the best way to shut down any "Yes No Wave is all lo-fi, avant-garde stuff," arguments.
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His lo-fi songs propose that an R&B Lothario can be a lonely singer-songwriter, someone who's assured but also alienated.
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The more fettered I felt inside the real world, the more I turned toward science fiction, speculative fiction and lo-fi fantasy.
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Then, it was the insurgent sound of black youth in East London — lo-fi, muscular and brittle, full of intricate, chaotic raps.
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Several recent pop tendencies coalesce in Eilish's music: the moody introspection, the fascination with death, the electronic simulation of lo-fi mess.
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Throughout the summer, American Apparel still used the lo-fi, direct flash photography style that's synonymous with the brand's earlier, more controversial days.
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The three women rock out to the defiant song in the lo-fi video, capturing the aesthetic of the late 90s grunge era.
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As with Wave, the actual music coming out of the lo-fi house scene isn't markedly different from house music in the past.
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As for the screen, Panic says that, while it sounds incredibly lo-fi, it's a bit more high-end than you might imagine.
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A young clubber is rushed to hospital after passing out from embarrassment after overhearing a smoking area conversation about lo-fi house. 21.
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I think a lot of people hear noisy, lo-fi music and immediately think it comes from a place of anger or dejection.
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Google's lo-fi VR headset let the kids look up, down, and all around, giving many of them their first look at Philadelphia.
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But beyond that, "John Cage" seems to move along the whole "lo-fi house" scene to which Ross From Friends was first pegged.
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Faces of famous members of the cult hover on the right side of the screen while eerie chants play in tinny lo-fi.
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That's Jay Som's lo-fi recording style—an airy and twinkling descent one moment, a brash and experimental tonal build up the next.
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All lo-fi, surf-rock grooves (wassup reverb!), Nielsen's insouciant vocal delivered (possibly) from a prostrate position on a couch, beer in hand.
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Canvas takes in everything from fluttering jazz, dreamy downtempo excursions, lo-fi funk, and glistening electronica custom built for this time of year.
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While Melissa & Doug is best known for its wooden toys, they only account for about 40 percent of the company's lo-fi merchandise.
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Elana is largely what you'd expect from a lo-fi adult production: lots of nudity, unsubtle dialogue and a general lack of polish.
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They composed lo-fi, grungy blues joints that made the most of Mosshart's prowling, post-coital purr, and Hince was her perfect foil.
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The songs are by no means a cappella; this one starts as a lo-fi waltz and gathers a full folk-rock band.
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They've been raised on Mac Demarco, The 1975 and lo-fi terrorcore-era Tyler, the Creator, but also Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.
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As Sunflower Bean, Faber, Nick Kivlen, and Julia Cumming propose a contemporary take on lo-fi psychedelia, wearing shrewd influences on stylish sleeves.
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The key document from this era is The Choir Inside (Wham City, 2009), which consists mostly of lo-fi a cappella field recordings.
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The band frolics in sunny, lo-fi pop worthy of its Los Angeles environs and released its most recent album, "California Nights," last spring.
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Comprised of Olivia Scibelli, Katie Banyay, Callan Elizabeth Dwan and Weston Sparks, the band's lo-fi jams recall serious '90s vibes with haunting vocals.
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The lo-fi sound of Los Norte Americanos' "The Band I Heard in Tijuana Volume 3" finds its tune with the rigid tortilla chip.
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The goal of this post was to create a clean, simple, lo-fi record of what Apple announced, in chronological order, with light commentary.
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Bedroom pop, a classifier often affixed to the work of young female upstarts, features a lo-fi scrappiness, suggesting origins outside professional recording studios.
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With her cerebral and charmingly lo-fi installations and videos, Heather Phillipson is leading the way toward a new emotional expressiveness in contemporary art.
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First up, we discuss the rise of the hazy genre people are calling "lo-fi house," partly on the back YouTube's related video algorithms.
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It's engrossing in its understatedness, from the lo-fi drum production (think trash can lids clattering into the abyss) and pulsating strains of melody.
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The rapid-fire lo-fi results might light up a local music scene, exploding from cell phone ringtones to parties on makeshift sound systems.
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Sonically though, it's all presented like a hyper-sexual yet lo-fi disco—the kind you might find on the battered outskirts of Berlin.
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Powell's is charmingly lo-fi—crowd-sourced footage of his fans smashing up watermelons—where Patten opt for a dystopian future via motion capture.
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"If the lo-fi quality says anything, it's just that the work is self-taught and independent in its vision and approach," she says.
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A record five years in the making, Infinite Orchards sounds like a playful pastiche of lo-fi dance music from the last five years.
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Wielding lo-fi, bedroom indie rock, acts like Diet Cig, Jawbreaker Reunion, Frankie Cosmos, and Florist were all clumped together in a Bandcamp boom.
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Katamari Damacy Reroll on Nintendo Switch for $21 ($9 off): Now is your chance to try this beloved, lo-fi game on the Switch.
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Given the current trend for smothering recordings in reverb and lo-fi fuzz, this kind of high def clarity is a real palate cleanser.
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It makes lo-fi pictures kind of like a Game Boy Camera, and there's a $1.99 in-app purchase to unlock a color mode.
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From afar, Soft Sounds is a patchwork (some of the songs date back to Zauner's old lo-fi demos) of giddy fusions and homages.
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The video's deliberately lo-fi quality is matched by a B-movie performance in which Upson's silicone prosthetics begin to peel from her skin.
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Fake Laugh has developed from a master of bedroom lo-fi to a scholar of sophisticated indie-pop in hardly any time at all.
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There's an undeniably dark quality to the abstract imagery that's emphasized by Macintyre's lo-fi instrumental, which evokes a cloudy, lightheaded, and claustrophobic mood.
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Though they'd get lumped in with other lo-fi, garage-rock bands, there was a fearlessness to change course that helped them stand out.
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The resulting videos are definitely lo-fi but take advantage of Claire Boucher's unique sense of style, with centuries-old settings giving enough flavour.
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The Pour Whether called natural or lo-fi, these winemakers are part of a global crusade to reject conventional thinking and raise important questions.
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Firstly there's an incredibly lo-fi series of house slappers that Wilie Burns found on an old cassette and uploaded for all collective pleasure.
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When he did, releasing the more experimental, lo-fi "Rock and Roll Nightclub" in 2012 on Captured Tracks, the indie-rock stars were aligning.
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The sound was lo-fi; the lyrics were about desire, rejection, humiliation, rage, ambivalence and the rocky seas of sex; the concept was meta.
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Pathologic anchors itself in theater, Cart Life is pixelated, and a growing number of games (particularly in the horror genre) use lo-fi polygons.
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Heller begins her film as Rogers opened his program: the lo-fi production values, the model streetscape, the tinkling celesta, and that familiar song.
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She's made harsh noise, lo-fi house, and ambient spasms, but none of that makes it onto Tentenko, her first release outside of Japan.
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Like entries out of a diary, each of the record's ten lo-fi songs captures a moment or emotion during ©©'s travels.
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It's sold out—a second sold out headlining date, a perfect show if not for a rowdy crowd speaking over lo-fi pop opener Bedbug.
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And that project is... The Balding Girls: your new favorite lo-fi, ambient, slinky, hyped-up, un-PC, ultra-depressed, under-dressed stars of tomorrow.
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For the most part, though, George fans are thrilled by the lo-fi, no-frills establishment, which is decked out in George art and paraphernalia.
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If you're prone to killing your houseplants, the Pot is probably worth a try (or you could just go lo-fi and build your own).
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For the Bill Gates and retro graphics lover in your life, this Windows 95 Pin from Etsy seller Jurgenstudio certainly makes the lo-fi statement.
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And speaking of brushes, each Lo-Fi package houses a tiny sponge applicator in the bottom that reveals itself each time you open the lid.
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When Jack Tatum was 21 and still in college, he recorded a bunch of lo-fi, slightly scruffy dream pop demos in his dorm room.
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If creepypasta were a game, it'd be IMSCARED, a demonic tangle of lo-fi glitch horror that feels like a ghost sliding inside your machine.
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The lo-fi art design gives Edwards Island a distinct feel, and the game plays like those classic 2.5D adventure games from Sierra On-Line.
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The latest is lo-fi garage outfit Vundabar, who make their return after a couple years on the road with a cult following in tow.
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Maybe it's just the thrill of seeing a lo-fi Netflix app running on NES talking, but there's a lot to be excited about here.
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It's a lo-fi folk song about heavy metal, delivered with a warm, comic touch and an empathetic passion from Mountain Goats auteur John Darnielle.
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Intentionally lo-fi in nature, it constantly oscillates between infomercial-style pitches seen on Adult Swim and community bulletin-style text screens of Weird Twitter.
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I first came across the music of Honey Radar through the great magazine Dynamite Hemorrhage, who decribed the band as bedroom lo-fi pop savants.
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A buoyant tribute to vintage pop, the song blends lo-fi synths and subdued yet aggressively paced percussion to create an uplifting synthpop chef-d'oeuvre.
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The album, like his earlier work, is just as much informed by late 2000's lo-fi Trapaholics mixtapes as it is punk and horrorcore.
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"Lil Thing," a chill, downtempo nightcap of a song features wobbly percussion and lo-fi synth elements coupled with Rhomberg's earnest vocals about his girl.
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CARAMANICA A brief slice of lo-fi neo-soul from an Oakland band, "Feel That Again" explores how elusive a moment of bliss can be.
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Monique and Asia expressed concerns that their teammate, the walking selfie Aquaria, would be too lo-fi to rise to the challenge of extemporaneous speaking.
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One collects all of the drink recipes in case you forget, while another lets you pick from an excellent selection of chill, lo-fi music.
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As a solo artist, he mines similar lo-fi sonic ground, best heard on "The Universe and Me," his first new album in seven years.
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Mind you, listening to literally anything from his blissed out, lo-fi back catalogue, I should have already known that would have been the case.
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Lil Pump and Smokepurrp and a whole crew of similarly minded kids have brought a bit of lo-fi noise's rough edges to blistered trap beats.
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Fans of Daniel Johnston and his lo-fi, enigmatic music will devour this retelling of Johnston's humble beginnings, his rise to fame, and his personal demons.
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The ephemeral material on her tapes — commercials, forgotten local stories, jingles, lo-fi graphics, newscasters with bad hair — might be the most compelling stuff of all.
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And, as ever, the band's seemingly unassuming lo-fi major chords back it all up with enough of a careful grin to drag the viewer in.
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It might not redeem the whole of lo-fi house for skeptics either, but its sweeping, bookish observance of house music history is something to behold.
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This was lo-fi collage music, earning an audience amongst left-field rap fans who were becoming enamored by the Anticon's version of nerdy art-rap.
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The anticipation for the NAVVI's debut album has not abated since the Seattle-based lo-fi R&B duo dropped their first single back in 2013.
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The clip, directed by Glassface (aka Josh Goldenberg) and illustrated by Tristan Zammit, mashes up a nostalgic cartoon style with claymation and lo-fi digital art.
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In terms of the production, I knew that by working with Chris Cohen I was going towards something different—something more precise and less lo-fi.
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The record features songs like "The White Man's Burden" and "The Mountains are Waking Up," and tempers its lo-fi black metal with an experimental edge.
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Incorporating elements of Krautrock-influenced drone, lo-fi electronic loops, reggae, and Afrobeat, Sun Araw aims to reconnect with the transformative, mind-altering roots of psychedelia.
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Even from an outsider's perspective, it's easy to see how something like lo-fi house lies at the intersection of a number of scenes and styles.
