Concept: Arcellony
Exploring the lineage of lo‑fi hip hop – that is the core concept of “Arcellony.” Hip hop, which was originally born out of anger toward racism and poverty and should have possessed an intense, massive character, has also given rise to a quiet, introspective strain of music. At first glance, this may seem like an incongruous shift, but in fact it represents a profoundly contemporary musical form that could be called “the blues of capitalist society.”
Value systems that attempt to judge every aspect of human life through numbers are, in the long span of human history, exceedingly rare. Yet under contemporary capitalism, most things have been transformed into entities whose worth is expressed in numerical terms such as money, and those “numbers” have continued to balloon at an astonishing pace.
The very term “lo‑fi” can be seen as the antonym of “hi‑fi,” which came into use several decades ago. However, across the long history of humanity, music has in fact always been “lo‑fi” in nature, and it has always contained a certain “grittiness” or “impurity.” In this light, the highly refined sonic ideal implied by the concept of “hi‑fi” is itself an abstract and elusive notion, one that is far removed from the everyday lives and ways of being of individual people—akin to concepts such as “capitalism” or “peace.”
“Arcellony” is a label that focuses precisely on the qualities inherent in the word “lo‑fi” itself, framing it as a quietly introspective form of “capitalist blues” in our present era of information overload, in which many of us find ourselves longing for mental rest.
Value systems that attempt to judge every aspect of human life through numbers are, in the long span of human history, exceedingly rare. Yet under contemporary capitalism, most things have been transformed into entities whose worth is expressed in numerical terms such as money, and those “numbers” have continued to balloon at an astonishing pace.
The very term “lo‑fi” can be seen as the antonym of “hi‑fi,” which came into use several decades ago. However, across the long history of humanity, music has in fact always been “lo‑fi” in nature, and it has always contained a certain “grittiness” or “impurity.” In this light, the highly refined sonic ideal implied by the concept of “hi‑fi” is itself an abstract and elusive notion, one that is far removed from the everyday lives and ways of being of individual people—akin to concepts such as “capitalism” or “peace.”
“Arcellony” is a label that focuses precisely on the qualities inherent in the word “lo‑fi” itself, framing it as a quietly introspective form of “capitalist blues” in our present era of information overload, in which many of us find ourselves longing for mental rest.