does anyone here like vaporwave?

[mrwillhorlen]

that was my shit when i grew up, i had a phase of "modern mainstream music bad" and when i discovered it i was hooked
there is something about it, the imagery, the musical aura of it that i can't quite put my finger on that appealed to my autistic mind
it gives an impression of a bygone era that might as well not exists, an utopian dimension brought about by the corporate propaganda marketing machine
in a way it does reflect a brief time where innocence was abound, i'm referring to the 90s, many of you weren't even around to experience, and neither do i
nonetheless whenever i played vaporwave it transports me into an alternate mental reality separated from my bleak life, and see that life is what we made it out to be and why they weren't so bad after all
anyway here's my favorite

~Moderators note: Sorry to edit your post - I removed a referenced to a traumatic event!

[Memory]

You might like the youtube channel NewRetroWave. They post a lot of vaporwave music.

My favourite band that I found through that channel is W O L F C L U B, and this is definitely their best song.

[Melooon]

My favourite band that I found through that channel is W O L F C L U B, and this is definitely their best song.

WOLFCLUB were my intro to retrowave back in 2018 I have a few of their albums on cassette!

Never Stop has always been my fav - "I will let these broken wires surround me - Running like the veins into my soul" - I feel like that captures the spirit of every retro tech enthusiast

[Memory]

WOLFCLUB does not sound like vaporwave at all to me? It's pretty standard synthpop.
Not bad by any stretch, but I think vaporwave is something entirely different: slower, slowed vocals, reverb, mixed-in advertisement jingles and digital sound effects, playing with mid-90s synthesized music sounds.

I think this is generally considered much closer to vaporwave:

WOLFCLUB reminds me more of a 2010s club pop radio version of things like Push It To The Limit.

[Leekleeks]

Vaporwave gives me nostalgia for something I've never experienced. I get the same feeling when I play torchlight and guildwars 2. I feel nostalgia even though I've only ever played those games as an adult. It's like I'm experiencing another person's life.

But yeah I love listening to vaporwave!

[Deckade (Tolo)]

I really enjoy hit vibes by saint pepsi and world class by luxury elite

[mrwillhorlen]

I really enjoy hit vibes by saint pepsi and world class by luxury elite

WOLFCLUB does not sound like vaporwave at all to me? It's pretty standard synthpop.
Not bad by any stretch, but I think vaporwave is something entirely different: slower, slowed vocals, reverb, mixed-in advertisement jingles and digital sound effects, playing with mid-90s synthesized music sounds.

I think this is generally considered much closer to vaporwave:

WOLFCLUB reminds me more of a 2010s club pop radio version of things like Push It To The Limit.

both windows96 and luxury elite are my golden standard, and i'm glad that you both also like them as i do

[Memory]

WOLFCLUB does not sound like vaporwave at all to me? It's pretty standard synthpop.
Not bad by any stretch, but I think vaporwave is something entirely different: slower, slowed vocals, reverb, mixed-in advertisement jingles and digital sound effects, playing with mid-90s synthesized music sounds.

I actually didn't realize there was a distinction. Vaporwave is a much more specific sub-genre than I thought. Thanks for pointing that out.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I've found it can be a large genre, although I'll admit I'm going by Bandcamp tags, which people do kind of play fast and loose with.

Honestly as long as it's good I'm not super picky

Anyway, here's one of my favorite Vaporwave albums, that I've listened to hundreds of times. It gives me warm fuzzy feelings inside.

[Colliewood]

I love vaporwave, although I don't listen to a lot of it. I was definitely not a Macentosh Plus head when that was big and was riding the hate train at the time, same with nightcore. It's just slowed down music I said, without allowing myself to feel the emotions of the music. For me personally I don't feel the same waves of nostalgia as lots of people do and so my favourites are generally more mellow and eerie.

News at 11 is one of my favourites. but seeing as an earlier post got edited for mentioning a particular traumatic event I think that I will hold off and elaborating on the specific feelings these songs give me and why I think that may be. Unless there is a spoiler or hidden text feature somewhere on BBCode.

