Music / Blank Banshee

Blank Banshee is a Canadian musician, best known for codifying (and possibly even creating) the vaportrap subgenre of Vaporwave.

Discography:

• Blank Banshee 0 (2012)
• Blank Banshee 1 (2013)
• MEGA (2016)
• Metamorphosis (2019; available as an album with separate tracks or as a single DJ mix)
• GAIA (2020)
• Music for Menus (2022)

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Counter attack, trope it back!:

• Action Girl: Cyan has shades of this.
• All Just a Dream: The protagonist of "Zero Day" wonders if the events he's experienced are this trope. Based on the subsequent "XENOS Lab" ARG, it probably wasn't.
• All There in the Manual: The greater concept behind ''MEGA'' can be better understood by reading "Zero Day", a short story/ARG written to hype up the album.
  • Likewise, the concept for GAIA is expanded upon in the XENOS Lab ARG^note any word can be used as the "password"".
• Careful with That Axe: "My Machine", "Fund My Death".
• Concept Album:
  • Blank Banshee 1 revolves around Doldrum Corp., an evil corporation that has laid waste to the Earth and its inhabitants.
  • MEGA tells the story of an unnamed Everyman as they team up with Cyan, "a girl about [their] age", and Xenos, a scientist, to stop a meteor dubbed "MEGA" from colliding with Earth.
  • GAIA (or, at least, the ARG) goes into more depth about Xenos and his company's work, revealing that he obtained the patents for Doldrum Corp.'s technology following the CEO's death.
• Driven to Suicide: The "Eco Zones" video has Korean subtitles from the perspective of Doldrum Corp.'s President & CEO, explaining that the consequences of the pirates' attack has lead to him choosing suicide.
  • "Mindtrap"
    Flip the switch if you think it feels right
    Bet it doesn't, bet it's a bad sight
    Cut it, not your friend though
    Go in the hard way, go in through the window
    No one wants to see you
    No one wants to be you
    Nobody wanted to fuckin help you
    ...
    It's not the kinda funny thing where nobody gets hurt
    It's a massacre
• The Faceless: Blank does live performances and photoshoots with a disco-ball mask or with his mouth covered.
• Gaia's Lament: Part of the apparent concept behind Blank Banshee 1.
  • Averted with GAIA.
• Genre Shift: Starting with Metamorphosis, Blank Banshee's works have moved away from the sample-based nature of Vaporwave and into the realm of broader electronic music. Downplayed in that while the genre has shifted, the general sound and ambience of the music has not.
• Interquel: GAIA serves to bridge the gap between Blank Banshee 1 and MEGA.
• Large Ham: This tweet, consisting of the words "I AM THE BANSHEE WITH THE TEARAWAY FACE", each word on a new line.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Wavestep" has a calming and tropical feeling, despite including the lyrics "lay myself in a bed of glass, cut myself as I turn."
• A Mistake Is Born: The first album has a song called "Teen Pregnancy", which the only words in the song are "I'm just a kid" and "It was just a little mistake." This was confirmed by Simpsonwave music video by Lucien Hughes, in which the song is starred by Bart Simpson using various "flashback" chapters in which appears that Bart was a mistake, just like in those referenced episodes.
• Retcon: MEGA was meant to be its "own thing" relative to Blank Banshee 0 and Blank Banshee 1. The XENOS Lab ARG for GAIA, however, fuses the lore of MEGA with that of Blank Banshee 1.
• Sampling: Like other vaporwave artists, Blank Banshee does this a lot – including sampling his own work. ^note "Dreamcast" and "Gunshots" sample "Resistor" and "Negatives", respectively, by Shinjuku Mad, Blank Banshee's previous band.
  • The song "Paradise Disc /芸能山城組" is essentially a DJ edit of 芸能山城組^note Geinoh Yamashirogumi's song "解逅［近未来］Disco"^note "Solution [Near future] Disco".
• Scary Musician, Harmless Music: Inverted: Blank Banshee's music goes pretty hard at times (both instrumentally and thematically), but Patrick and his collaborator, Curtis^note Cormorant, are a couple of silly, harmless guys.
• Spiritual Successor: To Shinjuku Mad. Blank Banshee is Patrick Driscoll's solo project, but Curtis Ferguson, as Cormorant, appears often as Blank Banshee's lyricist and vocalist. It's to the point where the Shinjuku Mad track "Negatives" no longer appears on the band's self-titled album, because it was redone as Blank Banshee's "Gunshots".
• Stealth Pun: GAIA has a bonus track called "Batteries [Not Included]". It doesn't appear in the digital track listings.^note That is, "Batteries" is "not included" in the list.
• Techno Dystopia: All of Blank Banshee's albums from Blank Banshee 1 onward have this trope as the setting, either explicitly or implicitly.
• War Is Hell: The Aesop of "Gunshots" and "Fund My Death".
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Downplayed in the Paradise Disc series. While the ethics and consequences of merging sea life with technology are left ambiguous^note the CEO of Doldrum Corp. says the cyber attack damaged the wildlife, but he's the antagonist and, as such, not the most reliable narrator, the attack itself was arguably necessary to save the planet.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The subplot in "Zero Day" about the Chaos Capsule dealer, [e-mail], is dropped once you and Cyan meet Xenos. Possibly lampshaded in "Hungry Ghost".^note "I won't worry/your hungry ghost".