Turning Point of the Next Quarter-Century by Orlando Turnpike

In their moment of complete global economic domination, the United States sketched an image of their future that included an equally uncompromising domination of the country’s physical environment. The new album Turning Point of the Next Quarter-Century by Orlando Turnpike tracks the last gasps of this historical moment in the 80s and 90s, following the frequent themes of the vaporwave genre. However, while the cracks in the American facade appear implicitly in other vaporwave releases, the stifling level of distortion and noise in this record makes its source material nearly unrecognizable, showing us just how far we’ve come from this so-called “golden age.” The artist name and general aesthetic of the record call to mind the built environment of Central Florida, a messy web of elevated interchanges amid a sea of surface-level parking, all of which funnels visitors into one of a handful of strange little fantasy worlds like Disney or Universal. As this region buckles under the weight of the housing crisis, climate change, and extreme traffic, this album’s corrupted portrayal of the American dream becomes all the more believable.