sweet trip velocity design comfort review

Velocity : Design : Comfort by Sweet Trip (Review)

Back in 1997 – 1998, when electronica was poised to make a big splash on this side of the pond, thanks to the likes of The Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, I was discovering a different sort of electronica. I was discovering what was termed “drum n’ bliss,” music which took the furious and spastic rhythms of drum n’ bass and jungle and married them to the graceful, dreamy atmospherics of 4AD and shoegazer acts. Darla Records was spearheading the movement, releasing albums from groups such as Junior Varsity KM, Color Filter, Technicolor, and Sweet Trip.

Unfortunately, it seems like many of these groups have practically disappeared off the face of the earth since then. Junior Varsity KM (arguably drum n’ bliss’ poster boy) hasn’t released anything since 1999’s Teledesic Disco , Color Filter’s last major release was 2000’s disappointing I Often Think in Music , and Sweet Trip had vanished after 2000’s blissed out Halica .

Well, with Velocity : Design : Comfort , at least one of those groups is back. And in this case, it was well worth the wait. Velocity : Design : Comfort finds Sweet Trip on top of their game, delivering an album that feels like a thoroughly modern version of Darla’s signature sound, circa 1999.

There are times when the album displays a lack of focus. It’s as if like the duo loved experimenting with their sound so much they sometimes forgot they were recording, and so we hear everything. Or maybe they were just anxious to make up for the three-year wait.

Whatever the case, sometimes the result is a song like “Pro : Lov : Ad,” which contains beautiful fragments of icy programming and lazily-strummed guitars sprinkled throughout its length. Fragments which are too often lost amidst a jumbled assortment of electronic bleeps and drum machine outbursts.

In other cases, it means you have to wade through a fair amount of filler in order to get to the really good music. “Velocity” starts off with anything but, as meandering electronic tones and stop-start programming take up the first half of the song. Once the song actually gets going, it still doesn’t pick up much speed. Instead, it resembles a sleepy Stereolab piece, but it’s far more cohesive and pretty than its beginning.

The ten-minute “International” contains almost exactly seven minutes of absolutely gorgeous material. Valerie’s voice coos and flutters over percolating synths, sputtering rhythms, and assorted sonic twitches before fading into a graceful finale of sparse piano and spiraling guitars. But to get to this, you have to sit through three minutes of shapeless electronica, glitchy vocals, and fuzzy guitar pop, all of which feels completely unnecessary. While they don’t ruin the song, cutting them out would have only made a great song even better.

Once you make it past the filler and the songs actually get started, though, the band’s affinity for liberally applying cut, paste, and glitch makes for a compelling listen. The songs become almost kaleidoscopic in nature, each second bringing about some new and brilliant sonic pattern. This is especially true with the vocal fragments. Valerie’s voice sounds just as lovely in its whole form as it does when Roby puts it through the ol’ slice n’ dice on his laptop.

“Fruitcake and Cookies” was one of the first tracks that caught my attention, and it still remains one of my favorites. The song takes its time assembling itself from bursts of static, eventually weaving a hypnotic tapestry of sleepy synths, fractured dulcimer-like strummings and pluckings (think Four Tet), and Valerie’s wistful vocals (which sound like they’re coming from several daydreams away).

“To All the Dancers of the World, A Round Form of Fantasy” finds Valerie’s voice cut and spliced over shimmering layers of glitchy programming, Ronnie Martin-esque analog squiggles, and drifting, Bows-like guitars (though you still have to wade through a bit of fluff at the song’s start).

Although the song kicks it into overdrive at one point, it’s primarily content to bubble and froth, churning and looping back on itself, and offering the listener a constantly changing sonic perspective. All in all, it’s one of the album’s finest tracks, culminating in a crescendo of bubbling electronics and My Bloody Valentine-esque guitars.

Although the album is primarily an electronic affair, the duo do drop in a handful of more guitar-oriented pop songs. From these, it’s obvious that Sweet Trip still hold a torch for all things shoegazer. “Dsco” is a beautiful and breezy pop number that laces MBV’s wall of noise with sparkling Stereolab-esque synths, while Roby and Valerie’s voices drift and sigh in unison.

The album closes with the Lush-inspired “Design : 2 : 3.” It starts off all fuzzy and noisy, goes through a psych-rock phase of rotating tones and lazy basslines, and ends with Roby and Valerie’s voices eventually merging amidst layers of fuzzed-out guitars and ringing vibes.

Despite a few missteps here and there, and the occasional lack of focus, Velocity : Design : Comfort still contains many stunning and lovely slices of electronic pop. It’s certainly far more accomplished and adventurous than I remember Halica being. What’s more, it takes what was Darla’s signature drum n’ bliss sound and gives it a healthy and heartfelt upgrade.

