Lil Vorsp’s “Lowfidelity” EP is a High-Fidelity Experience

Hawaii based musician Lil Vorsp released their first EP “Lowfidelity” in January 7, and we are very lucky it came up on our radar.

Very reminiscent of bands like Car Seat Headrest, and Slaughter Beach, Dog, “Lowfidelity” is moody, introspective, and very DIY. The projects’ bandcamp offers a lot of charming insight into Lil Vorsp’s inspiration for this EP, citing Car Seat Headrest as one of their main inspirations; “[I] kept on hearing [Car Seat Headrest] being referred to as “lofi” and I kept thinking this is not what lofi sounds like. Eventually in one of the videos one of the guys said something along the lines of “but lofi not in the sense of chill music, but as in lowfidelity; just absolutely horrible recording quality” and thats kinda where i got the idea for this ep. what better way to represent a lowfidelity situation than by a lowfidelity recording.” And such the name for the EP was born.

The real focus of this EP is the emotions it invokes. In the first song (and title track) Lil Vorsp reminisces on childhood, and the sweetness of the past, while contrasting it again the struggles they face in their current day to day. Lines like “i could bike for miles, now i can barely get up / i would talk to strangers, now the presence of others is too much” truly portray the feelings of exhaustion and being at the end of your rope, in a way that feels more like lines of poetry that verses of a song.

The next song, Nonlinear, feels like one long monologue, and is very reminiscent of Slaughter Beach, Dog, both in narrative and instrumentals. The constant stream of thoughts is really representative of the constant passing of time. As if listeners can feel the days whirring past them as Lil Vorsp speaks. Each verse seems to be a clip of a different moment of time; conversations with friends, experiences at parties, etc. Time is passing faster than we can process, and the pace of this song really helps set that speed.

The third song on the EP “snowing” feels almost like a second part to Nonlinear, with mostly guitar and audio taken from what feels like a video with friends, at-home family video style, and one of the only lyrics being “i stare at my computer screen and read a tutorial on how leave town / as the days pass by while i’m awake / and i stare at the monomanic landscape” — Nonlinear feels like a physical representation of the line “as the days pass by while I’m awake”, and thus this song feels like the second half of the song before it; as if the two belong coupled together.

The second to last song, (and also quite possibly the longest song title I have ever seen) “I am going to move far far away and you will never ever see or hear from me again because I am very sad, oh so very very sad”, is an exclusively instrumental track, consisting mostly of guitar and dreary synths. This is a change of pace from the previously anxiety-ridden streams of consciousness in the previous few songs, and is almost unnerving in that way. It creates an interesting thought break to make room for the final song; “Drifting”.

“Drifting” feels like the very end of the rope. Lil Vorsp discusses losing friends, losing yourself, and finally, that “things will get better, but not before they get far more worse, than they have ever been”. The end of this EP feels like we’ve lived all 2,359 days of summer with Lil Vorsp. As if none of us are the same people we were before this Lowfidelity experience. Lil Vorsp admits how this situation has changed them, saying “i am no longer capable of forming meaningful relationships with the individuals around me, if i ever was.” — and in that interlude, and in this final song, “Lowfidelity” becomes a very vulnerable experience.

In the notes on Lil Vorsp’s bandcamp, they explain that “the focus of this ep is by no means the production or quality, but the stories and feelings.”, and we could not agree more. The choice to allow audio quality to take a back seat in order for the words of the narrative to be the sole focus is a really daring choice, and isn’t easy to do well. And while the production may be considered Low-fidelity, the content is anything but.

LISTEN HERE