I was going to post about Vogue College Records being a label that oozed style but then it kinda dawned on me that this is their only release to date and although the aesthetic they have going on with their logo etc certainly seems like they’re heading in the right direction it would be a bit premature to claim that they “oozed” style at all really.

Instead I’ll focus on Vega‘s first release with them. Big Stereo referred to this release as “nu-hammer, dreamwave or whatever” which typically means someone is trying to find a genre to wedge this track into without just saying “it sounds like an updated 80s because as soon as anyone says “80s electro” we’re all thinking Jan Hammer or Harold Faltermeyer and doing a disservice to what Vega is actually all about (not that Bigstereo are trying to make up genres to fit him into hence the whatever). Besides to my money he’s got more in common with the type of tracks daft punk used to sample (obscure italo disco) but brought thoroughly up to date, by way of late 90s french house, cutting up and looping his own vocals to create the massive throbbing hook thats at the centre of “No Reasons”.

So to the artwork, one of the commentators on Big Stereo referred to it as a “massive clichéd piece of sh*t” but it’s not. Its subject matter – the alien landscape that to all intents and purposes is just a beach scene turned red is a favourite of hack photo-shop artists everywhere – is in itself a massive cliché. If that’s all it was I’d have to agree but it’s more than that. The rainbowed solar flair around the sun, the gentle horizontal lines, the deliberate misalignment of the two main colours giving a forced and faked 3d glasses effect all working, the pyramid with its outerglow and transparency not playing with the background alignments at all and all of it being pinned in place by the subtle typography at the bottom of the image show far more thought that just changing a beach scene red. It’s a striking and ethereal image that completely compliments the music and that’s why it’s not a cliché – because it works.