The world's first Hopeful Utopian Virtual project
For those whose personal 9/11 was June 10th 2013 (or January 14th 2020)

Beyond the genuine comfort & happiness that 'Frutiger Aero' imagery has always given me on a surface level, this EP is also a meditation on what exactly that meant for the corporations providing it in the first place. In some sense, I can't help but miss the feeling of blissful ignorance from back when they at least *tried* appearing as anything more than an absolute soulless death machine. Yet at the same time, it's hard not to find that inviting imagery somewhat insidious in hindsight. They lured us in with familiar physical textures, and pulled the rug out from under all of society at the first opportunity, exposing their hollow innards only after we were already in too deep to leave.

This is where artists come into play, though. Seeing as every overpaid executive under the sun has already long since moved on to their twisted idea of "minimalism", Frutiger Aero is now the aesthetic of the people. We are freer than ever before to reclaim its principles for our own purposes and achieve the best of both worlds. Embrace Aero with Honesty. No strings attached. Peace at last.

These songs are the results of my Shard Reassembly Process

• In the background of this EP's cover art, I used some screenshots of the 2009 PS3 video game Flower.

• On the very same day this EP released, J.J. McCullough put out a video entitled "Frutiger Aero: Gen Z's make-believe nostalgia", bafflingly dismissing this particular aesthetic revival for simultaneously being too "broad" and too "granular", in addition to being politically "naive". I've never really bought into this idea of Granular Categorization being inherently reductive or oppressive (especially in a context as low-stakes as Coining Terms For Design Trends), but even if I did, I fail to see how Frutiger Aero meets the criteria for not being ""real""; it's about as coherent as you could ever hope for an Aesthetic Wiki Entry to be, and I don't think a select few individuals having arguments over what really "counts" is evidence to the contrary. That's bound to happen with the definition of practically anything. His take on the political undertones here comes off equally misguided; there is a fine line between Acknowledging The Irony Of Planet-Destroying Corporations Having Previously Used Naturistic Imagery and Literally Believing They Specifically Planned That Just To Fuck With Us, yet he wholeheartedly equates the former with the latter. Admittedly I myself have been hyperbolic in describing the era of Frutiger Aero as having "lured us in", but my point isn't that literal; it was a flowery way of describing how the loss of familiar physical textures in corporate design noticeably coincided with their products becoming more transparently dystopian. And now that those textures are no longer of any use to them (unless they decide to cynically capitalize on the nostalgia, which certainly wouldn't surprise me), it is my hope that The People will feel free to use them for more honest purposes in their own artistic movements. I'm playing my part with the design of this very website! I think there's real beauty to be found in that.