Until someone tells me how I can safely talk about potentially triggering topics I'll just leave you with the song that pulled me in.

Something about this particular song. which samples Lady in Red which is an excellent song that my parents listen to from time to time, gives me a very eerie feeling (there's that word again) It's a feeling I got after thinking about my time on the internet as a child and thinking about those spaces that are all ghost towns Like visiting a dead mall and feeling ghosts of the friends you would hang out with there. It doesn't hurt that dead malls are already associated with grainy 80s-90s music.

There was definitely a palpable culture shift in my lifetime where people metaphorically stopped going to the places I had grown used to going to. Vapourwave feels like the vacant space that everyone left. the space that I sometimes have pass through when i think about things from that time.
 

[Colliewood]

Oh great! Melonland has spoilers now. CW for traumatic events and economic trends and genocidal politics.

Spoiler

So It's time to address the elephant in the room, which is a joke of course. I'm not even American and I associate conservatives with elephants. But yes there are things that should be addressed when talking about vapourware (sorry again, Canadian remember:evil:). The world in which vapourwave was born, the world it pulls inspiration from, and the world today are very different places. Sure in the distant past or the distant future the past 4 decades would probably feel like a blurry haze. But right now, in the shit, its impossible to look at vapourwave and not see the anachronism. So to really talk about this thing we'll need to jump around a lot, chronology breaks down and maybe that's the point. We can start where most people start, Oneohtrix Point Never - Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1

2010... Just listen to the first track. Slowed down, pitch shifted, repetitive. This is Vapourwave. Chuck Person didn't form this album from the aether, there has been a long long tradition of remixing music that could go back to old DJs like DJ Kool Herc and the 70s hip hop scene all the way to DJ Shadow. The technical mechanics of Eccojams is certainly important though not as important to the aesthetic enjoyment of the music as the emotional influences though. Chillwave was big at the time. The "Summer of Chillwave" was just recently passed in 2009. I should note right now that to get the real experience of our travel through music in time you HAVE to find artists FROM the era. Chillwave still exists today in a different form, As does Vapourwave, But there has been so much that has happened in the past decade, so much cross pollination, so many meme movements and even a fascist movement influencing the sound of all of these genres today. I'll touch on them but to listen to the real music being played in the day. check out this Pitchfork article to listen to chillwave here.

Eccojams took off in its own little niche and spawned many other artists mimicking the style and establishing Vapourwave as a genre and not a one-off. The article mentions about chillwave what can be said about vapourwave. The culture was staring down the barrel of an economic recession, people were out of work, people were losing opportunities, people were nostalgic. That nostalgic sound was cemented in the genres foundational album Macintosh Plus- Floral Shoppe by Trans artist Vektroid.

At this point Vapourwave was still very new, the sound was still developing, but the templates were established. Music from the '90s looped and slowed down and corrupted, some pop, some jazz, some ad music, even some startup jingles from early personal computers. The Genre was Firmly planted in the '90s, rarely pulling from music earlier than '89 and that is sort of to be expected. It is a common assumption that cultural nostalgia works in cycles of 20 years, someone could certainly dispute that. But It is certainly true that young adults in their 20s experience their most foundational media in their childhood, that is fairly uncontroversial, and the Adults in their 20s in 2010 experienced their childhood in the 90s. There is something deeper here though, I think, something that transcends individual experience. I was born in '96 I barely got the chance to experience the '90s and there are kids born in 2005 who have never experienced the '90s, and we also enjoy vapourwave. I'll have to talk about Hauntology in more detail later but I'll be bastardizing some ideas from Jacques Derrida here. The Berlin wall came down in '89, McDonalds came to Russia in '90, and the USSR disbanded in '91. People were talking about the end of history, the victory of Capitalism, and with that comes strong propaganda. The cold war was cold, violent, paranoid. The '90s were prosperous, peaceful, innocent. there wasnt a time as good as the '90s since the summer of '69, and this time its going to last forever, and forever, and forever.

Anyway, here's one of my favorite Vaporwave albums, that I've listened to hundreds of times. It gives me warm fuzzy feelings inside.

