Catalog entry: "Varra II," by Varra
Thoughts
Varra has a silly lil' thing going on. To be clear, I certainly don't want to imply that their music shouldn't be taken seriously, because it's well-produced, technically proficient and high-energy acoustic-electronic music heavily influenced by jazz and plenty of other influences (including but not limited to video games, memes, vaporwave, and generally just vibes), but there's no way that you can listen to the music and not think, at least at first, "oh boy, this is some silly stuff." It's music that ought to be taken seriously, in spite of it not seeming to take itself seriously, and that's why I really enjoy it.
Similar acts
N.B. I don't think many of these sound too much "alike," but I do think that they all fall under my general made-up umbrella of "sillycore"
- Anything that DOMi & JD Beck put out together, they're hilariously talented (and just hilarious)
- Clown Core - a side project of Louis Cole, who deserves (several of) his own catalog entries on his own. Clown Core is likely his most bonkers side project, but the music is still phenomenal
- Sam Greenfield is putting out some very legit instrumental jazz that's incredibly evocative of 80s Japanese jazz (a la Casiopea), but a lot of his stuff is intrinsically goofy as well. He also just seems like a generally cool and down to earth cat1
- Vulfpeck - generally more "serious-sounding" music, but the vibes I get from these cats is always just a little on the goofy side
- Chon - much like Vulfpeck, by itself this group is an incredibly tight math rock group with influences all over the place, but some of the music will just make you laugh.
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1you can totally trust my super-sound judgment because I spent ~7.5 minutes talking to him at his Chicago show last November, so we're basically best friends now