Face the Republican National Convention with a Compilation That Mirrors the "Circus" of the GOP

Many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around hardvapour, a Slavophilic, industrial-indebted descendant of the infamous vaporwave genre. If you're looking for an entry point to its outsider zaniness a brand new compilation called THIS IS THE ZODIAC SPEAKING… "I AM NOT TED CRUZ" by the net label H.V.R.F. CENTRAL COMMAND might just provide the perfect occasion. Thematically based around a satire of the Republican National Convention, which starts today in Cleveland, it weaves a fictional narrative based on the premise of the Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer meme, which absurdly alleges that Cruz is the famously unidentified serial killer.

Our recent investigation of the genre emphasized its aggressive negativity, and this compilation certainly has that on display, served with more than a whiff of Tim and Eric-esque flippant ridicule. While it adopts artist aliases like TRUMP2016 and toys with samples of Ted Cruz and Chris Christie speeches, the degree to which the compilation actually poses a productive critique of Republican politics is a little less clear. Are the artists actually committed to mobilizing people to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, or do they simply want to cash in on the RNC's spectacle factor to make people chuckle or scratch their heads? It's likely a little bit of both. Or maybe, as they suggest below, they just want to refocus our attention on the history of sampling political speeches in pop music.

Although the record varies stylistically—MS SMOKE ft. 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. Considering that it's based around the RNC, they're actually doing their subject a lot of justice with this approach.

The label emailed THUMP some backstory on the release. "It all started a couple weeks ago with the absurd concept of the Zodiac Killer coming out of the shadows to deny that he was Ted Cruz and then expanded to cover the overall circus of this year's GOP election," they said. "Musically we drew inspiration from the 80's trend of pop songs using political soundbites -- Ministry / Negativland / Paul Hardcastle (this song hit #1 on the charts!!) / Art Of Noise and ESPECIALLY this amazing track that Bootsy Collins and the Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison teamed up on after Ronald Reagan joked about nuking Russia into a live radio microphone."

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