Operation Echo

Artist: Jay Kubes Album: Moondog Location: Kingsport, USA Genres: Instrumental Hip Hop, Glitch Hop, SP-404 Scene Year Released: 2015 Date Re-Found / Posted: 2023-08-18 Format(s) Released: Bandcamp Explanation: Jay Kubes was a beatmaker and producer out of Kingsport, Tennessee. He came up in the early 2010s as a member of the Inkiscape collective (alongside Uncle Tairy, Lucid Optics, Airospace, and more). If you were following Tairy Hesticles or were constantly digging for backpacker stuff in the early 2010s there is a good chance you had heard of his work. I was one of those people and back then added a bunch of his stuff to RYM. He had tons of tapes, was pioneering a very 'crunchy' sound, must have been active on the SP-404 forums because a lot of his beats were also very glitchy. A lot of his tapes also had this similar, washed-out, highly saturated picture that almost looked like the deep-fried memes one would see years later. His production style fascinated me, and while he...

  Artist: creative_reality17 Album: A Midsummer Night's Dream Location: London, United Kingdom Genres: Vaporwave, Downtempo, Trip Hop Year Released: 2018 Date Re-found / Posted: 2023-08-18 Format(s) Released: Bandcamp Explanation: I have no idea who this is. What had happened was I saw a post on /r/vaporwave, months, maybe years ago about someone looking for this record. Some vaporwave e-celeb made a video where he shouted this record out for having good cover art. I checked the video, he just talks about its art without playing a sample and he overanalyzes the cover, finding messages where there clearly were not. And at some point, this guy just vanished. Can't find any explanation as to why, there wasn't some standoff, guy just deleted his Bandcamp and dipped. I can hardly find anyone even discussing his disappearance excluding that one reddit post. I figure this occurred in 2020. I had it saved, I’m sure of it. So when I finally found the record, I could not find the pos...

  Artist: ANDTIME / 2017 / &TIME / Next Year's Snow Album: (entire discography) Location: Earth Genres: Experimental Electronic, Vaporwave, Sound Collage, Noise Year Released: 2017 - 2018 Date Refound / Posted: 2023-08-11 Format(s) Released: Bandcamp Explanation: &TIME / ANDTIME / 2017 was a 'vaporwave' label and collective artists from all around the world. I use vaporwave in the loosest possible terms. That might have been what it started as but it quickly devolved into outright weird electronic albums, strange releases and a meme/joke EPs that I can't quite compare to any other groups. The only person who knew the true identities was Octavia Sheffner, the mastermind behind the group. They really were in a league of their own. I've heard a bunch of their releases and they were always very weird. Micheal545onYouTube's releases were recordings of some child talking about his fanfiction while soothing ambient played. မိန်းမတပိုင်းငါးတပိုင်းအံသွား was vapo...

Artist: Fatal Blast Whip Album: Slave Device Location: San Francisco, USA Genres: Industrial, Industrial Rock Year Released: 1997 Date Refound / Posted: 2023-08-04, found by an RYM user who wishes to remain anonymous Format(s) Released: CDr Explanation: The Christian Industrial scene is the perfect example of an incredibly niche movement that has a lot of lost releases in it. Fatal Blast Whip is one such project whose music never saw much widespread appeal and as a result releases from the band have vanished.  Fatal Blast Whip is the industrial alias of Californian-based artist Derek Jones. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a one-man band project or just an alias but either way, Derek Jones made a few of these industrial records, reaching into the early 2010s.  This specific release is Slave Device, their debut album. RYM currently has the only information even proving this one exists. It was added back when metacomments weren't needed so we don't even have original li...