Gif by Nick Surette

For those of you that missed our Discord listening party last night, we are pleased to be premiering Mercet‘s debut LP VIMS a day early at Allston Pudding. As Mercet’s Sai Boddupalli mentioned last night, he sees the album as a document of both the last year in quarantine and the mental health obstacles he has faced during that period. Working in electronic music largely for the first time, Bouddupalli aimed to chronicle his progress towards a sense of stasis alongside his ability to express himself emotionally within a new genre framework. The end sonic result, to paraphrase Allston Pudding alum Tim Gagnon, is something akin to Floating Points meeting DJ Healer in an airtight bottle. Boddupalli, an avowed FloPo fan, expressed gratitude for the comparison during an earlier chat about the album.

That said, VIMS is also something of a coronation for the scene that figuratively (and literally) birthed Mercet. A quick scan of the album credits shows collaborations with Kira McSpice, visual contributions and mastering from Matthew Politoski and Zach Weeks (his bandmates in beloved emo troupe Animal Flag), and album artwork from Nick Surette, fresh off the creation of Really From‘s striking self-titled cover. Hell, midpoint highlight “Mirst” even samples audio from an interview his father gave that he found on YouTube. It’s a fitting motif for an album dedicated partly to the dissonance in not being able to see friends and family for months due to the pandemic. In any case, VIMS is first and foremost a very strong opening statement from a project we’ll be keeping our eyes and ears tuned to, it’s strongly suggested that you do the same.

VIMS is out Friday, April 2nd, but you can stream it a day early at the link below. Digital copies along with the last few copies of the exclusive photobook can be found right here.