Vaporwave

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Not to be confused with Vaporware.
Vaporwave
Stylistic origins
Cultural origins Early 2010s, cyberculture[1][5]
Typical instruments
Subgenres
Other topics

Vaporwave (British English: vapourwave)[10] is an electronic music subgenre [11] that originated in the early 2010s and spread over the next half of the decade among various Internet communities. It is characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist fascination with entertainment, technology and advertising of the 1980s and 1990s, and styles of both corporate and popular music such as lounge music, smooth jazz and elevator music. Sampling is prevalent within the genre, with samples often pitched down, layered or altered (earlier in a classic chopped and screwed style).

Many have interpreted vaporwave music as a critique or reflection on consumer capitalism and popular culture, as its name alludes to vaporware, a term for products that are announced but never released.[1] The visual style of vaporwave (as seen on album covers and music videos) is commonly referred to as aesthetics (often stylized as "ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ", with fullwidth characters).[12] The style often involves classical sculpture, web design, surrealism, low-poly computer renderings, glitch art, VHS recordings, cassette tapes, Japanese art and cyberpunk tropes.[11][1][not in citation given]

History[edit]

Vaporwave originated as an Internet-birthed style loosely derived from the work of hypnagogic pop artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro.[4] Daniel Lopatin's 2010 release Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, Ferraro's Far Side Virtual and Vektroid's Floral Shoppe (released under the alias "Macintosh Plus")[13] are often credited for sparking the beginning and development of the trend, as well as solidifying it as a genre.[14][15][16] Vaporwave found wider appeal in 2012, with the release of Blank Banshee's debut album Blank Banshee 0, which introduced his signature fusion style of vaporwave's sampling techniques and trap music known as vaportrap.[9][17][18] Saint Pepsi's 2013 album Hit Vibes pioneered the future funk subgenre, and was carried on by artists such as Yung Bae in 2014.[citation needed]

A 2015 Rolling Stone list included vaporwave act 2814 as one of "10 artists you need to know", citing their album Atarashii Hi no Tanjō (新しい日の誕生?, "Birth of a New Day").[19] That same year, the album I'll Try Living Like This by Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv was featured at number fifteen on the Fact list "The 50 Best Albums of 2015".[20]

In 2015, MTV International introduced a rebrand heavily inspired by vaporwave and seapunk.[21] On that same day, Tumblr launched a GIF viewer named Tumblr TV, with an explicitly MTV-styled visual spin.[22]

Other Popular Artists include: Waterfront Dining, Vestige Vapor, Herr Doktor, Zararus, Topaz gang, Esprit, Jason Sanders, Xora, Haircuts for men. ect.

Interpretations[edit]

Vaporwave has often been interpreted as "a degrading of commercial music" in an attempt to "reveal the false promises of capitalism".[3] Music writer Adam Harper of Dummy Mag describes Vaporwave as "ironic and satirical or truly accelerationist", noting that the name itself was both a nod to vaporware, a name for products that are introduced but never released, and the idea of libidinal energy being subjected to relentless sublimation under capitalism.[3]

Critic Simon Reynolds has characterized Daniel Lopatin's Chuck Person project as "relat[ing] to cultural memory and the buried utopianism within capitalist commodities, especially those related to consumer technology in the computing and audio/video entertainment area".[23] Jouhou Desuku Virtual (情報デスクVIRTUAL?, "Virtual Information Desk"), an alias of Vektroid, describes her 2012 album Sapporo Contemporary (札幌コンテンポラリー?, "Contemporary Sapporo") as "a brief glimpse into the new possibilities of international communication" and "a parody of American hypercontextualization of e-Asia circa 1995".[24]

Music educator Grafton Tanner wrote in his 2016 book Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, "vaporwave is one artistic style that seeks to rearrange our relationship with electronic media by forcing us to recognize the unfamiliarity of ubiquitous technology."[25] He later wrote, "vaporwave is the music of 'non-times' and 'non-places' because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space."[26] In his review of Hologram Plaza by Disconscious, an album of the mallsoft subgenre of vaporwave, Dylan Kilby of Sunbleach Media stated that "[t]he origins of mallsoft lie in the earliest explorations of vaporwave, where the concept of malls as large, soulless spaces of consumerism were evoked in some practitioner's utilization of vaporwave as a means for exploring the social ramifications of capitalism and globalization," and said that such an approach "has largely petered out in the last few years in favor of pure sonic exploration/expression."[27]

Speaking on the adoption of a vaporwave and seapunk-inspired rebrand by MTV International, Jordan Pearson of Motherboard, Vice's technology website, noted how "the cynical impulse that animated vaporwave and its associated Tumblr-based aesthetics is co-opted and erased on both sides—where its source material originates and where it lives."[22]

Related media[edit]

