Vaporwave

Vaporwave. A world of slowed down 80's muzak samples, retro late-night/early-morning infomercial and early 90's Windows aesthetics, and Gratuitous Japanese song titles. A world that's actually few years old but has gained some attention recently. It's a kind of sound that invokes feelings of looking back on the mid-late 80's while taking LSD; in particular, Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe album. It's a somewhat polarizing genre, but an interesting one for the sound alone, but I'd kinda like to see it evolve - for artists to do more with the tracks.

Take this track, for example:

Wouldn't this be awesome with some synth chords, bassline, and a beat put over it? I think so. Which is why I'm remixing it.

Anyway, what do y'all think about Vaporwave?

edited 21st Jun '14 12:41:20 AM by PhysicalStamina

Some vaporwave stuff is interesting—it's really just lounge-themed Plunderphonics, after all—but a lot of it feels too unfinished or poorly thought out too entertain me. There are also artists like CVLTS and Oneohtrix Point Never who get put under that umbrella but don't quite fit in who I really like.

Eccojams was a really interesting listen, Floral Shoppe not so much. Only two track from it have caught my interest: Lisa Frank 420 and the Zapp Untitled track.

Contemporary Sapporo is also kinda cool.

edited 22nd Jun '14 7:30:00 PM by PhysicalStamina

I just discovered this kind of music a while ago. It's actually pretty relaxing, I listen to it when I need to wind down for the evening.

I made a page on Vaporwave. Tell me if it looks any good or not.

This isn't exactly related to Vaporwave proper but some of you cats into skate videos (as in skateboard) might like Solo Jazz (warning there's quite a bit NSFW language tho):

It's a video by Bronze (they're a NYC skate crew) and their whole style is super influenced by Vaporwave, wonky-swag rap, Windows 98, late night infomercials, Drive and that kinda shit. This whole video was probably the true start of post-street skateboarding tbh, and that has a big vaporwave undercurrent going through it.

I'm not super into to vaporwave tbh but this is how I discovered it (that and hearing random vaporwave shit on Sound Cloud.)

edited 29th Jun '14 7:54:24 PM by RoboZombie

Also, I know I'm posting twice once after another but... I dunno I got a question

So is this kinda stuff related to Vaporwave or not?

Ganz - Pvrple Forest

Hudson Mohawke - Fuse

Rustie - After Light

Machinedrum - Back Seat Ho

Flume - Holdin On

Bonobo - Kiara

I dunno, one of my buds calls it "post-vaporwave" (which is kinda Egregious to me because most of this stuff comes before vaporwave was really a thing tbh) because it keeps the half-time and reverb of vaporwave proper while dropping the sampling and dystopian tone in favor of clubby type stuff. Personally I don't exactly agree with that categorization but.... I dunno what do y'all think.

edited 29th Jun '14 8:15:04 PM by RoboZombie

I can definitely see the influence.

I have a question about this song:

Would you call this vaporwave or does it sound more like French House to you?

I dunno, I'd call it "future house" I guess. Yeah Saint Pepsi kinda threads the line between "future beats" (like the type of stuff I posted, also I'm gonna make a thread for it yeah) and vaporwave. I'd say he's closer to Flume than Mac Plus tbh, I dunno. That almost sounds like a LSD-ed out Justice tbh.

Edit: I might as well ask is Bronze56k a big thing in the vaporwave scene or is it just a skater thing?

edited 29th Jun '14 9:50:04 PM by RoboZombie

It might just be a skater thing; I haven't read anything about them on Vaporwave articles (but some of those were from last year or 2012. When did these guys become active?).

To answer your earlier question, the artists you listed really aren't related to Vaporwave, but rather different styles of electronic music.^note As an aside, I recognize Hudson Mohawke as one of people who produced Kanye's last album, and hearing one of his songs in a youtube poop. Some of it sounds like abstract Trap Music.

edited 29th Jun '14 10:26:03 PM by PhysicalStamina

Hmmm.

Shouldn't there be a mention of witch house in that article? While the two were fairly distinct scenes, there is a significant amount stylistic overlap, both being developments of the "chopped 'n' screwed" style of remixing with a strong undercurrent of absurdism and spooky surreal vibes.

edited 30th Jun '14 8:31:39 AM by JHM

You know what, I've been meaning to listen to Witch House for the longest time, so I can find out what it is, but I never got around to it.

Like vaporwave, it is a hit-or-miss genre which can be summed up as "X methods applied to Y to end Z with scene elements A/B/C." I would recommend Aegyokiller's stuff personally. It's hella trippy.

I find it funny that you make a big deal about Lopatin releasing Eccojams as a cassette when that medium has been a staple of underground experimental music for decades. Yes, if you're not familiar with noise and DIY culture, it's a bit of a novelty, but it's really not that weird.

Ugh, somehow I knew that wasn't so much of a weird thing. Should I just edit that part out?

Witch House is like Justice, Sebasti An, Busy P and the kinda stuff that usually comes out on Ed Banger, right, or is that Blog House?

No. Justice and SebastiAn are electro-house. A few witch house artists of note are Pictureplane, Salem, oOoOO and (depending on who you ask) Purity Ring. How To Dress Well and Zola Jesus have done work that has landed them under this banner at points as well.

You could rewrite it to give a little background on the culture for people who aren't familiar.

マクロスMACROSS 82-99 does some pretty fun stuff within the genre...

Otherwise that genre is kind of hit and miss for me. It's really weird because I kinda like it but I find it hard to listen to for a sustained amount of time because I just end up either depressed or freaked out, for some reason. It's weird because that's by and large the only musical genre that does that to me.

That album is a good example of something I can't listen to through the end otherwise I just feel like jumping out of the nearest window : http://ailanthusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/dreams-3d

edited 3rd Jul '14 8:35:47 AM by Akalabth

I don't really count Bad Girl as Vaporwave, personally. Sounds more like House to me.

But yeah, I find Vaporwave can fall into one of two categories: Sweet Dreams Fuel (Exhibit A) or Nightmare Fuel (Exhibit B).

So is Yung Lean on the vaporwave wavelength or no?

Like obviously he's rap but his shit oozes vaporwave man.

Hmm... I'd say it sounds like southern trap rap with vaporwave influences, mainly the chill, slow sample (?) and Gratuitous Japanese.

A whole thread dedicated to vaporwave! I hope vaporwave is still alive and well. I'm always looking for more people to share my aesthetic with.

Vaporwave is actually doing better than ever, with some pretty big and cool albums being dropped last year. Birth of a New Day was even featured in Rolling Stone.

edited 15th Jan '16 12:19:04 PM by PhysicalStamina

Vektroid (aka. Macintosh Plus, aka. the Vaporwave Overlord, at least as far as I'm concerned) has dropped three albums on her bandcamp, two of which (Shader Complete and Fuji Grid TV) are reissues/remasterings of earlier work and one is an as-yet-unreleased album from 2013 or so. Check em out here :

• New Dreams Ltd. - Sleepline
• Sacred Tapestry - Shader Complete
• New Dreams Ltd. - Fuji Grid TV: EX

edited 18th Feb '16 6:38:09 AM by Akalabth

I haven't heard the other two yet, but Sleepline goes in.

Pretty much the only experience I have with vaporwave is someone micspamming it on a LazyPurple Team Fortress 2 silly server I was on one night. That honestly got me rolling the moment it started playing.

It's not bad though. Not something I'd regularly listen to, but it's enjoyable for what it is.