Teamwork by Media Workshop
Released June 8, 2020
Before I get into this one, let’s talk a little bit about officewave. Also known as businesswave, this retrowave subgenre conveys the vibes and feelings of an idealized 1980s office environment where profits are up, deals are being struck, and computer technology is granting immense power to those savvy enough to wield it. Obviously the reality of this time and place also includes lots of less-positive dimensions, e.g., Ronald Reagan, but officewave doesn’t necessarily have a political angle. The appeal is more superficially aesthetic (which is appropriate in a meta way!), calling to mind shoulder pads, pastels, briefcases, black-and-green computer monitors, brick cell phones, graphs with arrows pointing up, etc. This is the type of music you might envision playing over an energetic business montage in an ’80s movie.
Some officewave music takes this literally, with artists like Bart Graft sampling dialogue from movies like Wall Street and American Psycho in their songs. But more frequently, officewave music conveys this feeling through the music itself, with peppy, high-energy 80s synths telling the story of the bustling office. This style is what we find in most of the songs on Teamwork by Media Workshop (AKA Andrey Komin.)
As with any retrowave release, the cover art gives artists their first opportunity to set the tone, and the artwork here does that well. I love the typeface choices, particularly on the word Media, which feels like something off the label of a blank VHS tape. The cover’s imagery is simple—ultimately it’s just a couple of stock images and some basic geometry, including the grid horizon often seen in retrowave art. But the composition and color elevate these elements, preparing the listener for the business music within.
Speaking of setting a tone, I like when an album opens with a short track that does just that, as with the 16-second track The Beginning here. It’s super simple, with rising synth tones followed by a little electronic flourish, but it does an awesome job setting up the album. If the album were a business training video, I could absolutely imagine The Beginning playing over the opening corporate logos.
Several songs on the album bring in office sound effects to set the scene. In Motion features a driving beat with a simple but compelling synth bass line, then periodically adds a playful, ambling melody. Around two minutes in, the song introduces samples of telephones ringing. The digital rings (rather than old-fashioned bell ringers) mesh well with the music and add a level of business flair. Rhythm of the Day has a literal clock ticking as the synths gradually fade in. This builds for more than a minute before being stopped by a ringing alarm clock, which ushers in some powerful drums with a catchy bass line. Open Space comes around the album’s halfway point and feels like an intermission, with simple, almost ambient synths playing out over literal office sounds of quiet typing, background chatter, and distant phones ringing. And Coffee Break opens with the sounds of coffee being poured, sipped, and enjoyed; the beat and melody are heard distantly, as if through an in-world radio, then jump to the foreground when the coffee sounds are done.
One of the album’s standouts is Can’t Stop Progress. Like many songs on the album, it has a driving synth beat that suggests the go-go-go attitude of a bustling ’80s business. The melody features warbling, sci-fi synth hits with slight echoes. They move back and forth between the right and left channels with an almost hypnotic effect. Workday is another favorite; I like how the melody progresses in the middle of the song. It shows how talented artists can get a lot of emotion out of relatively simple synths. This one reminds me a bit of the work of Gab Manette. In Coworking, a casual synth bass line underlies playful melodies from different instruments that interact and play off each other; the song’s title is a great fit.
Teamwork closes strongly. Terminal Solutions creates a great mood for the end of an album. It starts with a catchy, repetitive bass line, then brings in some echoing hand claps and a slowly progressing melody. A new melody emerges around the two-minute mark; its rising and falling feeling somehow evokes a sense of accomplishment (like getting through another day of business meetings and lucrative deals, for instance). Finally, The Ending is a simple 30-second closer with a single instrument playing a melody that is almost lullaby-like (or akin to the stuff you’d hear in low-fi hip-hop beats.) It brings the album to a solid, graceful conclusion.
Teamwork is among the strongest pure officewave albums I’ve heard. From the album art to the song titles to the music itself, everything is focused on achieving the officewave aesthetic. One of the great things about this genre of music is that it makes for great listening during actual office work, and Teamwork has been in heavy rotation in my work playlists for years now. This is an all-time great.