Simpsonwave is a YouTube phenomenon made popular by the user Lucien Hughes.[28][29][12][30] It mainly consists of videos with scenes from the American animated television series The Simpsons set to various vaporwave songs. Clips are often edited with VHS-esque distortion effects and purple video filters, giving them a "hallucinatory and transportive" feel.[31]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Lhooq, Michelle (December 27, 2013). "Is Vaporwave The Next Seapunk?". Vice (magazine). Retrieved April 10, 2014. 
  2. ^ Aux, Staff. "AUX". Aux. Aux Music Network. Retrieved January 2, 2016. 
  3. ^ a b c Harper, Adam (December 7, 2012). "Comment: Vaporwave and the pop-art of the virtual plaza". Dummy. Retrieved February 8, 2014. 
  4. ^ a b Bowe, Miles. "Band To Watch: Saint Pepsi". Stereogum. Retrieved 26 June 2016. 
  5. ^ a b c Harper, Adam (December 5, 2013). "Pattern Recognition Vol. 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave". Electronic Beats. Archived from the original on Feb 23, 2014. Retrieved February 8, 2014. 
  6. ^ Beauchamp, Scott (August 18, 2016). "How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed by the Internet". Esquire. Retrieved November 16, 2016. 
  7. ^ Kilby, Dylan (July 31, 2016). "Sacred Tapestry - Shader - Sunbleach". Sunbleach Media. Retrieved October 30, 2016. 
  8. ^ Arcand, Rob (July 12, 2016). "Inside Hardvapour, an Aggressive, Wry Rebellion Against Vaporwave". Vice. Retrieved December 30, 2016. 
  9. ^ a b Beauchamp, Scott. "How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed by the Internet". Esquire. Esquire. 
  10. ^ "Near-death experiences and vapourwave - The Wireless". The Wireless NZ. January 14, 2016. 
  11. ^ a b Ward, Christian (January 29, 2014). "Vaporwave: Soundtrack to Austerity". Stylus.com. Retrieved February 8, 2014. 
  12. ^ a b Minor, Jordan (June 3, 2016). "Drown yourself beneath the vaporwave". Geek.com. Retrieved June 12, 2016. 
  13. ^ Gibb, Rory (November 8, 2012). "The Month's Electronic Music: Through The Looking Glass". The Quietus. Retrieved December 7, 2013. 
  14. ^ Blanning, Lisa (April 5, 2013). "James Ferraro - Cold". Pitchfork. Retrieved February 8, 2014. 
  15. ^ Bowe, Miles (October 13, 2013). "Q&A: James Ferraro On NYC's Hidden Darkness, Musical Sincerity, And Being Called "The God Of Vaporwave"". Stereogum. Retrieved 8 February 2014. 
  16. ^ Beks, Ash. "Vaporwave is not dead". The Essential. The Essential. Retrieved December 8, 2015. 
  17. ^ "Vaporwave: subversive dream music for the post-Internet age". Vaporwave: subversive dream music for the post-Internet age | Editorial | Bandwagon - Live music, bands and concert guide for Singapore, Manila and Kuala Lumpur. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 
  18. ^ "How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed by the Internet". Esquire. 2016-08-18. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 
  19. ^ "2814". Rolling Stone. 10 New Artists You Need to Know. November 25, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2016. The next-level gambit paid off with second album 新しい日の誕生, an unparalleled success within a small, passionate pocket of the internet. 
  20. ^ "The 50 Best Albums of 2015". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. December 9, 2015. Retrieved December 11, 2015. 
  21. ^ Lange, Maggie (August 29, 2015). "The Crowd-Sourced Chaos of MTV's Vaporwave VMAs". GQ. Condé Nast. Retrieved December 8, 2015. 
  22. ^ a b Pearson, Jordan (June 26, 2015). "How Tumblr and MTV Killed the Neon Anti-Corporate Aesthetic of Vaporwave". Motherboard (Vice). Vice Media, Inc. Retrieved December 8, 2015. 
  23. ^ Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. Faber and Faber Ltd., June 2011, ISBN 978-0571232086
  24. ^ 情報デスクVIRTUAL - 幌コンテンポラリー. Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved February 8, 2014. 
  25. ^ Tanner, Grafton (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Alresford, Hants, UK: zero books. p. 10. ISBN 9781782797593. 
  26. ^ Tanner, Grafton (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Alresford, Hants, UK: zero books. p. 39. ISBN 9781782797593. 
  27. ^ Kilby, Dylan (August 7, 2016). "Disconscious - Hologram Plaza - Sunbleach". Sunbleach Media. Retrieved August 7, 2016. 
  28. ^ Lozano, Kevin (June 14, 2016). "What the Hell Is Simpsonwave?". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved June 22, 2016. 
  29. ^ Song, Sandra (June 6, 2016). "What Is Simpsonwave? A Brief Introduction Via Scene Staple, Lucien Hughes". Paper. Paper Communications. Retrieved June 8, 2016. 
  30. ^ Robson, Kurt (July 7, 2016). "We spoke to the creator of Simpsonwave, and it's about to end". The Tab. Retrieved July 20, 2016. 
  31. ^ Blevins, Joe. ""Simpsonwave" is the most wack, tripped-out Simpsons meme ever". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Retrieved June 4, 2016. 

External links[edit]

  • Media related to Vaporwave at Wikimedia Commons
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