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The guitars are fuzzed to the high heavens, playing a complicated stoner-rock riff that's given more grit thanks to a typically lo-fi UMO recording.
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But back before there was Reyes, Lo-Fi, or Matthew Crawley, there were the baby-name trends of the '80s and '90s, when we were born.
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The meld of industrial, rave, and punk is weirdly fun this time around—a very pleasantly surprising progression from the band's history of lo-fi cyberpunk.
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Set to his song "Fronto Kings," the lo-fi clip credited to "Dean Blunt & Jonatanleandoer12" sees him and the Sad Boys ringleader prowling some darkened streets.
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Related Swirling GIF Illusions Look Like the Universe Breathing Meet the Artist Building Pixelated Sci-Fi Landscapes Feedback Becomes Art in This Lo-Fi Music Video
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Michelle Zauner's indie rock project set itself up to be food-adjacent: since 2013, Zauner has played dreamy, lo-fi tracks under the moniker Japanese Breakfast.
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This post ran originally on THUMP UK. Welcome to February baby, and what promises to be another stellar month of international incident and lo-fi rollers.
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Since production has been halted on his Comedy Central show, David Spade has been doing a nightly lo-fi monologue from his home in Los Angeles.
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It's a lo-fi song that sings the praises of what exactly she loves about the object of her affections, sounding not unlike a Shakespearean sonnet.
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For the most part, this collection is lo-fi and smooth, but on the title track, which features a bit of Chicago footwork, there's holiday bite.
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On "Apocalipstick," Cherry Glazerr has grown from three members to four, and it moves beyond the lo-fi sound and throwaway sarcasm of the band's debut.
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But Congrats levels up the Toronto outfit's sound, honing their lo-fi scuzz into a sleek collection of songs that are less cerebral and more id.
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It's not super pristine like most of [Mosaic's] other records are and it has a little bit of lo-fi, but the bottom is really banging.
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In some ways, it can feel quite minor, though certain moments—the melodic elegance of "Highlights," the lo-fi Timbo slouch of "Feedback"—transcend their surroundings.
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Capturing the rolling mountain ranges and sparkling oceans of California, these Psychscapes question everything from traditional landscape photography to Instagram effects like Lo-Fi and Vignette.
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In last half of the 232s, Blogspot nurtured Grizzly Bear's ascent from lo-fi halo folk Brooklyn band to indie rock avatars scoring Ryan Gosling melodramas.
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We wanted to make a record that was done in the studio but was still very lo-fi and scratchy and a little bit out of control.
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This fair will be produced and presented in 8 Ball Community style, super lo-fi and DIY, and will feature almost only West Coast publishers and projects.
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Features editor Mark Robinson recommends Reader View, which he describes as a "one-button, rather lo-fi instant Instapaper," stripping web articles down to the bare essentials.
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"To Americans teletext seems absolutely ridiculous, but this lo-fi technology is still really, really popular in Europe, and especially in the northern parts," he told me.
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Pairing lo-fi, downer-pop riffs, and abrasive electronics with melodies that are both romantic and eerie, they could have been plucked from Olympia in the 90s.
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That's all Rick and Morty fans really need: the ability to create lo-fi tracks that trend on SoundCloud starring Rick, Morty, Summer, or other favorites. Seriously.
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The lo-fi aggression of 1982's masterful Hex Induction Hour gradually gave way to the relatively polished alt-pop of 1985's This Nation's Saving Grace.
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The equalizer, which no doubt spiced up many a home video, has a paintbrush feature and colorizer which lets the user apply tailored lo-fi visual tricks.
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All sorts of simple lo-fi piano loops linger deep in Bandcamp's ambient tags, but there's a spark to this solo project from Indiana that few have.
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Filled will lo-fi infrared-inspired jam scenes and friendship vibes, the video makes you nostalgic for all the off-season cottage memories you wish you made.
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Alex G's Beach Music, a mini-masterpiece of lo-fi indie songwriting, only came out in 2015, though it feels like it's been around for far longer.
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A lot of our earlier work that had this crazy lo-fi stuff, but since then we always try to say that's not necessarily what we're about.
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The Daydream EP is a bit more polished and less lo-fi than our other recordings, but we felt like we should up our game a bit.
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Since then, Gonzalez continues to experiment with her eclectic sound, incorporating a variety of different aesthetics, from weird synth pop one-offs to lo-fi dance anthems.
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The tape, entitled Falling on Your Arse in 1999, is made up of unreleased, lo-fi hip-hop tracks that Tracy produced with Hardy rapping on top.
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The "X-Pro II" or "Lo-Fi" filter will only do so much, and it's often that the only decent photos you'll see are saturated to death.
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The "X-Pro II" or "Lo-Fi" filter will only do so much For now, there are alternatives ways to share the moment that go beyond stills.
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The album's production created a collage of satisfying textures—soul samples, deep bass, gritty lo-fi noise arrangements, and careful orchestral flourishes—for Wiki to play with.
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Power Games remains one of the purest and most vital expressions of the NWOBHM era: a lo-fi joy that pulses with adolescent fury and demented gnash.
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Today, they're sharing a track from their newest release, When She's Sports Casual, a split release between lo-fi-loving Frenchman Raär and UK artist Rick Sheen.
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For instance, his last project, a ten-minute lo-fi hip-hop epic, takes elements from the weirdest corners of the internet to accompany his whimsical flow.
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SuperHyperCube: The Retro-Futurist VR Game Seven Years in the Making 'SuperHyperCube' is a lo-fi puzzle game that reinvents virtual reality in a 70s arcade style.
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Well, it was more palatable, generically speaking, to a normal listening audience, whereas the first album was so barebones and lo-fi, we sounded like retarded people.
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The repetitive beat insinuates how these moods often operate within a cycle, and the lo-fi production gives insight into how messed up that can all feel.
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Accompanied by English subtitles translating the French spoken word lyrics, the video alternates between lo-fi footage and high definition shots, befitting of the track's gloomy vibes.
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The track itself is exactly the sort of continual brilliance we've come to expect from the twins; super melodic, breezily lo-fi and jam packed with guitars.
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On their fourth record, the crew turns to frequent collaborator and New Yorker Baltra, who comes correct with a four-tracker of hypnotic, acidic lo-fi house.
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Bucking industry expectations, Shamir recorded the lo-fi, guitar-based songs on a four-track, confronting years of tribulations entirely alone, with none of that "Ratchet" sheen.
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But Femme Wave will feature about 30 musical acts, with headliners including L.A.-based lo-fi punk band Peach Kelli Pop and Toronto-based blues duo catl.
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A lo-fi Tumblr by the pair soon followed, with photos of inspirational brown women, like Indian award-winning author Arundhati Roy and Kuwaiti DJ Fatima Al Qadiri.
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If Hotline Miami was a lo-fi action-puzzle game, The Hong Kong Massacre is its spiffy-looking HD cousin that places more of an emphasis on style.
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It's a 2D beat 'em up game that ditches the revamped visuals of the (admittedly great) Double Dragon: Neon reboot in favor of a more lo-fi feel.
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But Lo-Fi avoids the mess completely by pressing its pigment into a small, circular compact (that's small enough to fit in a clutch or your back pocket).
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But for all his influence on the charts, it was Prince's lo-fi home recordings that had the biggest, most lasting, and most fertile impact on British music.
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Moody melodies and head-nodding synth stabs punctuate the action scenes, offering a flicker of some of the music coming out of city's vibrant lo-fi techno scene.
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Its equally sweet and surreal video is a lo-fi pastel feast, a reminder that there's no heartache that team aerobics and a good crew neck can't fix.
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The film is the latest effort from director Sean Baker, whose lo-fi trans drama "Tangerine" (2015) offered an entertaining and non-judgmental look at a marginalised community.
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Part of the charm of Hovvdy songs is the ability they have to go in any direction, like a cloud of smoke escaping from their lo-fi experimentation.
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Recorded around 2003–2004 in lo-fi camcorder quality, Shakedown follows the strippers—called "angels"—as they balance their real life personas with their lives on the dancefloor.
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Created by a teenager from Connecticut, the videos were mostly lo-fi comedy sketches starring their young amateur director and some people I assumed were his closest friends.
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It's a cheery game with lo-fi graphics, but there's a surprising amount of depth to it once you start tackling the challenges of being a successful farmer.
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Directed by Patrick Osborne, an Oscar-winning animator who's worked on a number of big recent CG films, "Pearl" has a sort of lo-fi charm to it.
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Over the last year, the term lo-fi house has become synonymous with a certain gritty sound; it's heavy on bass, yet built from simple synths and samples.
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Still, the record has dozens of guest stars, from the comic Jerrod Carmichael to the electro-pop veteran La Roux, scattered across lo-fi interludes and hushed refrains.
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Remy was, technically, the only person in the band, and her earliest compositions were lo-fi, bedroom-recorded experiments born of solitude and a do-it-yourself ethos.
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JON PARELES Tender, elegiac lo-fi electro-R&B from the soundtrack to "Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse" from Swae Lee (of Rae Sremmurd) and Post Malone.
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Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads Introduced in 1987, Fisher-Price's PXL-2000 is a toy camcorder that records lo-fi, black-and-white videos onto audio cassettes.
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Nicolas Pablo Muñoz, a 19-year-old guitarist-singer from Bergen who's basically Norway's answer to the lo-fi/bedroom pop craze of the last year or so.
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Wiesner commented, "All The Streams is made to revel in platform independence, and to demonstrate how even the most lo-fi hacks can be the equal of giants."
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This is a much more lo-fi look at some highly regarded comic and dramatic actors, and a higher-profile version of the popular 24 Hour Play series.
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Speaking of those live shots... A "lo-fi view" The opening hours of the trial "did not exactly make for visually compelling viewing," the NYT's Michael Grynbaum wrote.
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There isn't really a culture around streaming on the site, or at least not much of one outside of political events and lo-fi chill anime beats streams.
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A recent flip through Twitch's channels revealed — apart from the live-streamers showing themselves playing League of Legends and other games — a number of lo-fi talk shows.
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Since 1999, this Austin-based group has made wonderfully uplifting and tuneful instrumental music with an array of quirky instruments like vintage synthesizers and lo-fi drum machines.
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The pain and sorrow are unambiguous on Feist's new album, "Pleasure," a set of lo-fi songs that confront and seek to exorcise heartache, loneliness, betrayal and despair.
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" His lo-fi segments are like "The Dr. Oz Show," if "The Dr. Oz Show" were produced by self-consciously quirky interns from public radio's "This American Life.
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"I'm Drunk and Real High (In the Spirit of God)," a single by the little-known crooner Ada Richards, poured lo-fi, up-tempo beats into the room.
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War metal in particular remains the last frontier—an unassailable blockade of hideous, lo-fi savagery, where the weak are scorned and the nastiest, most violent perpetrators reign.
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It's the third major motion picture for Jones, the son of late musician David Bowie, following 2011's Source Code and 2009's lo-fi sleeper hit Moon.
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The video's lo-fi, grainy look and feel compliments the tracks dreamy soundscape, while the home movie aesthetic makes this introduction to the band seem personal and almost intimate.
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For some, a self-care practice might mean hiking scenic trails, taking a bath, or unplugging their devices; for me, it's watching old, lo-fi videos of Mister Rogers.
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Kusama wowed audiences with her lo-fi thriller The Invitation last year, and the same slow-burning suspense that made her feature a critical darling invigorates this briefer work.
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The openness of "Maps" gave way to who Karen O could and would be on Show Your Bones and any future project, including her solo lo-fi Crush Songs.
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And whether in the raspy, broken lo-fi pop of "Pink Sunglasses" or the warm spark of excitement that propels the ballad "Pushin' Time," everything finds ways to stick.
