Swamp Computer shares the retro-future vacation with "Paradise FM"

There's background music for your day, and Swamp Computer's "Paradise FM" is a station worth tuning into if you're a fan of electronic dreamscapes, hip-hop storytelling or miss when albums used to feel like adventures. It is the hype, with 99% of what you hear today undercut in a bad way by them. Swamp Computer doesn't just believe they make better music than them; they are right.

As the anchor and crown jewel of the artist's fully realized debut hip-hop concept album, one-half of the former album, "Paradise FM," is the cornerstone. Of course, Swamp Computer offers no apologies and pulls no energy, calling this their favorite, and it's easy to tell why, quite frankly. The track beams out with the sort of self-assured swagger that you don't hear every day, and certainly not at a time when the musical landscape tends to be dominated by algorithm-chasing singles.

What distinguishes "Paradise FM" is its unapologetic nostalgia, matched with a shameless originality. Synths shiver like heat waves over a retro Miami boulevard, the groovy, low-end rhythms rolling in with warm tides. It's cute and slightly goatee, a little 16-bit and 16-year-old, like the intersection of VHS and VR, retro-futurism at its most cozy. Think 1980s fantasy, except processed through a modern hip-hop lens and drenched in sun-warped tape hiss.

Despite the sci-fi dressing, there is an empathetic heartbeat buried deep within all the circuitry. Swamp Computer is in the interchange of telling stories and transmitting emotion as much through meticulously textured production as a love of the good and the off. But if your playlist needs brightening, catch the signal and shimmy into the shimmer. "Paradise FM"  is a song that makes you want to drive nowhere with the windows open and your mind agape.