I'm really happy that this album makes you feel warm and fuzzy, I don't want to ruin that for you so if you want to protect that feeling I suggest you stop reading here.

It didn't last forever. The '90s threatened to extend into the distant future in America, It's not that people didn't know what was happening outside the country but people didn't ever think it could affect them. America had won, now every one gets to catch up. So what a shock it must have been to wake up one summer morning to watch the news and feel that prosperous, peaceful, and innocent music for the very last time. The News of 9/11 was a mass traumatizing event that got soothed and dulled by smooth inoffensive jazz, a trend in news that would stick. That's what I think News at 11 is about. By the time 猫シ Corp (Neko Shisutemu Corp) released this album Vapourwave had gone through half a decade of experimentation and crystallization and had branched off into even more subgenres. Vapourwave had seen its way through the Obama administration vibing in economic vulnerability, day dreaming up an imagined past where you could just forget all about the world outside yourself.

These three albums kind of encapsulate all of the points I enjoy about Vapourwave. there is a bit that I dislike but the worst of it can be quarantined off into it's own section. I think most vapourwave that stays true to the "soul" of the genre has some sort of awareness of the role of Capitalism in the creation of their source music. weather station Muzak, pop played in malls, etc play a heavy role in what sound vapourwave wants to emulate. Explicitly music that is meant to be heard but not listened to, toothless opiates making consumers feel good and passive about their role in society. Vapourwave then escaped its niche subculture and spread like an algae bloom to just about anyone with an internet connection. People who are not primed to question manufactured culture, people who do not see value in art as politics, and people who actively work against any progressive messaging, The results are vapourwave artists who just don't get it. this isn't me saying anything about the quality of the music itself, sometimes I like to listen to music without thinking about the cold war too and some of these albums are great for that, just that these albums miss the message that the original fans were talking about.

Vapourwave has gone in many directions, its been around for almost a decade and a half now. Eccojams is as old as some of the samples were when it was made. The Genre has split off into countless sub-genres within vapourwave. Simpsonswave which may have at one point had the potential for potent critique but quickly descended into simpsons memes and sad songs played over sad scenes without even making original music. The same can be said about all memewave and vapourwave memes. Futurefunk which fetisizes capitalism by portraying an american fantasy of 80s japan with happy advertisements and bright beautiful mornings and dancable music. How many futurefunk listeners do you think even know what the singer is singing about? That's the point, you can hear someone singing without thinking about their experiences.

Then along came fashwave, Fascists loved vapourwave. You have to do a lot of heavy lifting for a genre that began anti-capitalist and featured trans artists in 2011 to make nazi's love it, and by 2015 the internet at large defanged and neutered and stripped everything but aesthetics from the genre wholly enough that it seemed natural for millennial nazis to love this genre that looked as if it loved the archetypal past, the beautiful 90s, after communism fell, before social justice arose.

Don't feel bad about the fate of vapourwave though, The genre has gone really cool places too. Below the spoiler line I'll give my favourite notable mentions and evolutions of the genre.

[close]

Notable Mentions:
SAINT PEPSI - Hit Vibes
SAINT PEPSI blew up with its Mac Tonight song that sounded very vapourwave The artist also makes Futurefunk and other Electronic music

Blank Banshee - Blank Banshee 0
Blank Banshee sounds radically different from other vapourwave artists and for a good reason. He combines Vapourwave with Trap.

haircuts for men : 壊滅悲しみ
Haircuts for men is another late entry to the canon of Vapourwave and listening to it you can hear the point it transitions from traditional vapourwave and into lo-fi hiphop. Do not confuse these two, Lo-fi has a much longer history, for more info listen to Nujabes - Modal Soul

Clams Casino // I'm God
Clams Casino was a very early artist in Vapourwaves history but never mentioned in anyones favourites or retrospectives. For whatever reason they were overlooked and passed over when Vapourwave got big in favour of newer or more mainstream artists.

[EDIT: posted too early... WAY too early]

[Onio]

Oh great! Melonland has spoilers now. CW for traumatic events and economic trends and genocidal politics.