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Now, with his project Car Seat Headrest, he releases the studio album "Teens of Denial," a promising collage of arcane references, knotty confessionals and sturdy lo-fi rock rumbles.
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Shoegaze was about lo-fi anyway so over-production could be said to be an enemy unless you are into more electronic and lush sounds like M83 or Maps.
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Favoring plain-spoken lyrics tinged with millennial malaise and whimsical production underscored by stuttering beats, Verzache self-releases the sort of charming, lo-fi tracks destined for Spotify playlists.
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C.G. Extremely promising, witty and raw, girl in red is a young, gay Norwegian lo-fi singer-songwriter, who is just now migrating from Bandcamp into the wider slipstream.
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Scratchy vocals and rustling overdubs didn't make this lo-fi to me but positively verbose: what was a soft song rang out like cop sirens, or madhouse dorm alarms.
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Much of that early work falls into the band's quasi-folk stylings, which is incredibly lo-fi and sees Dwyer working largely alone with only a handful of exceptions.
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"The lo-fi aesthetic was a big selling point," says Fred Bednarski, designer of the Bitsy games House of the Living and The World Has Been Sad Since Tuesday.
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Look for livestreams of lo-fi music, long-running nature sound videos, tutorials on getting fit and learning languages, classic sports games of the past, stand-up comedy sets.
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Over its first four albums, it evolved from lo-fi to supersized, beginning as a group of pop-punk enthusiasts and growing into a band with far wider ambitions.
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Polaroid film is still known for its lo-fi aesthetic (which some photographers still prefer) and the analog approach taken here will soften and desaturate images in the process.
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Big Thief have been crafting fragile, noisy rock miniatures since their debut, Masterpiece (2016), on which their warm, rustic sound first emerged in a more rickety, lo-fi context.
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Well Google appears to have heard your lo-fi cries of anguish, and responded by adding a way to control your third-party Bluetooth speakers using your Google Home device.
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Some might not be keen on this side of PJ—there are no lo-fi rock anthems a la 1992—but others regard it as some of her greatest work.
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While the remade Diablo will benefit from Diablo 3's graphical and gameplay enhancements, Blizzard is offering fans a way to tap into the lo-fi feel of the original.
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The visual branding also recalls lo-fi house, with videogame screenshots and trippy cartoon images, playing on the same druggy nostalgia as artists like DJ Seinfeld and Ross From Friends.
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She's had a track used by Mary J. Blige, but "Kool Aid" is aesthetically more like an R&B take on freak folk; it's lo-fi but catchy as hell.
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The early industry player's Atari 2600 console brought video games into the living room, with artwork that stylized the lo-fi gaming experiences of the time helping to sell it.
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"To be honest I don't actually really hate lo-fi," said Maël, a 23-year-old from France, who currently makes music under the name In Love With A Ghost.
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Related: [Premiere] Feedback Becomes Art in This Lo-Fi Music Video Bass Drones Become a Moving Sound Sculpture in 'Vellum' Code Like a God in Virtual Reality Video Game 'Loop'
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They were wise to pursue other projects, let indie music cycle through a lo-fi 90s slacker rock revival phase, and allow Expo 86's distorted, overlooked melodies to percolate.
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Related: Yukon Blonde's "Saturday Night" Music Video Is Fellini Meets David Bowie How To Turn Your Photos Into Animated Clips [Premiere] Feedback Becomes Art in This Lo-Fi Music Video
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Photo courtesy of Count Your Lucky Stars Cotopaxi is a musician out of Braddock, PA that plays lo-fi, emotive indie sure to tug at the core of your heart.
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It was lo-fi and kind of sloppy, and it was taped together in the editing, but I thought it was awesome that they asked me to do a record.
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I'm a filmmaker who is coming from a more experimental and narrative background and some of my earlier work used a lot of mixed media, lo-fi animation, and slides.
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Signed to Grand Jury Records (home to Day Wave and Mothers), the Minnesota quartet oscillate between melancholic lo-fi gems and colorful, energetic tracks, think Ezra Koenig fronting Real Estate.
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I love the 3D world and lo-fi aesthetic, and it gets much bigger and more impressive as the game goes on, but the opening city environment wasn't my favorite.
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He reworks Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" into lo-fi twang, and on the record's title track, he belts out some of most ragged and stomping rock you'll hear in 2017.
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But isn't it a bit odd that a guy who has grown up with smartphones and access to apps and the internet should be so willing to go lo-fi?
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If Bristol-based imprint Shall Not Fade's musical M.O is succulent and subdued lo-fi house, then their side-label Lost Palms takes things one step deeper and more dreamy.
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It may seem lo-fi, but it is also foolproof: Your vertical reach while jumping is the highest metal flange you are able to bat away from its set position.
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There's a massive pond at the bottom of the garden, they're hiring a bouncer, and a lo-fi DJ you've never heard of is going to be on the decks.
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Her latest album, "Soft Sounds From Another Planet," doesn't sound alien; instead, her lo-fi crooning harks back to the Pacific Northwest indie rock of the 1990s without being redundant.
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She is a nimble, honest songwriter in a variety of modes — synth-pop, shoegaze, garage rock — and never sacrifices grooves or hooks for some forced idea of lo-fi intimacy.
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"The Great Milenko," the first album from that partnership, is a lo-fi curiosity: Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope come off like Beastie Boys starring in a Troma film.
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Transpiring with the pace of a hymnal procession, the track combines distorted guitar chords, a chipmunked introductory passage, and a solemn rhythmic undergirding to create an intimate, lo-fi sensibility.
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His Chain and the Gang have been in operation since 2009 and have released four albums of charged but stripped-down indie pop, funk, garage punk, and lo-fi experimentalism.
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We spoke with Jakobsson about his rise in the realms of lo-fi house, being a serious producer with an unserious name, and the heartbreak that built the foundation of Time.
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Someone will no doubt find a tune with the same sample I used now that I've said that... You've been a part of the whole lo-fi crazy as of late.
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Two SoCal indie rock darlings repping for different generations, it makes total sense for them to work together - like the Frasier and Niles Crane of lo-fi production and ripping guitars.
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I couple the interviews with some very intimate portraits using an old instant Land camera, which gives the whole thing this very real, lo-fi feal that i'm really attracted to.
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It's super grainy and lo-fi, occasionally fading into pixelated squares, which gives it a dreamy, stylish, almost nostalgic quality, like an old grime visual mixed with a 90s skate video.
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Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads Martha Colburn uses myriad analog and lo-fi techniques including stop motion, puppetry, collage, and found footage to create her boisterous and frenetic animated films.
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Filming an actual casting call provided the ideal lo-fi conditions, while also allowing Moullinex and collaborators to explore the immersive nature of dancing outside of the environment of a club.
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Bbymutha , with her take-no-prisoners approach, joins Earl Sweatshirt at Irving Plaza (March 30) on his "LIGHT IT UP!" tour, for a showcase of lo-fi ingenuity and lyrical prowess.
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Bill Callahan's wry and sardonic writing style, lo-fi approach and commanding baritone have made him one of the most evocative and compelling songwriters and lyricists of the last two decades.
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Given their lo-fi approach to recording, it was easy to lose sight of what the singers were saying, as their words got swallowed up by the ruckus unfolding behind them.
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It's all hemmed in by Lindsey's obvious ear for melody and gritty voice, while her technical proficiency as a guitarist and songwriter is balanced out by a fuzzy, lo-fi sensibility.
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Anyone who ever stayed up past 21.99 AM watching late-night TV during the 250s is likely well-acquainted with the ubiquity of skeezy lo-fi ads for phone sex operators.
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The Oh Sees as Rock Gods Though the band started off as a lo-fi, experimental freak-folk band, that is far from the best starting point with the Oh Sees.
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I noticed how adding so much as a lo-fi beat to something as, honestly boring as C-SPAN, can make an 8 1/2 hour filibuster so much more palatable.
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If you want to listen to music, get a record player (or go lo-fi with a boom box) or verbal speaker where you don't have to look at a screen.
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Once inside, they appraised one another's outré ensembles under the glare of not-safe-for-work video projections — lo-fi montages of men gyrating in skeleton bodysuits (and then, inevitably, less).
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This collection archives every surviving recorded note, including a few lo-fi audience tapes, from the whirlwind five months when Mr. Dylan toured from suburban New York to Sydney to London.
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"Tippecanoe 1811" is actually the result of multiple, unconnected recording sessions and how I struggled to make things hold together despite the disparity, confusion, and lo-fi quality of the material.
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If, on the other hand, proper lo-fi atmospheric black metal is the kind of thing that gets you going, you might want to keep the Kaffaljidhma name on your radar.
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Release date 22016 Platforms Xbox One, PC Take the stiff challenge of Dark Souls and mash it together with the lo-fi aesthetics of The Legend of Zelda and you've got Below.
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There's introspective pop star Kali Uchis, slacker rocker Courtney Barnett, and lo-fi singer/songwriter Angel Olsen, who really speaks to Annie's inner monologue since it pops up on the show twice.
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Soothing in several ways, Clairo's music combines acoustic and electronic modes of calm: the fragile, lilting, homemade quality of lo-fi bedroom confessionals, and the warm, shimmering, layered surfaces of trance music.
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The prints are about the same size, but if you're going to go for the lo-fi novelty of an instant-print camera, you may as well embrace the real Polaroid look.
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There's a distinctly lo-fi aesthetic to the game, which crackles with the static of an old VHS tape and opens in an eerie kitchen where a cassette tape player sits, waiting.
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It could have been their albatross, but instead Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly cut the cutesy-coo and lo-fi canned beats, with each album surpassing the last in confidence and vision.
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Announced half-jokingly at the end of its keynote, Google Cardboard was a disposable fold-up virtual reality headset powered by a smartphone, an extremely lo-fi competitor to the Oculus Rift.
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With a defiantly lo-fi feel and an irreverent wit, Cheap Date drew an impressive lineup of contributors, including Chloë Sevigny, Debbie Harry, Harmony Korine, Anita Pallenberg, Bryan Ferry and Jerry Hall.
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There's also a lot of leftovers from the album, stuff that really didn't fit thematically (like more lo-fi hip hop sounding stuff) that I want to piece together into something else.
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John Curley of The Afghan Whigs took a crack at engineering this one, and the recording does a dutiful job of committing the band's grimey, lo-fi pop-rock songs to tape.
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With a mix of lo-fi, glam, rock 'n' roll, and classic guitar riffs, Sunflower Bean will transport you to exactly where you need to be…and keep you there, fully entranced.
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He's so beholden to his own aesthetic, and so uninterested in how the rest of hip-hop actually sounds (apart from the lo-fi "Chloraseptic"), that his music verges on outsider art.
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Lo-fi channels singlehandedly incorporate Soundcloud culture, wholesome internet culture, teen study communities on Tumblr and Instagram, and all that subtly detailed animated Tumblr GIF art into one beautiful easy-listening soundtrack.
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Guests are guided down a steep, narrow corridor lined with lo-fi video art of zombified yogis, quack beauty products and double-take pharmaceutical posters — all awash in pink and purple hues.
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There, he learns to adapt such traditional processes as sand-casting and brickmaking for his own pieces, which are often made with unconventional materials — none, it seems, too lo-fi for Wolston.
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Carti doesn't seem to know, nor does he care, but he and Travis Scott drone about being rock stars over the lo-fi track with a seemingly endless bassline and violent synths.
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The main loop in the song is from an iPhone recording I made—it's a very lo-fi gentle thing that I got really attached to, everything else was built around it.
