Saatchi made me hardcore.
TVAM self-released his much-acclaimed debut Psychic Data in the autumn of 2018, something of a cult-classic, the album joined the dots between Suicide’s deconstructed rock ’n’ roll, Boards of Canada’s irresistible nostalgia and My Bloody Valentine’s infinite noise. Psychic Data attained BBC 6Music ‘Album Of The Day’ whilst signature tune Porsche Majeure featured in HBO’s smash-hit ‘Succession’.
Now signed to Invada Records, High Art Lite takes a different tilt to its predecessor by emphasising the immediate and the personal. The colours are blown-out and the brightness is cranked up. TVAM’s take on role models, fictional movie character tropes, and fables of good and evil, are all tackled with the same suspicious cynicism but this time with an urgent belief in the human condition.
A heady mix of Black Mirror’s modern fables, JG Ballard’s gated communities of sun-drenched wealth, and Mulholland Drive’s boulevard of broken daydreams, High Art Lite offers an all-inclusive package of redemption.
Whereas his first album focused on the unknown influences over our surrounds and the information that permeates our unconscious, High Art Lite has a wider, more colourful, although no less disconcerting, remit.
