Vaporwave - A new you, a new tomorrow.

Kamas009 · Post by **Kamas009** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:53 pm

I figured it was time I get around to writing this.

Vaporwave has taken off quite a bit in the musical underground, and I must admit it's a very, very different style of music. There are many artists that make great music under the genre, but there are also five bad ones for each good one.

I will give you a list of things to start with, and if you like it, hey dig deeper.

http://miamivice.bandcamp.com/album/culture-island

I love this release for how dreamy it gets, songs like "Alone in the airport" and "final dreams i and ii" are my favorites. They capture an emotion that is alien too me, but I enjoy it.

http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/album/floral-shoppe

This one is infamous, but also great. I don't have much too say about it, but it's an essential.

http://fortune500.bandcamp.com/album/dream-boxx

This one gets my vote because it's one of the best produced vaporwave albums I've ever listened too, he doesn't half ass his sampling it's almost a new form of the genre.

http://sujico.bandcamp.com/album/new-classics

This one is on the list because it's the easiest too listen too, Luxury Elite has a very unique sound.

http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/album/ ... h-whatever

And finally, if you're wanting to dig into the deepest edges of vaporwave this is for you. (Definitely not for beginners haha)

The Telepathic Kid · Post by **The Telepathic Kid** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:43 pm

Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe was one of my favourite records of last year.

More stuff to go along with what you posted;

情報デスクVIRTUAL - 札幌コンテンポラリー

http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/album/-

Internet Club - Vanishing Vision

http://internetclubdotcom.angelfire.com/

Big ups for reppin' Fortune 500, that dude does some good stuff. Have you heard the tape/album they released recently?

Also the same person behind 情報デスクVIRTUAL and Macintosh Plus (apparently) also has a project called Vektroid which is far and away the best thing to come out of this genre, even though it's not really all that "vaporwave-y" (but what is?)
Sounds more like chillwave instrumentals at times.

http://vektroid.bandcamp.com/

It's interesting that this has become a "thing" though, the way these artists seem to create music, it's almost like post music. I was talking about it to a dude and I likened it to the pop art phase of the late 70's/early 80's with dudes like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein essentially recreating other artworks or pieces in different ways and different styles, giving the art a new context.

On that level vaporwave some what makes sense, because at the same time of giving the listener nostalgia they're also breaking down music to its basics, the repetitiveness and cheesiness is almost like how we crave the hook in our modern pop music, so they're giving it to us to the point where we become over saturated and sick of it.

It's like anti music. Despite not being all that pleasing or satisfying to listen to most of the time, vaporwave is an extremely interesting genre with boundless possibilities and I'm interested to see where it could go next, that is, if it is even a genre at all.

Kamas009 · Post by **Kamas009** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:48 pm

Have you listened to much of my Nyetscape work, TTK?

I dig really deep into the psychology of the genre, it really is almost as boundless as IDM (as much as I hate that genre name...)

The Telepathic Kid · Post by **The Telepathic Kid** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:07 pm

I think vaporwave's a pretty shit name too.

like, what is it, vapors? waves of vapors? It's more like nostalgiawave or something.

What is with genres and waves anyway, what's new wave, it's the new wave of what?

Also your Nyetscape project is pretty sweet, I dig what I'm hearing in relation to 3.0 or 2.0.

A little more on the abstract side though, which is nice.

Kamas009 · Post by **Kamas009** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:14 pm

The Telepathic Kid wrote:I think vaporwave's a pretty shit name too.

like, what is it, vapors? waves of vapors? It's more like nostalgiawave or something.

What is with genres and waves anyway, what's new wave, it's the new wave of what?

Also your Nyetscape project is pretty sweet, I dig what I'm hearing in relation to 3.0 or 2.0.

A little more on the abstract side though, which is nice.

There's another theory on why it's called vaporwave but it's a tad farfetched.

The genre game is hilarious, but necessary.

Also check your inbox.

Geodesic · Post by **Geodesic** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:38 pm

I love vaporwave too, from the sound universe to the graphic influences. That remind me the Japanese athmosphere from 90/00 era from video games and movies.

Beer on the rug is a great label of this genre, and Spettra have produce nice tracks :

https://soundcloud.com/spettra

CFCF, who is a genius for me, have a part of vaporware in his work too ( from his mixtapes, with orignal remix and brand new tracks in, to his last album and ep). Here are two gorgeous mixtape from him, highly recommended for the vaporeware lovers :

https://soundcloud.com/ssense/cfcf

http://www.oki-ni.com/mix-series/cfcf

Patryk Ludamage · Post by **Patryk Ludamage** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:55 pm

18 Carat Affair can't be messed with vapor cos it's too chillwavey but in anyway - it has a very vapor mood - so i can recommend you to listen the whole Denis Parker discography - a very talanted musician

http://18carataffair.com/

Well Daniel Lopatin's stuff i think is not required in introducing:

And of course - my favorite Macintosh Plus alias )))

circleofthesun · Post by **circleofthesun** » Sat Apr 06, 2013 5:27 pm

Yo.
I wanna do a series of variations on this...

James Ferraro introduced me, FACT289.
BoC have some vaporous tracks, too...