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City Girl does, in a way, see themselves as part of the lo-fi scene but thinks that music is far more complex than the limitations of what has become an internet meme.
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"I'm interested in the lo-fi aesthetic as a way to save money and time for art, and it plays to my strengths as a non-professional-3D-modeler/texturer," said Han Tani.
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Starring fellow downtown New York artists and musicians like Lydia Lunch, Nick Zedd, David Wojnarowicz, Karen Finley, and Kembra Pfahler, Kern's Super-8 short films were lo-fi, subversively punk, and darkly comic.
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His home studio and four-track recorder were the band's home base for his ten-year tenure for the band, and much of their defining lo-fi sound is credited to his input.
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He sheds some of the snark, humor, and lo-fi sludge that peppered the first two Total Slacker albums, Thrashin' and Slip Away, and harps on the humanness in longing, loneliness, and adversity.
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That immediacy was central in Weaves' approach to recording their full-length, a collection of wildly reckless lo-fi pop that feels like it can go off the rails whenever they see fit.
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By painting its menu and drive-in window chroma green, the artists have enabled anyone with a camera and some basic editing software to shoot the next lo-fi fried food cult classic.
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Meanwhile, the rapper 6ix9ine, whose hit song "Gummo" blends the brazen lo-fi aesthetic of SoundCloud with New York street rap, is making headlines for appearing in sexual videos with an underage girl.
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Two years after Goat Girl formed, the name has proven a fitting moniker for the lo-fi quartet, whose droll, searing self-titled debut straddles the line between provocative crassness and mocking crassness.
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House of Flying Daggers (China) This film feels as if it were shot through Instagram's Lo-Fi filter, and the wonderfully saturated colors are only part of this Chinese movie's lush, beautiful magic.
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The classic emo formula of lo-fi acoustic strumming, augmented by crackling power chords, suits her wobbly voice, solemn in a way that suggests the projection of an aspirational seriousness larger than herself.
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On a Twin of Twins gospel reggae record called "Only God Knows", a younger, 16-year-old Vanessa can be seen and heard in a lo-fi video under the moniker Va-Ness.
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Here's what we know about Willie J Healey: He's 22, he's from Oxford, England, he will definitely need a high SPF in direct sunlight, and his vibe is lo-fi indie slacker pop.
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Stormzy enjoyed a ridiculous rise from London's grime underground, freestyling on the city's grey pavements in lo-fi videos, to a number 16.993 album with his February 2017 debut album Gang Signs & Prayer.
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LE SON's—Liam Fergus and Emily Ady—track fuses trip hop and soul, and the subdued, hypnotizing sound is reflected in the lo-fi glitchy graphics in the video directed by Charlie Hawley.
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Though he was billed primarily as a rapper, XXXTentacion also dabbled in genres like punk and emo, favoring a lo-fi aesthetic that came from recording at home instead of in professional studios.
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"Money" is effectively a stripped-bare version of BlocBoy JB and Drake's already-bare "Look Alive," and a de facto lo-fi rejoinder to Cardi B's steady pop incursions over the past year.
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Guided by Voices has been his perennial outlet ever since the lo-fi late 56133s for pretty songs, noisy ones, full-fledged anthems, whimsical fragments, free-associative wordplay and moments of soul-baring.
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If I let the production be a little more open-ended and lo-fi and idiosyncratic, it could have been a better record, but it was a very strange time in my life.
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This article originally appeared on Noisey UK. Bristol's Oliver Wilde has been described in the past as "a Nick Drake for the 21st Century", probably because his music is quite lo-fi and sad.
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Their music would be considered "lo-fi" compared to major label releases, but still sounded like it was made by professionals, thanks to high-quality music software that had become common among amateur musicians.
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Ryan Celsius, a D.C. based DJ who runs his own suite of lo-fi hip-hop channels, says YouTube became the hotbed for his work because of the comparatively lax attitudes towards copyright law.
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Those voices, sweet and pained… the extra vibrato wobbles at the beginning… the sheer naivety of it all—this lo-fi Indian interpretation got me good, more than the original song's slickness ever did.
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Making and releasing games costs money so I follow a development methodology I call "economic lo-fi" to produce commercial games with small teams and short dev cycles, which helps reduce overall financial risk.
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Moskowitz has been involved in various Bay Area bands including Emotional, Teenage Chain, and Healing Potpourri but Froogy's Groovies sees Muzzy stepping out to write and record his own lo-fi and nonchalant pop.
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The latest of which, "Rejoice in the Realm of Unordained Light," surfaced on their Bandcamp just the other day, and is a characteristically challenging, lo-fi Luciferian meditation on the night and its secrets.
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While its cameraman, the future documentarian Leslie Woodhead, later described the lo-fi film as looking "like something smuggled out of Eastern Europe," its historical significance more than makes up for its questionable quality.
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Hooded Fang shed any trace of their late Torontopia indie-pop origins on Venus on Edge for lo-fi post-punk dystopia, exposing the shortcomings of their so-called music city metropolis and others.
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Shamir's voice is as beautiful as always, floating over the minimal guitar strums to create a lo-fi ballad that sits somewhere between country, punk and whatever else you can call what Shamir makes.
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A need is met when Anna Abhau Elliott can fill a black box space with a lo-fi piece of devised theater, using text from an 1871 Federal investigation of Klan violence in Spartanburg.
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Along with a full stream of the record, we had a chat with B.C below about the record's concept, the whole craze around lo-fi, and how he makes his tracks sound so dope.
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It's fitting that the songs they wrote together that most effectively channeled their pasts, "After Hour Perfection" and "Got No Crew," would never get recorded, relegated to lo-fi bootleg status to this day.
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It's a far cry from the lo-fi grunge anthems she came out of the gate with in the early 1990s, or the "pop according to PJ Harvey" tracks she released in the 2000s.
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Their early experiments, as on their debut album and 2004's Sung Tongs, pave the way for a new wave of lo-fi psychedelia that will come to shape alternative music in the noughties.
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I brought this up this up with Isobel James Shasha, a developer at Sundae Month who just released Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, which mixes lo-fi 3D environments with 2D pixel art characters.
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Related Virtual Psychedelia: Enter Vinyl Williams' Surreal Jungle Colonise an Alien Planet in 3D Animation 'Space Diaspora' Tiny Japanese Cameras Create A Series Of Lo-fi Instagram-y Music Videos For L.A. Indie Darlings
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"It was my attempt at trying to make sense of incorporating these really metallic, jarring, grainy, lo-fi textures and field recordings with my voice, [and] kind of meeting in the middle" she says.
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A looped keyboard melody, some deeply distorted bass and a simple drum pattern was all it took to inspire Sheck Wes, whose improvised, mantra-like chants rounded out the song's lo-fi punk spirit.
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That said, if you're too anxious for Top 40 hits, user Listen2Listed has you covered with "Coronavirus beats to chill/hide in my room to," a playlist dedicated to soothing, lo-fi hip hop.
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A solo show earlier this year at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, "Lo-Fi Glamour," featured graffiti-like paintings scrawled with gut-punch slogans like "#You Don't Own Me." It closed this month.
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Following a string of well-received one-offs, including "Winona" and "Goodbye Michael," London lo-fi house producer DJ Boring has shared the buoyant title track from his upcoming three-song release Sunday Avenue.
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Instead of continuing with a successful death metal career, Fenriz opted instead for a brand of lo-fi black metal that no one—and certainly not his label—was looking for at the time.
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Wonderfully lo-fi – by which I mean created by people unconcerned about treating players kindly, guiding them along, or any such proprieties – a lot of these games exist outside the paradigms that define mainstream horror.
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Her voice has that near-but-not-quite a growl and dicey delivery in line with Stevie Nicks, but her aesthetic is all lo-fi '90s rock, like Mary Timony, Liz Phair, or Juliana Hatfield.
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It's a loving parody that reminds the audience that Revenge of the Sith's more objectionable elements — the stilted dialogue, bad acting, and bizarrely misogynistic plotting — can still be fun, especially through a lo-fi lens.
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I think it's wonderful that someone we all thought was going to be lo-fi has actually got the ability to take a genre piece, make it fun, keep it entertaining and choke you up.
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"The lo-fi aesthetic and freaky vocal delivery makes for an unsettling experience, like being chased through the woods by a chainsaw-wielding maniac," due to its "distorted riffs and scratchy guitar solos," said Pandora.
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Mr. Ocean's most recent solo releases are a cover of the Isley Brothers' "At Your Best (You Are Love)" in January 2015 and "Memrise," a skeletal lo-fi recording posted to Tumblr in November 2014.
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"One could call it a Lo-Fi minimal wavish version of cosmic space jazz and anything closely related to it... from spiritual soul, g-funk, ethiopian jazz to ambient and everything in between," he said.
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Beyond the retrofuturist veneer of cuts like "Forget Your Place" and lead single "Viktor Borgia," this is Malkmus alright, earnestly if nonchalantly embracing a lo-fi aesthetic using electronic gear instead of well-worn guitars.
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This is great news because 219's Just Hip to be Woman, backed up the inspired album title, with a bunch of new wave indie pop that was just the right side of lo-fi.
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During one recording session, lead singer Damon Albarn was messing around with two kick drums and Street recorded it with his new hard drive recorder, the room microphones giving it that lo-fi, distant quality.
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After Wilson gave up on the project, the Beach Boys pulled out of the production race, stripped Wilson of his status as band leader, and released the lo-fi Smiley Smile in September of 1967.
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If you were to remove the chip sounds from three-piece Playing Tourist Forever, it would sound like the kind of lo-fi garage-punk band that would get a limited tape run on Burger Records.
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Led by guitarist Michael Falcone (Speedy Ortiz, Ovlov), their scuzzy guitars and crisp harmonies recall everything great that existed on the fringes of late-80s grunge and lo-fi – Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Archers of Loaf.
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Often hand-drawn, nearly always incredibly lo-fi, with music ranging from slinky chiptunes to ambient drones, they tackle everything from the troubles of sleeplessness and anxiety, to the trials and tribulations of newspaper headline editors.
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Thanks lo-fi animations, cheesy acting and a soothing voiceover by the quintessential 1940s voiceover guy, it turns out that watching a video that explains how you wrecked your body last night can be surprisingly palliative.
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I scrunched my hair with my fingers (you can use a hairdryer, but I wanted to go as lo-fi as possible) and let it air-dry, adding more spray where I felt I needed it.
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As the only major audio-only YouTube counterpart, the site fostered a vibrant lo-fi rap scene accessible to a range of new independent voices, as well as a variety of other musical genres and podcasts.
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As I've said in my other reviews of ZINK-based printer products, I think the "lo-fi" look is charming and reminds me of the imperfections of film and instant photos, but you may feel differently.
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We come from a lo-fi band world as much as an electronic music one and that definitely comes through in everything from what we put out on record to how we approach our live shows.
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There's a house track, there's a lo-fi techno burner, a jungle track, and the last track "Sun Shadow," I don't even know how to put a genre on it, maybe IDM or something like that.
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Back in April, the 38-year-old released one of the most pleasant albums of 2018 with Sex & Food, a psychedelic blend of lo-fi funk and danceable indie rock with a touch of R&B.
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Simon Holland: Let's first differentiate between the kind of vintage, lo-fi synth and drum machine music that I compile and the Retrowave movement which is all about recreating the sound of 80s professional music studios.
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The record featured happily sleazy, lo-fi parts from Josh Homme and Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys; the younger bucks sounded delighted to edge into his light.
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Well before the ubiquity of Spotify playlists, algorithmic curation, and "lo-fi beats to relax/study to," Arca was crafting her own seamless amalgamations of popular and fringe culture—and presenting them as authored listening experiences.