Spoiler

So It's time to address the elephant in the room, which is a joke of course. I'm not even American and I associate conservatives with elephants. But yes there are things that should be addressed when talking about vapourware (sorry again, Canadian remember:evil:). The world in which vapourwave was born, the world it pulls inspiration from, and the world today are very different places. Sure in the distant past or the distant future the past 4 decades would probably feel like a blurry haze. But right now, in the shit, its impossible to look at vapourwave and not see the anachronism. So to really talk about this thing we'll need to jump around a lot, chronology breaks down and maybe that's the point. We can start where most people start, Oneohtrix Point Never - Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1

2010... Just listen to the first track. Slowed down, pitch shifted, repetitive. This is Vapourwave. Chuck Person didn't form this album from the aether, there has been a long long tradition of remixing music that could go back to old DJs like DJ Kool Herc and the 70s hip hop scene all the way to DJ Shadow. The technical mechanics of Eccojams is certainly important though not as important to the aesthetic enjoyment of the music as the emotional influences though. Chillwave was big at the time. The "Summer of Chillwave" was just recently passed in 2009. I should note right now that to get the real experience of our travel through music in time you HAVE to find artists FROM the era. Chillwave still exists today in a different form, As does Vapourwave, But there has been so much that has happened in the past decade, so much cross pollination, so many meme movements and even a fascist movement influencing the sound of all of these genres today. I'll touch on them but to listen to the real music being played in the day. check out this Pitchfork article to listen to chillwave here.

Eccojams took off in its own little niche and spawned many other artists mimicking the style and establishing Vapourwave as a genre and not a one-off. The article mentions about chillwave what can be said about vapourwave. The culture was staring down the barrel of an economic recession, people were out of work, people were losing opportunities, people were nostalgic. That nostalgic sound was cemented in the genres foundational album Macintosh Plus- Floral Shoppe by Trans artist Vektroid.

At this point Vapourwave was still very new, the sound was still developing, but the templates were established. Music from the '90s looped and slowed down and corrupted, some pop, some jazz, some ad music, even some startup jingles from early personal computers. The Genre was Firmly planted in the '90s, rarely pulling from music earlier than '89 and that is sort of to be expected. It is a common assumption that cultural nostalgia works in cycles of 20 years, someone could certainly dispute that. But It is certainly true that young adults in their 20s experience their most foundational media in their childhood, that is fairly uncontroversial, and the Adults in their 20s in 2010 experienced their childhood in the 90s. There is something deeper here though, I think, something that transcends individual experience. I was born in '96 I barely got the chance to experience the '90s and there are kids born in 2005 who have never experienced the '90s, and we also enjoy vapourwave. I'll have to talk about Hauntology in more detail later but I'll be bastardizing some ideas from Jacques Derrida here. The Berlin wall came down in '89, McDonalds came to Russia in '90, and the USSR disbanded in '91. People were talking about the end of history, the victory of Capitalism, and with that comes strong propaganda. The cold war was cold, violent, paranoid. The '90s were prosperous, peaceful, innocent. there wasnt a time as good as the '90s since the summer of '69, and this time its going to last forever, and forever, and forever.

I'm really happy that this album makes you feel warm and fuzzy, I don't want to ruin that for you so if you want to protect that feeling I suggest you stop reading here.

It didn't last forever. The '90s threatened to extend into the distant future in America, It's not that people didn't know what was happening outside the country but people didn't ever think it could affect them. America had won, now every one gets to catch up. So what a shock it must have been to wake up one summer morning to watch the news and feel that prosperous, peaceful, and innocent music for the very last time. The News of 9/11 was a mass traumatizing event that got soothed and dulled by smooth inoffensive jazz, a trend in news that would stick. That's what I think News at 11 is about. By the time 猫シ Corp (Neko Shisutemu Corp) released this album Vapourwave had gone through half a decade of experimentation and crystallization and had branched off into even more subgenres. Vapourwave had seen its way through the Obama administration vibing in economic vulnerability, day dreaming up an imagined past where you could just forget all about the world outside yourself.