Now, does anyone know what Junior Varsity KM is up to these days?

• Retrospective Reviews , Reviews , Song Reviews

A Sweet Trip of Sweet Trip: A Guide Through the Cult Favorite Band’s Best Songs

• By: Joe Hoeffner
• June 2, 2021

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Engaging with the music of Sweet Trip is a very personal thing. That’s true for all music–the thesis of this very blog is that the listener forms their own story when listening to a song based on their own experiences–but it’s especially true with Sweet Trip. A Sweet Trip song is never just happy or sad: even their most upbeat moments have a wistful undercurrent, and even their most melancholy songs have a certain sense of wry serenity. This ambiguity extends to their albums:  Velocity : Design : Comfort  celebrates the possibilities of the future while hinting towards a deeper alienation, while  You Will Never Know Why  contains devastating ballads and peppy Stereolab-esque pop. Different people with different imaginations will hear the same music and come away with different conclusions.

As such, my ten favorite Sweet Trip songs will look very different from someone else’s. I don’t mean to position myself as an authority–Roby Burgos himself is reluctant to declare himself an authority on his own music, not wanting to override what fans might think–but since they released a new album and I had the immense privilege of interviewing Burgos , I want to share ten songs that I think are essential to understanding the unique beauty of this band. As ranking these songs would be like choosing a favorite puppy from a litter, they’ll be listed in chronological order.

“Fish” (from  Halica: Bliss Out v.11 ):  It’s not quite accurate to say that Sweet Trip arrived fully formed. Their debut album,  Halica , had elements of both ambient techno and shoegaze, but they didn’t always synthesize the two as neatly as they would in the future. Still, they had blissful soundscapes down pat, and the album’s opening track, “Fish,” still stands among their best. Clouds of synth and guitar drift across playful, clattering drums, while Valerie Cooper’s voice lilts and echoes like a mysterious spirit singing as she bathes in the depths of a cave. Even as it gets noisier towards the end, “Fish” still feels like a dream, a burst of optimism and possibility.

“Dsco” (from  Velocity : Design: Comfort ):  Considered by many Sweet Trip fans to be their best work (it’s ranked the highest on Rateyourmusic, the music nerd haven where I cut my teeth writing amateur reviews),  Velocity : Design : Comfort was where Sweet Trip truly came into their own. On  Halica , the electronic and rock elements were starting a tentative courtship; here, they’re happily married, and the result brims with imagination and joy. “Dsco” is  VDC  at its most optimistic, with vibrant pop hooks and crunchy rock candy guitars suggesting a glorious futuristic playground: it sounds like a utopian soda commercial in the best possible way. But while the lyrics invite us to “spread the towels and bring out the lotion” and “synchronize your time in motion,” the pleasure is tempered by the need to escape from something: “run away to the sun, to the comfort.”

“Velocity” (from  Velocity: Design: Comfort ):  Sweet Trip’s brilliance comes in part from their musical versatility. They’ve always delighted in genre fusion, but you get the sense that they could have been a pure dream pop band or a pure ambient techno outfit and been just as excellent either way. Case in point: “Velocity,” a straight-ahead IDM suite that stands tall alongside the Autechres and Venetian Snares of the world. While some IDM gets too caught up in its own cleverness, “Velocity” is endlessly evocative: its looping synth haze and sputtering drum crunches summons a world of blue holograms and jagged chrome skylines. Everything about it is pure cool, down to a distorted lounge-y piano put in the mix towards the end, but Cooper’s periodic vocals hint at a desperation and a loneliness behind all this opportunity.

“Chocolate Matter” (from  Velocity : Design: Comfort ): There’s something great about a band that knows exactly what its listeners want. Take “Chocolate Matter,” which comes towards the end of  VDC  and provides a dizzying rush of catharsis. It starts out as a catchy, lilting shoegaze song, not far off from You Made Me Realise -era My Bloody Valentine. Then, an absolutely thunderous guitar riff that sweeps in out of nowhere, sticking around just long enough to get you addicted before disappearing for a buzzing synth solo and another verse. “This is all great, of course,” you catch yourself thinking, “but I really hope that huge guitar riff comes back.” And then it does! And it repeats over and over again until the end of the song, growing louder and more ecstatic until it feels like your headphones might break! And it’s awesome!