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We are in an era of high female achievement, from the jangly and verbose work of Courtney Barnett to the devastating confessions of Katie Crutchfield's Waxahatchee and the lo-fi disillusionment of Lindsey Jordan's Snail Mail.
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In Search of Lost Time is an energizing, guitar solo-heavy, polished step forward from 2015's "The 'Ellen' Page," the Canadian band's first single to earn lo-fi buzz (and approval from the titular actor).
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"Lo-Fi Sky is a project that looks at the mundane and stagnant aspects of life and chooses to delve into the natural world, even though it is constantly in flux and unstable," Ursa Major explains.
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When he did release a solo album, 2014's True That, it was an excellent but humble affair: a lo-fi set of bedroom folk, jangly psych-pop, and pretty piano instrumentals quietly released via Bandcamp.
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Segre's lo-fi DIY aesthetic is at odds with sculptors whose studio assistants fabricate their artworks for them and seldom get their hands dirty, but that seems to be only a small part of her intention.
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Sebadoh's signature lo-fi aesthetic wasn't expected to do the sizeable numbers that their alt-rock contemporaries Nirvana did, which, judging from their insistence on four-track or (gasp!) eight-track recording, probably suited them just fine.
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It makes sense that the video for "Zorak," the latest track from hip-hop duo Cavanaugh, is a tribute to the strange beauty of Pong-era video games, lo-fi animation, and black-and-white home movies.
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The production here is rather primitive (one assumes intentionally so) but even its lo-fi nature can't extinguish the echoing, almost delicate melodies and glimpses of advanced technicality on the band's most recent release, Rite of Dissassociation.
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The unlikely hit, throbbing with darkly personal lyrics, volcanic energy, and lo-fi, distorted sound, rapidly came to signify the rapper's popular brand of music, known as "emo rap" to some and "sad hip-hop" to others.
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Ditching the lo-fi, vintage sensibility of Luke Wyatt's earlier work, "Feeling is Law" is a high-fidelity instrumental that feels composed with the default "orchestra" instruments you'd find on your average piece of music production software.
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While the lo-fi camcorder quality and old school square TV image ratios give it that crunchy vibe, the clothes should not be overlooked as the very thing that the Breeders or Sonic Youth would have worn.
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In that time, Sports Coach has mutated from an over-the-top lo-fi conceptual venture—see 2014's GRAB YOUR BALLS AND GET ON THE COURT—to a warped, yet emotionally affecting pop project in miniature.
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So he gave up the fancy producers and set out to define his career in a way that departed from what was expected of a black musician, recording a lo-fi album alone in his Philadelphia bedroom.
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It's cool if you like the fuzzy, lo-fi appeal of VHS, but please, don't pay $40 when you could pick up some of these old tapes at a thrift store or on eBay for much less.
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While Ms. Naïm, now 38, has gone on to a prestigious artistic career in France, she continues to make music in the same lo-fi fashion, recording at home with her partner and longtime producer David Donatien.
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The Video Equations systems uses the power of mathematics to create what Jordan calls "rippling lo-fi seas of color, acid trip roguelikes, glitching fractals, visions of an 80s techno dream and worlds of crashing computer programs".
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The project started as "something else to do in the bedroom together" and quickly blossomed into a full band churning out bittersweet lo-fi indie songs influenced by the knowledge that one day your life will end.
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His debut as Destroyer from that year, We'll Build Them A Golden Bridge, is a self-recorded bedroom LP of 16 tracks, avant-garde witticisms delivered by a golden-tongued prophet of 90s lo-fi anti-heroes.
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Consent is also the namesake of Toronto band Vallens' debut album, a dark aura of lo-fi rock led by singer-songwriter Robyn Phillips that explores a myriad of women's issues including sexual, physical, and communicative consent.
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She moved to London with him, despite her parents' warning that she was making a mistake, and the pair have been writing music together ever since, beginning in 2006 with their lo-fi indie collaboration John & Jehn.
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Last month's "Pretty Face" — his first full-length recording — is built on the same melancholy lyricism and lo-fi production that defined previous projects, but it feels more resolute, nudging up the intensity on his heartsick ruminations.
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Tracks like "So Easy," which was originally released in 221 on a split with Chicago garage-pop lifers The Lemons, is revamped, scrapping the original's lo-fi sensibility in favor of immaculate production and daydream-inducing guitars.
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Despite its abysmal image quality, there are still a few photographers who love the Game Boy Camera's lo-fi aesthetic, including Matt Gray who discovered an old-school photography trick that finally lets the peripheral produce color images.
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Study sessions set to lo-fi hip-hop are just one example; other 24/7 channels run through different visuals to create a digital ambiance that makes it feel like more than just a Spotify or SoundCloud playlist.
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The brand's aesthetic seems closely linked to this part of the capital, the moody surroundings of Elephant and Castle turned to cotton, thread, and velour—another example of the blend of lo-fi and aspirational Palace excels at.
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Earlier this year, in spring, he uploaded a ten-track collection of lo-fi, guitar-led DIY recordings called Hope to Soundcloud alongside an open-hearted, anxious-sounding note that explained both his absence and change of sound.
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More straightforward and melodic than many of their knottier peers, Naðra channels the grandiosity, savagery, and epic, folky inflections of 90s black metallers like Borknagar or Windir, intensifying the effect with their own lo-fi, fiercely DIY approach.
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The clip mostly consists of verité lo-fi footage of Hunt singing and picking through the dirt and brushing her teeth, rough-hewn stuff that emphasizes the contrasts between her work and the raw material that informed it.
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Don't worry, it's still rough, raw, lo fi rock'n' roll that you can drink beer and get rowdy to, but the more prominent oi sound found on their 2014 Vain in Life has taken on a poppier edge.
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The heartfelt, lo-fi indie rock he's steadily churned out under the umbrella of The Microphones and, later, Mount Eerie is unflinching as he recounts the tragedy that altered the course of his life and his daughter's, too.
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The songs were lo-fi, melodic little gems that totally skewed the ice-cutting American punk of Dalle's previous work, sounding more like trash rock deep cuts from 1997 rather than something you'd hear on a free Kerrang!
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The often overlooked quintessential New York band stuck to the lo-fi sound they built a name for themselves on this, their fourth album, and the result is something that feels like a product of NYC's glory days.
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If you don't know who 9th Wonder is, all you need to know is that his production style (and that of J Dilla's) is responsible for those "24/7 lo-fi hip hop studying/chill" mixes you love.
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If you've spent a long time in the seedy corners of the rap internet ruled by the likes of $UICIDEBOY$, Black Kray, Xavier Wulf, and Slug Christ, you probably encountered Nedarb's lo-fi, sample-heavy beats years ago.
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The video evokes thirties Hollywood, and the song features Remy singing over a loop from Gloria Ann Taylor's "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing," from 1973, a haunting bit of lo-fi disco that should have been a hit.
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For fans who still love the sound fundamental elements of Doom's combat design or the lo-fi taped-together charm of exploring its environments, they have the capability to make something potentially very ambitious with relative technological ease.
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The Broward County native made a lasting impression in 2012 as an 18-year-old with his debut tape Calendars, a project that captured the early 2010s obsession with Three 6 Mafia-influenced drugged-out, lo-fi raps.
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Over their original 260-year run, the one-time husband-wife duo of Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema created their own inimitable sounds that evolved from strung-out, lo-fi experiments to greasy, Stones-esque, boogie-rock jams.
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VanderWaal faces a similar struggle, in figuring out how to exit the first phase of her life and smoothly end up on the other side, releasing music inspired by a combination of Kanye West and lo-fi jazz.
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J.P. If Sam Hunt is country music's Drake, then this is his "Marvins Room" — a lo-fi, diaristic song about the wages of celebrity that doesn't bother much with ostentatious production and instead leans in to emotional trauma.
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Over the course of a string of lo-fi bangers—released via YouTube videos, online mixtapes, and all reputable DSPs, and pushed through Instagram, where he has over 29,211 followers—he's established himself as a fringe rap star.
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There's no mistaking Lush as a DIY or lo-fi record—Jordan has been trained in guitar since she was five, and you can hear it in the way she places angular, unexpected chords next to each other.
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One of the new members of their roster is Cer, a one-man project from Utrecht whose first full-length "Void Emissions" was released last year and has that lo-fi quality one would expect given the label.
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Meet The Big Moon: Four girls from London—Juliette Jackson (guitar/vocals), Soph Nathan (guitar/vocals), Celia Archer (bass/vocals), and Fern Ford (drums)—who make moody, marvelous music that's equal parts Elastica and lo-fi indie rock scuzz.
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I have a diverse listening style — K-pop, hip-hop, EDM, classical, jazz, and lo-fi, to name a few — so it was to my surprise when I found out that the larger pads made the MW50+ sound worse.
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There's a certain finesse to the way they play with melody; it's centered in a way that this kind of lo-fi black metal seldom bothers with, and is what makes this band so appealing (and so terribly listenable).
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In 1998, Kathleen Hanna, known then as the indefatigable riot grrrl frontwoman of Bikini Kill, released "Julie Ruin," a lo-fi bedroom album made alone with a drum machine and quarter-inch tapes while her band was falling apart.
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This music is defined by the creaky, dust-spattered sound of her acoustic guitar and/or cleanly trebly electric, strummed or plucked, as a token of expressionist sincerity and a way to sound homemade, if not exactly lo-fi.
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Though no longer a member, it was at this stage where Quay gained her chops as a performer while regularly releasing music that teetered between 90s New York rap and the lo-fi, distorted sounds of early Memphis rap.
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Whether in the sing-song hook of "Hate Being Sober," the choppy bravado of "Don't Like," the lo-fi grit of "3Hunna," or the ambient drift of "Citgo," Keef forecasted basically every trend of hyped 2017 music in 20163.
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Unlike, say, hardvapour's eagerness to get behind a single unified label, lo-fi house exists at the crux of a number of sustained styles, each more interested in creating lasting grooves than in bearing the weight of fleeting buzzwords.
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He masterfully curates for the comedown, and by the time Yves Tumor's lo-fi slow jam "The Feeling When You Walk Away" creeps in, he has you ready to float home, somewhere above a new morning's grit and grime.
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It's a new story for Zauner, however, who fronted the crunchy power-punk band Little Big League before starting the Japanese Breakfast side project on her own, shaping an assemblage of lo-fi demos into the debut Psychopomp (2016).
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But our lo-fi world ended on October 13, 1994 with the introduction of the Netscape browser, which made it possible to actually "surf" the "net," to invoke a term that has aged a lot worse than vinyl albums.
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This retrospective celebrates the legacy of Fisher-Price's PXL 215, a camcorder that proved a bust with children but added a fun new tool to the palettes of experimental filmmakers, who prized it for its lo-fi, mosaicked imagery.
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The track is as outwardly triumphant as something this patently lo-fi can be, while conjuring a longing for something greater beneath the melting synths and rotting drums, like a fading photograph of the best summer you never had.
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The prospect of receiving a signed copy of a remixed 8bit video title might seem unfathomably uncool to some, but for many, the backing track of their youth was the lo-fi beeps and monophonic melodies of Allister's early repertoire.
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Los Angeles' Ablebody are about as perfect a pop package as you can get, really: Handsome twin brothers, summery lo-fi tracks, and a "formerly of" CV that includes The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The Depreciation Guild.
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This article was originally published on THUMP UK. If you aren't familiar with Montreal's Banko Gotiti Records, then you've been missing out on some of the best warped bedroom pop and lo-fi dance music coming out of Canada right now.
