Skylar Spence — Almost Butterflies

I got into indie music and the blogs that were covering it in the late 2000s, which means I was in early on every short- and long-lived, internet-rooted microgenre, including chillwave, retrowave, synthwave, vaporwave — trust me, if there was a new wave, I was riding it ‘til it crashed with the current. I lurked through the primitive days of Bandcamp, downloading every album, EP, and mixtape from artists like Blackbird Blackbird, Blank Banshee, Manatee Commune, Teen Daze, Washed Out, Wave Racer, and Fine Peduncle, to name a few. 

Amongst these young pioneers of the online electronic renaissance was Saint Pepsi, aka Skylar Spence, whose current Instagram bio reads “YES I AM SAINT PEPSI YELL AT THE SODA PEOPLE FOR THE NAME CHANGE.” Some of Spence’s notable works include the vaporwave-defining classic “Enjoy Yourself” from his split mixtape with Luxury Elite Late Night Delight, his brilliant 7-minute edit of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” and his final major LP before his forced name change, Hit Vibes. All of these were released in 2013, and since then, Skylar Spence has continued a prolific career of making feel-good, throwback dance music for the dial-up degenerate generation.

To celebrate the first vinyl reissue of Hit Vibes in over a decade, Spence released a brand new DJ mix entitled Almost Butterflies, a 22-minute, lo-fi suite that triggers actual nostalgia for his primary genre’s fabricated nostalgia. The mix unfolds across what I believe are nine movements, which scroll between peppy dancefloor cuts and more fuzzy, laid-back passages. There are still plenty of warped samples like Spence’s initial Hit Vibes era was packed with, my two favorites kicking in around the 3- and 9-minute marks. The first of those makes up a shimmering slow disco jam that evokes the haze of a seedy 80s dance club, while the second leans more yacht-and-soul, and I’m dying to discover its source material.

While those are definite timestamp highlights, Almost Butterflies isn’t meant for jumping around from point to point. The atmosphere Spence creates from beginning to end must be felt in a single, uninterrupted setting, which I can assure you isn’t difficult. I listened to the entire thing three times in a row while working on this without even realizing I’d been feeling the butterflies for over an hour. If you missed Hit Vibes when it originally came out, now is the perfect time to dive into its waves and grooves, with this new companion mix in tow.