The latter would go well with the MCing from this 380 tune

lostintegrity · Post by **lostintegrity** » Sun Apr 07, 2013 8:33 pm

tried getting into a lot of artists in the realm of vaporwave, found vektroid to be one of my favorites

bearhead · Post by **bearhead** » Sun Apr 07, 2013 9:08 pm

I can't wait for a more honest genre, like Garbagewave.

Cupz · Post by **Cupz** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:44 am

bearhead wrote:I can't wait for a more honest genre, like Garbagewave.

or "intelligent dance music"

circleofthesun · Post by **circleofthesun** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 1:17 am

hantasi.bandcamp.com
Essential.

bearhead · Post by **bearhead** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 3:43 am

Cupz wrote:
bearhead wrote:I can't wait for a more honest genre, like Garbagewave.
or "intelligent dance music"

I think ADM (average dance music) exists, though. And if not, I know what trend I'm starting.

IanRedpoint · Post by **IanRedpoint** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:24 am

I'd be interested to see the age demographics of vaporwave artists. It seems to me that pretty much all retro/nostalgia channeling artists are referencing the sounds of their pre-teens.

In BoC's case it's the sound of poor broadcast quality '70s television and unreliable analogue synths / tape. With slightly younger artists such as Com Truise and Rykard there's a celebration of mid-'80s digital alongside the analogue. Chiptune artists reference a very specific period of the early '80s when 8-bit sound chips were in affordable home computers. Now vaporwave appears to reference late-'80s 16-bit polish and early PC general MIDI. I would guess that most of the artists involved were less than 10 years old during this period.

What's interesting to me is that before the age of 10 we listen to everything uncritically. Sure we have favourite songs etc. but we don't understand why or consciously limit our listening to only things we know we would like. It's a very impressionable time and I wonder if all these essentially nostalgic micro-genres are a subconscious attempt by the artists involved to return to that childhood innocence.

Those early years are also a time that we're not old enough to participate in fully, particularly when it comes to adult activities such as being in a band or making music yourself. That might also explain a desire to jump into a timeline that the artist would have been denied access to at the time. I loved synth-pop as a kid but that world was completely closed off to me at the time. All I could do was look on fascinated at the exotic other-worldliness of it all and dream of affording a synthesizer or having the ability to play it. When I did have the opportunity to make electronic music, it inevitably referenced the music I loved but was never able to be a part of.

Negamuse · Post by **Negamuse** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 11:23 am

I don't know, with vaporwave. People have always reinvented the music they grew up with, in all genres, going back forever. I'm no expert but it seems to me electronic music has always had a problem with this - progress in technology and production has meant music from 20 years ago sounds extra dated so hard to reappropriate.

You look at some of the monosynth sounds BoC reference. Trying to make sense of that, if BoC had never gone there... it sounds too alien and spartan and doesn't really work. But then, they come along and find a way of incorporating it, playing up the imprint of time on the recording rather than ignoring it. Suddenly, there's a lens we can see this stuff through and lo and behold, their process gets copied and refined by other artists.

The music vaporwave seems to reference... we're talking harsh, inauthentic electronics that in its day tried to sound futuristic and bombastic, reaching for pristine and glorious but landing in inescapably corporate and unartistic. How do you "remember" that? How do you reincorporate it? One way is to hold a mirror to everywhere it failed, break it, reassemble it in a naive, un-slick, anti-musical way. Strike against the soulless anonymous heart that produced it in the first place. Then there's the irony. Which seems from the outside to be a big part of it, as long as you never acknowledge it. Maybe they're telling the truth and it's really not where they're coming from.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't really follow vaporwave, I'd never even heard the term until someone on here tagged one of my sketches as being similar to vaporwave and I had to look it up. I mean, I'd heard Ford/Lopatin's stuff, and Gatekeeper which is really something else.

TL:DR, seems from the outside to me to be a continuation of a long theme in music, or maybe I don't get it at all. But it did catch my ear in a way I can't really define why it should've.

Cupz · Post by **Cupz** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 5:10 pm

Its just that nostalgia in music has exploded in different genres since BoC.

I totally agree with Ian. At least with me, my music is highly inspired by my preteens. Not just because I listened to music without judging, but also because being younger then 10 was trippy/intense as fuck.

Tony Montana · Post by **Tony Montana** » Mon Apr 08, 2013 5:21 pm

Great thread!

Also check out 骨架的 http://soundcpu.bandcamp.com/

Like 18 Carat Affair, it's more chillwave/instrumental but still cool

Kamas009 · Post by **Kamas009** » Tue Apr 09, 2013 12:30 pm

I agree, the genre name is quite silly. My take on the 'vaporwave' scene is indeed ironic but only to an extent - a lot of the songs really do capture the wonderlust of music from another age, another mind.

It all sounds terribly pretentious, and it is.

bearhead · Post by **bearhead** » Tue Apr 09, 2013 8:19 pm

Kamas009 wrote:It all sounds terribly pretentious, and it is.

"vaporwave bro"

circleofthesun · Post by **circleofthesun** » Wed Apr 10, 2013 12:17 am

One of my favos.
Also, I have three albums, as well.
http://metroko.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/music/
The bottom three links.