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The next Thursday we passed through the lunch line at Bertha's Kitchen, at the far northern end of The Neck, for meltingly tender platters of stewed oxtails and turkey wings served over rice, before heading to Lo-Fi Brewing nearby.
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"Generally speaking, I think right now the entertainment industry is coming to terms with how lo-fi a lot of these incredibly popular new media projects are," says James D'Amato, an RPG live-streamer, games podcaster, and game designer in Chicago.
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This may be dusty and emotive heartland rock 'n' roll, but it has more in common with the grimy lo-fi realism of Peter Laughner of Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs than with any John Cougar/Jeff Tweedy sap.
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The lead single "House of Jealous Lovers" holds the distinction of being DFA's first release, and its screechy-vocals and rusted cowbell beat definitely brings us back to the glory of dance music's golden lo-fi era, that it helped inaugurate.
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In what may be the most lo-fi engagement announcement ever, famed actress Meg Ryan shared the news of her engagement to John Mellencamp via an Instagram post featuring a hand-drawn illustration on what appears to be a napkin.
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The whole episode is trés Internet-in-2018: semi-established artist drops lo-fi video as a joke, goes instantly viral — viral enough to spawn a catchphrase and a dance challenge — just before heading on tour to promote her new record.
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Others in the past have taken a more lo-fi approach to the problem, as shown in a video in which a French iPhone owner simply punched in a set of random consonants for Siri to repeat, to surprisingly effective results.
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This spring, Exile in Guyville is getting a box set reissue from Matador Records, a seven-LP/three-CD edition, replete with remastered versions of her endearingly lo-fi Girly-Sounds demos and a book full of old photos and interviews.
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DOM's "WHAT I'VE TRIED TO DO IS MURDER (Homophobic Disco DOMination MegaMix)" works with lo-fi house tropes, while OFFSHORE OVERDRAFT's "CRUZ'N USA" employs a distinctly turn-of-the-millenium sound palate—deliberate amateurity is largely the name of the game.
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If you're familiar with the Studio Barnhus co-founder's work (his debut album was one of THUMP's favorite records of last year), then you know the drill—expect Balearic disco, lo-fi house, and techno that will get the blood pumping.
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As No Age, the Los Angeles-based duo went from a spanking DIY unit spreading releases across as many labels as they could, to music press favorites on Sub Pop pushing boundaries for the lo-fi arm of indie rock.
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Throw that aggressively lo-fi hardcore into a blender with the likes of Indian Summer and Policy of 3, two acts who dared to insert long, ruminative sections into their songs, and you have a rough approximation of early Saetia.
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While the music reminds me of the lo-fi aesthetics in the late '90s of bands like Spoon and the Rainer Maria, her voice is a unique sounding beacon that leads you towards a light at the end of the tunnel.
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American Pleasure Club's TOUR TAPE, which came out in May after Kitty had joined the band, was in itself completely restless, bouncing from black metal to ambient bliss to throwback, lo-fi screamo in the span of a few minutes.
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It's a lo-fi production, with piano, harmonium, banjo and a somber, simple drumbeat in the murky mix alongside the voice of Mr. Springsteen, alone and then joined by others including Adam Schumann, the soldier whose story underlies the film.
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Two parallel stories run through these confessions — her audience's persistent anger when her band strives to move beyond its political, lo-fi origins, and her lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria, ultimately leading her to come out as a transgender woman.
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Most of the works here follow this line of inquiry — from slow-moving nonnarrative videos and glitch photography (that is, technically defective images) to a lo-fi kinetic painting with talk-bubble texts that turns at one rotation per minute.
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The static, lo-fi images of the Senate floor vote were in stark contrast to the high production values of Mr. Trump's State of the Union, where cameras swooped above the audience and zoomed in on the facial reactions of politicians.
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The film's deliberate lo-fi design leads to endless shots of people sitting in cramped and dreary rooms — although there is a great scene involving the French actress Sarah Bernhardt (Rebecca Dayan) slinking and brooding through a snowy walk with Tesla.
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APL's signature "purple metal" blends the lo-fi grandeur of black metal with post-punk atmospherics, acoustic guitars, and bursts of punk intensity to create a dynamic and surprisingly sensuous sound, augmented by Master's provocative, viscerally emotive lyrics and seductive aesthetic.
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Sleepyheaded and lo-fi as all hell, their music sounded like it was filtered through every late Summer evening you ever spent alone, wanting to be somebody else, anywhere else, laying head-to-toe with someone who just gets it.
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The limitations added to this unbearable feeling of nothingness—the constant hum of off-screen "space electronics" and the loud blinks of Zorak all muddled together to make a show that was as much lo-fi zine as it was Braque collage.
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The film — written and directed by Jonah Hill — is a surprisingly lo-fi, intimate, personal movie about a kid trying to figure out who he is and how to fit in as he hangs out with a ragtag crew of wannabe skateboarders.
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While other YouTube stars—like Jake and Logan Paul, Bethany Mota, and Lele Pons—rely on hyper-produced, staged videos with bright thumbnails and clickbait titles, Chamberlain posts lo-fi vlogs using default fonts, clashing color schemes, and lowercase titles that never overpromise.
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The main difference, it seems, between the viral lo-fi mixes and the work of musicians like City Girl is that instead of providing ambient background music, the latter wants listeners to connect and become immersed in the worlds of their tracks.
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It's a function of the related lo-fi illusion, the impression that these turbulent, punkoid spurts, airy, strummed confessionals, and squelchy, through-composed amalgams of both were stitched together by hand, that she's sharing something private with you (and you alone, dear listener!).
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Despite its gritty, lo-fi vibe, Oath had some serious firepower behind the boards: Hum's Matt Talbott recorded it at Earth Analog, Kvlthammer guitarist/vocalist Carl Byers mixed it, and Dan Randall from Mammoth Sound put the finishing touches on the whole thing
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The first, common among Netflix series, is that it spends roughly half of its debut season doing nothing of consequence; the show's early episodes are full of long, aimless scenes that chronicle Arnett and his pals' lo-fi, scuzzy adventures around Venice, California.
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When I first heard the music of Best Coast—chimeric as Fleetwood Mac, slightly nostalgic in a Beach Boys way, bad-ass and lo-fi too—I was living in New York City, thousands of miles from Venice Beach where I live now.
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It was at 18 that she dropped her first mixtape, Drunken Babble, a collection of lo-fi jams that spiral between genres—from Motown to hip hop to soul and R&B—like someone frantically dipping their paintbrush into a multitude of colours.
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But back when she made the stuff on Beside Herself, it was necessarily analog and lo-fi—recorded at home, where she had the time to experiment, to cut and paste tape loops, to workshop the strange techniques that fueled her work.
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The Anonymous YouTube channel, a place for robotic-voiced broadcasts by a mask-wearing spokesperson, comes across like video art—specifically the lo-fi aesthetic of Nam June Paik's videos from the 1960s or even the surrealist short films of Salvador Dalí.
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" Everything that we've heard from the 26-year-old Canadian's forthcoming fourth LP, This Old Dog (out May 5), has been a perfect refinement of his swooning, lo-fi indie, from the canine-pleasing title track to the smooth "On the Level.
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Gerd Janson has given John Talabot's "Voices" a conga workout, there's a bittersweet posthumous release from Nackt—a victim of the Oakland fire—something punishing from Unknown Archetype on R&S, and a lo-fi roller from DJ Steaw on Hot Haus.
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These three have worked in some of the most well-known and prestigious restaurants in the world—places like noma, Fat Duck, and Rockpool—and yet they seem to have a deep affection for lo-fi foods like tacos, fried chicken, and kebabs.
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Whereas the first taste of High Bias, released on Drag City, came with the skittering and boldly dense guitars of "Fever", the latest offering is pure fuzzed out lo-fi power pop complete with sides of acoustic guitar and "bop, bop, bops".
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Lo-fi Scottish folk isn't normally the kind of thing we write about here on THUMP, but to date, as far we know, as far as we're aware, no one's come close to capturing the queasiness of a proper blow-out bender.
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Like Quierós's White Out, Black In (2014), this new film is also a lo-fi sci-fi consisting of Afro-Brazilian non-actors, only it takes place in Brasília (the capital) and Ceilândia — an impoverished satellite city first built for temporary residence.
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Garbus has always loved lo-fi fragility for the way its patchiness can make listeners uncomfortable — her erratic juxtapositions evoke a sonic backwater whose ingredients fail to click together and are more interesting that way — and here she goes overboard with this approach.
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The project's progenitor, NKSV, serves up noodly, hard-charging, 80s-flavored heavy metal mixed with power metal bombast, thrashy breakaways, and screechy, distorted, black metal-inflected yelps that somewhat unnervingly recall both vintage Children of Bodom and early Leviathan's lo-fi sickness.
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Photo via Soundcloud It's easy to follow suit to whatever everyone else is doing around you but Ursa Major is a 19-year-old Toronto-based producer and R&B artist would rather go a little off center for EP Lo-Fi Sky.
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Through a series of increasingly eccentric mixtapes, Uzi surfaced last year as an exemplar of so-called SoundCloud rap, embodying the splotchy intensity, warped trap hooks, tuneful ache, and strategically deployed lo-fi distortion characteristic of rappers using that particular online distribution platform.
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It kind of mashes up two very popular things, Sander and lo-fi beats to chill/study to, and if there's anything I know about contemporary culture, if there are two popular things, they are going to get mashed up fairly quickly.
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In 20183 he was at a wedding when a friend with a smartphone showed him TikTok, whose users post short, lo-fi videos of themselves doing just about anything: lip-syncing to pop music, conducting make-up tutorials, standing on their head.
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Folk is a big umbrella now, expansive enough to include the North Carolina bluegrass of the Avett Brothers; the bright-eyed piano balladry of Regina Spektor; the orchestral R&B of Michael Kiwanuka; and the cutting lo-fi attack of Angel Olsen.
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But the unabashed earnestness of it all — the conviction with which garish costumes are worn, nerdy jokes are delivered, and lo-fi recreations of famous comic panels are staged — it's got a cheesy heart you can't buy with any amount of money.
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In the six years since this Cleveland-based act released its self-titled debut album — a lo-fi set of messy rock 'n' roll — Cloud Nothings has sharpened the focus of its songwriting and become one of America's more thrilling noise-rock bands.
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From the rascally chug and kitchen room clatter of "The Grasshopper Eaters," to the sparse, piano-wonky "Sad Baby Eyes," the pummeled thwacks of "Unfinished Business" to the raw lo-fi pop of LP closer "Eye Shop Heaven," Pollard is unswervingly, unabashedly himself.
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This photographer, author and former No Wave rocker is known for favoring lo-fi technology like the pinhole camera, and every image in the exhibition — whether taken at home, grabbed from surveillance footage on the internet, or shot through a telescope — is blurry.
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Though Brooklyn's electronic scene is flourishing, the "Bushwick techno" sound—characterized by a lo-fi crunch and industrial drum kicks in the vein of New York pioneers Adam X and Frankie Bones—was nowhere to be heard during the time I spent at the festival.
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Songwriting twins Mark and Scott Grundy of Quaker Parents and Monomyth, ex-Crosss drummer Nathan Doucet, and Old and Weird drummer Cheryl Hann have all been players in Halifax, Nova Scotia's indie scene for a good while, tapping away at lo-fi, alt-pop brilliance.
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But if you're willing to cough up some health information and refer your friends, you can earn special Nebula tokens that can help pay for a lo-fi sequence, the equivalent of a first draft that someone went over once with a subpar spell-checker.
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I've seen their name splashed across every decent punk show in New York City for the past few years, and they've been gaining a considerable amount of traction thanks to their bouncy, lo-fi tunes and cutting lyrics howled in both Japanese and English.
