bvdub + East of Oceans - Replicant Memorie (2025) [Hi-Res]

There is no way I can formulate in words how deeply the music of Brock Van Wey has impacted my life.

It started with envy. I was a confused young man, living with a friend who I looked up to a lot, and we were DJ-ing together (only vinyls of course). My friend bought a copy of one of the first ever bvdub releases to come out, and he was in love with it. I had been trying to get my music released for years with no success, and here was this guy with vinyl releases out left and right, whose music reminded me a bit of my own. But somehow he was much cooler than me and had made it, while I kept on sending demos that no-one ever bothered to listen to. I also wanted to impress my friend with my music, and while he was positive about it, it was obviously on a different level than how he felt about this bvdub guy.

So, I kept a critical facade outwardly, maintaining that his music was "too basic" in production, or whatever other bullshit I could make up. But secretly, I found myself falling into it, and swallowed up by it in a way that rarely ever happened to me. This music was sensitive, like mine.

I think it was a year or so later. I no longer lived together with that good friend of mine, but we would meet and hang out and listen to music from time to time. One night I was over at his crib, and he put on a new bvdub album. I actually don't recall exactly which one (which is crazy), but I am 95% sure it was 'We Were the Sun'. And it changed me forever.

From then on, I was openly professing my love for bvdub. But, as it had been for most of my life, very few people around me understood what I got out of this "boring" music that seemed to just loop and repeat for way too long with "nothing happening". Well, I knew there was no way I would ever reach those people via music, but it still hurt me when I tried to share this thing that meant the world to me with someone.

Over the years, I found that more and more the few people close to me seemed to be able to open up to it. Maybe not fall in love with it, but at least grasp that there was something there that somehow was the most important thing in the world for me. That inexplicable feeling of belonging to something greater. Faint wisps of home, appearing out of nowhere.

This album (Replicant Memories) sonically and stylistically stands quite far from those early bvdub offerings, as Brock's craft naturally has evolved and expanded (not to mention that the album also represents the first clash of two of his three aliases, all of which I love by the way). But I've never heard a release from Brock in which I didn't immediately recognise his sound, and his soul. Few artists out there have as unmistakable a signature as he does. As his fans know.

I was part of Brock's subscription (RIP) here on Bandcamp, and that's how I first heard Replicant Memories. It was winter, and I was in Sweden visiting my parents. The same day I heard the album for the first time, I had just reconnected with the guy who first signed my music and released it – someone I hadn't seen in 15 or more years. In some ways, it was like a spiral, coming full circle, back in the same house where I handed over a demo more than two decades ago, one that actually led to a release ('Ground' by Purl). Full circle, but seen from a much different vantage point, hence the spiral. I was amazed at how much had changed since I last set foot in that house.

So, late at night on that same day, it was into an especially open mind and heart I received Brock's newly unleashed beast, and I was floored. My excitement over the idea of bringing this work of art to my own label led me to reach out immediately. It's been a journey like no other (cliché, but truer than ever), and I can't even grasp that we are here now. But, it seems we are here. Standing in fields of light.