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Soundtrack: tttc - Pool Party (2024)


72 / 100
A playful and stylistically varied summer EP that blends ambient, IDM, glitch, and experimental textures.

I’m deeply obsessed with offline music, so I had to postpone my journey with Radiohead and a new J-Pop artist named Yuna after some issues occurred on the streaming platforms. I then returned to my main base, Bandcamp, to meet tttc.

Summer is the perfect time to go to the pool. It’s no surprise that a tropical artist like tttc (trang trại trái cây), hailing from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, did the same with an EP titled Pool Party. The release date through Ingrown Records perfectly matches the EP’s theme—May 2024—with a remastered version following in July 2025, after Fruit Exports initially released it in November 2023 with a remaster in September 2024.

The album cover shows a woman in a swimming pool, which made me expect something vaporwave-like, but actually, no—the opening track, “Pool Party,” leans more toward ambient with experimental, slightly noisy, and tapping sounds. Another ambient track is the long-titled Vietnamese song which, when translated, reveals the name of a famous local singer, Đàm Vĩnh Hưng. This track has a rougher texture, with fuzz/reverb effects and a sound resembling sharpening or scraping, creating a slightly mysterious atmosphere.

The IDM tag only fully applies to “Pool Partyyy!” which emphasizes the excitement of a summer holiday by the pool. Meanwhile, glitch effects can be found in the soundtrack “Raw Coconuts Groove,” while “Little Frogs” is the most fun to accompany observing frogs in action. There’s also a darker, dungeon-synth-like tone on “Gift of Varuna,” then acoustic guitar melodies was chosen to close this summer EP, though it doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression.

Even though none of the tracks really hit home for me, tttc still entertains through a few soundtracks and the song titled “Đàm Vĩnh Hưng flying to heaven.” Therefore, Pool Party doesn’t stick to a single genre, aiming instead to convey a range of moods and messages drawn from the many scenes that might happen in summer.

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