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Shared on a Soundcloud page called "DaysBeforeAmericanBF," the demo doesn't differ too much from the final cut of the song, but it has a fuzzy lo-fi charm that kind of befits the song's atmospheric, soundtrack-to-a-pivotal-moment-in-a-teen-movie quality.
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It lent the distinctive lo-fi style they've crafted over the course of five LPs to the gun control debate which currently rages across the USA, and as such, it made for some of the most politically direct music the band had ever made.
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Housed in a mall falling into disrepair, it has the degraded, retro-futurist look Terry Gilliam's Brazil and the underrated The Zero Theorem, while the sci-fi exists in the realm of lo-fi realism like Spike Jonze's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
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" From behind barricades demarking a free-speech zone, where anyone can sign up for a 30-minute slot at the microphone, Prophets of Rage run through a lo-fi, boombox-led medley of its protest songs, including "Can't Truss It" and "Killing in the Name.
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LeCompte certainly isn't a video or new media artist, but what he does looks like a trippy lo-fi variant of Chris Cunningham's warped album design for Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy," as well as the sleeve for Windowlicker and Cunningham's legendary accompanying video.
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The strained vocals and fraying music of the reimagined opening sequence are unsettling, leading into a video made up of a mixed bag of 3D, hand-drawn animations, and live-action shots in as many distinct, bizarre, lo-fi styles as there are participating artists.
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Nilüfer Yanya "H34T RISES" Nilüfer Yanya's reworked take on "Heat Rises" from her March debut album takes the lo-fi aspects of the OG track and puts a new shine on the bass that makes it pop a bit more, sound a bit more crips.
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Marrying dirty ambience and lo-fi techno to a fabulist aesthetic with track titles such as "Darkness, and the night, and the Wolf Whisperer," this is easily one of the most intriguing experimental electronic releases to emerge from the holiest city in the Muslim world.
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Titled BREACHEDBIRTH, it's a filthy, feral dose of lo-fi black metalpunk, prickly and mean; the lyrics to songs like "Gun Wrapped in a Party Dress" and "Shattered Cheekbone" are short, nasty, and brutish, fucked up poetry for dark bar corners and darker alleys.
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But for the video they become the end product, a style unto themselves, creating a lo-fi vibe that's present in the unprocessed aesthetic of the depth capture technique—and in the low poly landscapes, oceans, and pre-worlds the band fly, float, and sail through.
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Similar to how any movie nowadays with a disease or epidemic plot might be labelled as a 'zombie' movie, even if it has no relation to the history/tradition of said films... In this way, lo-fi has turned what was a river into an ocean.
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Since founding the band in El Paso, Texas in 2008, Gonzalez had been flitting between sounds, releasing a couple records including the only-to-be-found on YouTube LP, Romans 13:9, which meanders between 90s lo-fi indie and the sun-dappled haziness of 80s shoegaze.
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As with Simpsonwave, fans of the long-running Japanese anime franchise have found a way to further lose themselves in Technicolor nostalgia with Pokewave (or, more aesthetically speaking, Ｐｏｋｅｗａｖｅ), a tumblr-prime mash-up of lo-fi cartoon clips and the soothing, atmospheric sounds of vaporwave.
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With their lo-fi, leather jacket vibes, comparisons to bands like The Kills and The Raveonettes are inevitable, but the five-song EP injects those garage bones with engine oil-sludgy desert rock guitars, Clover's big, almost-pop vocals, and a touch of Nick Cave ominousness.
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If distroid, as Harper suggested, was "hi-fi to the point of actively fetishizing the hi-frequency hisses and twinkles that lo-fi was unable to produce," hardvapour sat somewhere in between distroid and vaporwave, hi-fi without fetishing hi-fi tools (laptops, DAWs, VST synths).
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I also spent hours and hours and hours on Bandcamp, inhaling anything tagged with "lo-fi" or "Philadelphia" as though, if I stopped, I would just shut down on the spot like a remote control that someone grabbed and slapped the batteries out the back of.
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Perhaps it's because Hinds didn't expect their almost literally infectious brand of guitar pop to get quite as huge as it has, but their madly entertaining debut record Leave Me Alone's lo-fi production values are now being regularly overrun by shiny, cool-as-hell videos.
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Philadelphia—the city still best known for Rocky, terrible sports teams, a rather ambivalent attitude towards the concept of "brotherly love," and unbridled cheese steak sandwich decadence—has long been a breeding ground for shredders, jazz freaks, and grimy, lo-fi punk of the highest order.
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In keeping with SoundCloud rap's pervasive aesthetic, Baylor Swift's stylistic scramble declines commercial polish in favor of rap as junkyard, as creaky and fragile as a lo-fi demo, aiming to simulate recording in a home basement with pipes leaking and paint peeling from the ceiling.
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For instance, "Life in Short" will have brief, under 2-minute episodes that are mini biographies of enigmatic musicians; "Rhymes & Misdemeanors" will investigate the biggest crimes in music history; "Generations" will pair artists from different generations; "Singles" will offer lo-fi studio recordings of artists' biggest songs; among others.
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Featuring lo-fi indie royalty Kurt Vile, cimbalom virtuoso Michael Masley, and psych-folk siren Mariee Sioux, the album flits from pulsating drone to tender, sunlit folk and then alights somewhere along the perimeters of country-gothic, largely recorded largely in Ireland's 19th century defensive forts, the Martello Towers.
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Kim: I dig the lo-fi, rough-and-tumble feel you've maintained here, even with the cleaner guitar tones; I'm picking up on some post-punk influence, too, which spices up the usual garage punk formula (the vocalist sounds desperate and half-drunk, too, which I'm very into).
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A centrifugal force of Bay Area ambient and drone, Cantu-Ledesma placed a reel-to-reel tape machine on a chair front-and-center, like the guest of honor at a musique-concrète coffee date, propelling lo-fi kick drums and barely-there hi-hats into the dusk.
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Below is their video for "Summer Feet": the visuals are very weird and the music is excitable, lo-fi indie-pop with the kind of yelps that make you think the singer's trying to walk across a bed of coals to get somewhere he's really stoked about arriving at.
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Soon, bands like The Lawrence Arms and The Honor System would offer up their own takes on this brand of punk, and before long, this kind of lo-fi, rough-hewn strain would become Chicago's chief export to the rest of the punk scene over the next decade.
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In the three years since its inception, and the year since the release of its debut single, this eight-member group — based in London and made up of members from all over the world — has honed a style that's a rigorous take on D.I.Y., lo-fi indie rock.
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The latest album from these d-beaten feminist Malmö punks has a weirdly lo-fi guitar and drum sound that reminds me eerily of Deathcrush (especially on album opener "Nix"), but even outside that, their tortured, reverb-drenched vocals and overall kängpunk racket is addictive as all hell.
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Tune-Yards: I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (4AD) For a decade now, Merrill Garbus has written complex songs about political inequalities and human relationships, performed in a jumbled lo-fi collage style whose rickety acoustic core shares space with found sounds and electronic splashes.
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Sure there's an occasional black and white image, and in 2015 Michelle Obama was clearly a fan of the infamous Lo-Fi filter with the border (and a bunch of other border filters,) but that was years ago, back when filters were in style and more easily accepted.
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For me, outside of what will forever be known (to us) as The Bob Hope Scene, the most effective moment in "Miss Americana" was the lo-fi (cellphone?) video of Swift finding out in 2018 that "Reputation" was not nominated in the top categories at the Grammy Awards.
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Over a decade after the murders and church burnings that scandalized Norway's black metal scene, filmmakers Audrey Ewell and her partner Aaron Aites traveled to the country to go beyond the headlines and rumors, in order to better understand the ideas and aesthetics behind the lo-fi metal subculture.
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They will headline both Friday and Saturday night, and be joined by a personally curated round of guests: folk musician Jessica Pratt, LA synth weirdo M. Geddes Gengras, Tri Angle artist WIFE, California lo-fi poppers The Range of Light Wilderness, and self-proclaimed "bubblegum noise" band Winter.
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A few months ago, a lo-fi port of "Super Mario Brothers" that took seven years to program was wiped from servers in just four days, reportedly after threats from Nintendo — despite the fact that this hobbyist project only runs on the obsolete 250s computer system Commodore 64.
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She catalogues her encounters with the era's artistic signatures — colored iMac G3 desktop computers, Jeff Koons's balloon dogs, "the cacophony of lo-fi indie rock reverb" — while linking them temporally to the crises that have come to define the decade — 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, frequent school shootings, the war in Iraq.
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But thanks to Ingrid Goes West, the next time I go somewhere beautiful, I'm going to enjoy the moment for a while, before I filter the scenery through Lo-Fi (the best filter of them all), and pretend not to care about how many notifications light up my lock screen.
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We dig into the group of lo-fi house producers who are rapidly moving into more fully realized pieces, a new generation of DJs who are slowly incorporating ambient music into their work, and a few musicians taking grammar of house tracks and turning it into something more strange and surreal.
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She seemed to be doing exceptionally well, making the leap from the adolescent Jorja who'd recorded lo-fi YouTube covers accompanied by a friend four years earlier, her thick curly hair scraped back in a high ponytail with one of those sparkly, crinkly-to-the-touch scarves looped around her shoulders.
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August By Cake is a sprawling two-album affair which resembles a 'traditional' GBV album (ie Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes) in its arrangements, although with a production aesthetic of studio and home studio quality, rather than the lo-fi tape recordings that made those albums the cult holy grails they are.
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Once you know the limitations of the old equipment you could in theory set about recording using replica plug-ins and digital audio software like Logic or Ableton but the temptation with software is to smooth out mistakes and so you begin to erase the lo-fi feel of the music.
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Whether it was the rise of the atmospheric, emo-worshipping SoundCloud rap movement, the chilled-out YouTube rave music of lo-fi house, or the experimental bubblegum-pop assault of PC Music, each of these scenes initially faced backlash for their willingness to challenge the norms of their respective genres.
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As the internet has kicked dance music's often faceless, single-driven existence into overdrive, and web-based trends have become more and more banal, lo-fi house, as it exists now, offers an interesting logical endpoint; it's the first "genre" almost entirely indebted to the platform on which it was disseminated.
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The lo-fi pop ingenue trend that her first LP, Pure Heroine, went on to influence has come and gone, and there's a certain nervousness among fans about whether the new work can keep up with the wildfire that was her debut—or, more interestingly, what that even looks like.
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If you don't care for what Spotify or Google serves up, YouTube has user-driven, live-streaming music channels that play specifically "music to work or study to," like lo-fi, instrumental hip-hop stations and other 24/7 streaming stations playing subdued, instrumental, electronica intended to help you focus.
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I only had a $100 mic at the crib, so I was just recording on Audacity and I was studying lo-fi shit to hear how it sounded back in the day so I could mimic it and put it into the new age, and that's how it came out.
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Have a look: I think that, while it's safe to say that this particular twist on the common endless (or infinite) runner genre isn't about to dislodge the likes of Jetpack Joyride and Temple Run from the public's portable handsets en mass, it's definitely got a lo-fi, knockabout charm to it.
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Instagram may have had humble lo-fi beginnings trying to emulate the instant film aesthetic of Polaroid, but the app has transformed over the years into a serious digital gallery where tossing a bloody Nashville or Rise or Earlybird filter on top of a pic and calling it a day invites scorn.
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The poster boy of lo-fi, Barlow had amassed a substantial library of music up to that point through his many projects: Sebadoh, Sentridoh, The Folk Implosion, Lou Barlow, and previously, Deep Wound and Dinosaur Jr. Korine was a fan of Barlow's work and handpicked him to provide original music for the film.