“Acting” (from  You Will Never Know Why ): Musically,  You Will Never Know Why  is a lovely moonlit shimmer of an album, forgoing the noisier shoegaze and IDM parts of Sweet Trip’s sound for pure dream pop bliss. Lyrically, however, it gets dark, going into thorny, personal territory. “Acting,” an early highlight, gets a lot of mileage out of that juxtaposition. It’s a long, sprawling song, with a psychedelic outro left over from the  VDC  sessions, and the rich sounds make the lyrics dig their claws in deeper. “Don’t speak of golden dreams,” Burgos sings over a fast-paced, jazz-inflected section. “You once had a chance to make things right.” The “acting” described in the title refers to “acting on regrets,” but when Burgos coos “so sad, so sad, so hopeless,” the cruel joke of the title’s second meaning comes in. It’s the most luscious world’s-smallest-violin ever recorded.

“Milk” (from  You Will Never Know Why ): While “Acting” was acidic and bitter, “Milk” is just devastatingly sad. With its jangly acoustic guitar and yawning pedal steel, “Milk” sounds a little like Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You,” but while that song is an expression of romantic intimacy, “Milk” is about the loneliness of drifting apart. According to Burgos, “Milk” is about an insomniac watching their lover sleep, jealous of their peaceful rest. But in the song’s bittersweet tone, it’s clear that the divide is deeper and more complicated than that. “You will drift away/and I won’t mind,” Cooper sighs, and she means it. “Don’t you drift away,” she pleads afterwards, and she means that, too.

“Your World Is Eternally Complete” (from  You Will Never Know Why ): One of the album’s most upbeat offerings, “Eternally Complete” has plenty of darkness in its lyrics, but this time the darkness is being pierced by the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a fast-paced pep talk of a song, with Cooper’s sweet, bell-like voice encouraging you to “carry yourself through the frozen desert” and “empty your thoughts into the well of pressure.” It’s a lot to ask, but it’s a testament to Sweet Trip’s empathy that it feels possible: it really does feel like they’re in your corner, and if they think you can carry yourself through the frozen desert, then, hey, why not give it a shot?

“Things to Ponder While Falling” (from  You Will Never Know Why Outtakes ): When “Things to Ponder While Falling” was posted to Soundcloud in 2015, the description said that it was “probably the last Sweet Trip song ever.” Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case, but if it really was the last we’d hear of them it would have been a wonderful coda. The first half of “Things to Ponder While Falling” is a gentle, almost halting lullaby, with Burgos and Cooper singing from the point of view of an outcast (or just an agoraphobe) hiding in their home from the “wounds of coyness and shame.” It’s not a happy song, but there’s a sense of peaceful resignation: if you’re falling, you may as well close your eyes and drift off before you hit the ground. Then, right when you think there’s nowhere else to go, a surge of guitar kicks in, and you get your second wind along with the band.

“Chapters” (from  A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals ):  When any band returns after twelve years, it’s natural to wonder what might have changed in their sound and what new approach they might take. In the case of Sweet Trip, they didn’t radically alter their sound for  A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals , but they did take everything they had done over their discography and put it all together into one lush, swooning package. Everyone who likes Sweet Trip will find something to like on this album, and “Chapters” may end up one of the best-liked songs of all: starting with a glitchy acoustic strum that recalls the warped warmth of Fennesz’ Endless Summer , it becomes a psychedelic swirl of guitar, synth, and voice, achingly tender and romantic. “Hand in hand, electrified/I will love you,” Burgos and Cooper promise, and the sentiment is earned.

“Snow Purple Treasures” (from A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals ): There’s nothing tiny about  A Tiny House . Although it’s not the longest album Sweet Trip’s ever made ( VDC  beats it by about four minutes), it’s definitely the most ambitious, aiming for transcendent romantic bliss at every turn. In the wrong hands, it could be exhausting, but with songs like “Snow Purple Treasures,” who could complain? Not unlike “Chapters,” it opens with a sparse acoustic strum and delicate vocals before expanding into the stratosphere, but there’s always something twilit and elegant to its sound. In short, it sounds like its title (the best Cocteau Twins song title Cocteau Twins never came up with.)

“Polar Equals” (from A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals ): If you wanted to narrow Sweet Trip’s entire discography down to one song, it might be “Polar Equals.” Sure, it lacks the gorgeous vocals that are essential to the band’s excellence, but it contains just about everything else: dreamy peals of guitar, brilliant blossoms of psychedelia, even a return to the blippy IDM of VDC. And to finish it all off, there’s a beautiful outro that shimmers and glimmers and darkens like black butterfly wings. It’s a perfect reminder of what Sweet Trip is capable of, and it’s when it finally sunk in that one of my favorite bands was back.

Joe Hoeffner

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