These three albums kind of encapsulate all of the points I enjoy about Vapourwave. there is a bit that I dislike but the worst of it can be quarantined off into it's own section. I think most vapourwave that stays true to the "soul" of the genre has some sort of awareness of the role of Capitalism in the creation of their source music. weather station Muzak, pop played in malls, etc play a heavy role in what sound vapourwave wants to emulate. Explicitly music that is meant to be heard but not listened to, toothless opiates making consumers feel good and passive about their role in society. Vapourwave then escaped its niche subculture and spread like an algae bloom to just about anyone with an internet connection. People who are not primed to question manufactured culture, people who do not see value in art as politics, and people who actively work against any progressive messaging, The results are vapourwave artists who just don't get it. this isn't me saying anything about the quality of the music itself, sometimes I like to listen to music without thinking about the cold war too and some of these albums are great for that, just that these albums miss the message that the original fans were talking about.

Vapourwave has gone in many directions, its been around for almost a decade and a half now. Eccojams is as old as some of the samples were when it was made. The Genre has split off into countless sub-genres within vapourwave. Simpsonswave which may have at one point had the potential for potent critique but quickly descended into simpsons memes and sad songs played over sad scenes without even making original music. The same can be said about all memewave and vapourwave memes. Futurefunk which fetisizes capitalism by portraying an american fantasy of 80s japan with happy advertisements and bright beautiful mornings and dancable music. How many futurefunk listeners do you think even know what the singer is singing about? That's the point, you can hear someone singing without thinking about their experiences.

Then along came fashwave, Fascists loved vapourwave. You have to do a lot of heavy lifting for a genre that began anti-capitalist and featured trans artists in 2011 to make nazi's love it, and by 2015 the internet at large defanged and neutered and stripped everything but aesthetics from the genre wholly enough that it seemed natural for millennial nazis to love this genre that looked as if it loved the archetypal past, the beautiful 90s, after communism fell, before social justice arose.

Don't feel bad about the fate of vapourwave though, The genre has gone really cool places too. Below the spoiler line I'll give my favourite notable mentions and evolutions of the genre.

[close]

Notable Mentions:
SAINT PEPSI - Hit Vibes
SAINT PEPSI blew up with its Mac Tonight song that sounded very vapourwave The artist also makes Futurefunk and other Electronic music

Blank Banshee - Blank Banshee 0
Blank Banshee sounds radically different from other vapourwave artists and for a good reason. He combines Vapourwave with Trap.

haircuts for men : 壊滅悲しみ
Haircuts for men is another late entry to the canon of Vapourwave and listening to it you can hear the point it transitions from traditional vapourwave and into lo-fi hiphop. Do not confuse these two, Lo-fi has a much longer history, for more info listen to Nujabes - Modal Soul

Clams Casino // I'm God
Clams Casino was a very early artist in Vapourwaves history but never mentioned in anyones favourites or retrospectives. For whatever reason they were overlooked and passed over when Vapourwave got big in favour of newer or more mainstream artists.

[EDIT: posted too early... WAY too early]

Saint Pepsi was one of my jams back in 2014, same with Clams Casino! I never saw Clams Casino as vaporwave, though. That's interesting.

[LunarLepidoptera]

I absolutely love the genre, I have a few recent favorites from it, some of these may be straying from the 'core' of vaporwave, but to me after a certain point in time, while it just took off in so many directions I still think they're viable to be called vaporwave. Here's some of my personal recently-ish released favorites:

Hopefully these embed fine cause I'm a supern00b

Okay so I had to make an edit cause i did indeed make a mistake woopsie

[Colliewood]

Saint Pepsi was one of my jams back in 2014, same with Clams Casino! I never saw Clams Casino as vaporwave, though. That's interesting.

I see what you mean, typically vapourwave doesn't have drumkits with the samples, maybe we missed that timeline by a hairsbreadth. While I don't listen to as much hiphop as I maybe should, Clams Casino produced a lot of cloudrap which arguably has influenced and been influenced by vapourwave.

Again I haven't listened to much but the name popped up again and again when researching this post I wanted to say something.

[Colliewood]

I want to add on a vapourwave Album I just found today. If you're a fan of Serial Experiment Lain you should check this out.