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Barely over 20 years old, the Montreal-based lo-fi trio of guitarist Augusta Veno, bassist Charlotte Dempsey, and drummer Anwyn Climenhage shows impressive depth for their age with biting lyrics like "I'm so tired of myself I'd punch my shadow on the pavement" and sudden frantic-yet-melodic time signature shifts.
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I don't know if it's because I come up with a thousand ways to do clever and mean wordplay on the titles while writing this review, or if it's the sheer childish joy of hearing three mildly exuberant Brooklyn indie Cindies once again have at it, lo-fi punkrock style on record.
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I was worried when I put it out, because the first release on 1080p [Moondance] was what I would consider lo-fi house music, and going from that to where I'm at now... I felt like once it was announced, people were going to be expecting something that they weren't going to get.
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From heads who have been around since house's beginnings, to a younger generation now thoroughly burned out on the vaporwave zeitgeist—both of which lie at the heart of the style's burgeoning audience—lo-fi house has very simply given electronic music fans an untapped vein of new tracks to get lost in.
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As advances in maching learning increasingly make music discovery more flawlessly streamlined than human agency could really ever be, lo-fi house sets a precedent for how things could look: videos spinning endlessly on autoplay, hits driven more and more by the sort of algorithmic patterns already beginning to shape the industry.
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As soon as your job involves any degree of concentration, though, that shit has to stop: as soon as this country rejects Brexit and enters willfully into my Iron Rule, the only office music allowed by law will be those "lo-fi beats 2 relax 2" YouTube playlists and literally nothing else.
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The example she has set over the last seven years — from lo-fi, no-budget home recordings to effusive critical acclaim and sold-out tours, all without sacrificing any of her charm or individuality — has helped open doors for a generation of self-starters like Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail and Julien Baker.
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I think before that, you had a lot of radio shows that people listened to as podcasts, and then you had a lot of podcasts that were sort of like lo-fi, Marc Maron talking to his friends, but it's really compelling because Marc Maron has famous friends, and they have good stories.
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And I remember being surprised that the grimy, lo-fi riffs and monotone vocals that were shaking out of those speakers weren't a riot grrrl band that I'd never heard of, but Shampoo's first ever release; a small collection of innuendo-filled punk tracks that they'd written and recorded while they were still at school.
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But when designers and marketers need to come up with new ideas or vet products before trying to sell them, they still turn to the same lo-fi method that's been in use for decades: putting a bunch of people in a room and having them hash it out as part of a focus group.
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I listen to a wide range of genres — classical, jazz, EDM, hip hop, lo-fi, and K-Pop to name a few — so more often than not, I have to rely on the bass-boosting "Commute" setting to compensate for the sound leakage and give me a better feel for how it handles sound reproduction.
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" Hence the planned 2019 Lollapalooza appearances of bands like the cult Chicago college kid fave Beach Bunny; the Korean American lo-fi hip-hop beatsmaker Yaeji; and R&B artist Tayla Parx, who has already made a name for herself behind the scenes as the songwriter for some gigantic singles — including Grande's "7 Rings.
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Featuring a monochromatic, one-bit art style and lo-fi chiptunes that you'll want to relax and study to, Demon Girl Game strikes the perfect balance of being a chill yet engaging way to spend time, and I can't wait to see what the next month of making rent has in store for me.
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The earliest release "Bite My Ear," featuring Tigers Jaw's Brianna Collins, is lo-fi bedroom pop that wouldn't be out of place on the Orchid Tapes roster, while Abercrombie & Me (2015) is pure emotional trap featuring a song built entirely around the hook from Ian Van Dahl's eurodance 1998 rager "Castles in the Sky".
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It was compiled by French vinyl collector Olivier Carrié, AKA Uncle O. Included on the compilation are composer Roger Roger, whose LP Pop Electronique was among the first albums in the world to feature the Moog synthesizer, and Anarchic System whose hazy lo-fi electro-pop tunes forsaged the work of musicians like Ariel Pink.
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The trio's deliberately lo-fi war metal recordings about drowning Richard Spencer in piss and declaring war on incels became another flashpoint in the seemingly eternal argument over how politics fit into extreme metal, and as it turns out, served as the direct inspiration for yet another buzzy new Nazi-smashing metal project: Gaylord.
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Pom Pom Squad "Cherry Blossom" For those of you out there wondering where the Liz Phairs of this generation are — less on the indie rock about sex , and more on the lo-fi music with lyrics that hit at the heart of what kind of sucks for women in the world — here you are.
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This is the rare case in which a rapper successfully translates the messy SoundCloud rap aesthetic into an album without sacrificing the mess — the distortion, the static, the lo-fi murk, the random noises surfacing and subsiding, the preoccupation with death and horror tropes (for instance, "Lost Souls" and "Suicide Season"), and the defiant incoherence.
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Mitski: Puberty 2 (Dead Oceans) It's not often a new album uses the lo-fi sonic palette to novel effect, but here you go: that dry acoustic clang mirrors the existential dread in Mitski's songs exactly, and when the guitars suddenly swell up in distorted electric explosive unison, it's like the style has never worn out, formally speaking.
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Though The Indian Runner follows the plot of "Highway Patrolman" — ultimately dealing with the choices Joe has to make about how to handle Frank's law-breaking — the movie more generally re-creates the whole feel of Springsteen's stripped-down, lo-fi 1982 album Nebraska, which is full of songs about desperate characters, straining under the weight of their obligations.
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Featuring members of bands like Evergreen Refuge, Deafest, and Twilight Fauna (with the addition of Josh Thieler from Slaves BC on drums), this American project focuses on primal, lo-fi atmospheric black metal (which sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but listen to the below stream of its debut, Hymnal, and you'll see what I mean).
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The connecting threads that tied the theory together had to do with Hebden's previous collaborations with Burial, as well as the fact that the two both attended South London's prestigious Elliott School in their youth—on a whole, reminiscent of stray rumors throughout the 90s that lo-fi once-recluse Jandek was actually an alias for Thurston Moore.
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Going beyond the darker themes of Tyler's first three records, the album is a vast expanse of pastel colors, of string sections recorded with Han Zimmer, ascendent harmonies from Gap Band member Charlie Wilson, near iconic guest verses from Lil Wayne and Kanye West, lo-fi subversion—and, most importantly, a young artist finding his wings.
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Say goodbye to the four-track production, hazy compositions, and comfortable lo-fi tics of the excellent Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream: Produced in Los Angeles by Chris Cohen and sung entirely in French, La Passagère is, from the very first listen, a necessary departure from the trajectory of Marietta's former projects, Feeling of Love and AH Kraken.
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But of course it's also a world where sometimes you have to hit a robot or a spaceship to get it to work, like an old dashboard radio, a place where the supercomputers are operated manually and where buttons and control panels and screens seem far removed from our own galaxy: tactile, lo-fi, and elegantly simple.
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Self-described "Lo-fi / Mid-fi / Sci-fi" producer, Com Truise, has shared the slow-motion gliding title track from his forthcoming Silicon Tare EP. It's the second single to come from the release, following the lush rolling groove of last month's "Diffraction," and it finds Seth Haley delivering what listeners have come to love him for.
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While Winters' had pre-Melkbelly outlets like reddelicious, a folk-rock project and Coffin Ships, her lo-fi duo with husband and Melkbelly guitarist Liam Winters, her new solo songs, which were recorded with the Funs' Philip Lesicko at his Rose Raft studios as well as the Hecks' Dave Vettraino, are catchier and more instantly accessible.
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Though the beats are lo-fi, the sentiments of Sanders are far from relaxing; he is making the same statements that we hear from the presidential candidate today: the rich want to get richer, the middle class is shrinking, Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profit in 2009 and yet paid nothing in taxes, for example.
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While the minimal lo-fi, black and white framing aesthetics of the video were brainstormed after watching Segundo de Chomon's famous 1907 silent film, Le Spectre Rouge, the idea of choreographing a performance depicting the extremities of both mania and depression using just one dancer throughout is strongly rooted in a familiarity of living long periods with bipolar disorder.
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Also known under his other moniker Stephane 1993, B.C's been turning vertebrates throughout the last year with releases on celebrated lo-fi house hotbed Shall Not Fade, gracing proper EPs and curious white labels with his trademark pitched up R&B samples, simple yet effective kicks drums, and an easy going charm that less chin stoke and more ear-to-ear grin.
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When I was in high school and my mom got real sick, all I listened to was lo-fi, antisocial American black metal like Xasthur, Leviathan, and Cult of Daath; I found their CDs in bargain bins and on the shelves at the old Relapse Records store on South Street in Philly, and clung to them as the hospital bills racked up.
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"The 8-Bit Cities project, which started with 8-Bit NYC, is an attempt to to make the city feel foreign yet familiar, smashing together two culturally common models of space: the lo-fi overhead world maps of 1980s role playing and adventure games, and the geographically accurate data that drives today's web maps and GPS navigation," Camper writes on his website.
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At the intersection of a number of styles and influences—from the dripping downtempo of Ibiza's Balearic years, to the early austerity of techno, synth-funk, and more current revivals in new age—lo-fi house represents such a varied collapse of styles that it seems like every dance music fan might be able to find something good in it.
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In the past year, lo-fi house producers such as DJ Boring and DJ Seinfeld––whose tracks bridge the gap between classic Chicago house and chilled-out indie pop––have earned millions of plays on YouTube, in part because the site's algorithms have determined that if these songs start auto-playing after another video, the passive listener is unlikely to object.
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Though she had been releasing charmingly lo-fi music online since her early teens (including acoustic covers of Mumford & Sons and Frank Ocean), everything accelerated for Ms. Cottrill last summer with "Pretty Girl," which she wrote and recorded herself on GarageBand and uploaded to YouTube with an equally crude — yet representative — video: a girl, alone in her room, singing directly into her laptop.
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Adult Swim specialized in toothsome, twilit grooves for its bumpers and commercials, and they also engineered the crossover success of the zonked-savant rapper MF Doom, (if there is one shared touchstone for lo-fi hip-hop, it's probably Madvillainy.) Toonami, on the other hand, brought Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo to a western audience for the first time, with their incredible merengue-tinged soundtracks intact.
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Having lived out a number of lives in the music industry—883s R&B loverman Antonious Thomas, a Death Row writer-for-hire, frontman for Anglophiliac LA rockers The Crosstalk—the then-32 year old retreated to his bedroom and recorded song after song, touching on a concept each day until he held two CDs worth of warts-and-all lo-fi genre-hopping.
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Late last year it was announced that indie rock's beloved Superchunk would be making a much-needed comeback in 2018, with a new album titled What a Time to Be Alive due on 16 February (via Merge, obvi.) They shared the title track, a reasonably lo-fi affair with a typically anthemic guitar line, along with that announcement, and today, they're back with another.
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Instead, the internet buzzed with the kinetic energy of a thousand music bloggers frantically looking up old videos from said band, Foss, which was a seminal post-hardcore outfit who served as an early launching pad for Cedric Bixler-Zavala's music career in At the Drive-In and the Mars Volta (Rolling Stone unearthed a jammy, lo-fi track off the band's The El Paso Pussycats EP if you're curious).
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What's remarkable about this comp is twofold: one is that the bands mainly adhere to a lo-fi, endearingly shambling alt-country/indie fusion similar to Pinegrove themselves (the band doesn't contribute as a whole unit, but Hall performs a raucous solo version of "Burnout" and drummer Zach Levine covers "86"), not only giving the collection its own character but also exposing the yearning hearts of these snotty songs.
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