Vaporwave is a
microgenre
A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electr ...
of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
, visual art style, and
Internet meme
An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down,
chopped and screwed
Chopped and screwed (also called screwed and chopped or slowed and throwed) is a music genre and technique of remixing music that involves slowing down the tempo and deejaying. It developed in the Houston hip hop scene in the early 1990s by DJ ...
samples of
smooth jazz
Smooth jazz is a genre of commercially-oriented crossover jazz and easy listening music that became dominant in the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.
History
Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 19 ...
,
elevator
An elevator or lift is a wire rope, cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or deck (building), decks of a building, watercraft, ...
,
R&B, and
lounge music
Lounge music is a type of easy listening music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It may be meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place, usually with a tranquil theme, such as a jungle, an island paradise or outer space. The rang ...
from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding
subculture
A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...
is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on
consumer capitalism
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...
and
pop culture
Pop or POP may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* Pop music, a musical genre Artists
* POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade
* Pop!, a UK pop group
* Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band
Albums
* Pop (Gas al ...
, and tends to be characterized by a
nostalgic
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word ''nostalgia'' is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of (''nóstos''), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, ...
or
surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
engagement with the
popular entertainment, technology and
advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design,
glitch art
Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. Glitches appear in visual art such as the film ''A Colour Box'' (1935) by Len Lye, ...
,
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
,
3D-rendered objects, and
cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
tropes in its cover artwork and
music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
s.
Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of
chillwave
Chillwave (originally considered synonymous with glo-fi and hypnagogic pop) is a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It loosely emulates 1980s electropop while engaging with notions of memory and nostalgia. Common features inclu ...
, evolving from
hypnagogic pop
Hypnagogic pop (often abbreviated as h-pop) is pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as American lo-fi and noise ...
as well as similar retro-revivalist and
post-Internet
Post-Internet is a 21st century art movement involving works that are derived from the Internet or its effects on aesthetics, culture and society.
Definition
Post-Internet is a loosely-defined term that was coined by artist/curator Marisa Olson ...
motifs that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the era, such as
Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
's
seapunk
Seapunk is a subculture that originated on Tumblr in 2011. It is associated with an aquatic-themed style of fashion, 3D net art, iconography, and allusions to popular culture of the 1990s. The advent of seapunk also spawned its own electronic mu ...
. The style was pioneered by producers such as
James Ferraro
James Ferraro (born November 6, 1986) is an American experimental musician, producer, composer and contemporary artist. He has been credited as a pioneer of the 21st century genres hypnagogic pop and vaporwave, with his work exploring themes relat ...
,
Daniel Lopatin
Daniel Lopatin (born July 25, 1982), best known as Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American Experimental music, experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer and songwriter. His music has experimented with wikt:trope, tropes from ...
and
Ramona Xavier, who each used various pseudonyms.
After Xavier's album ''
Floral Shoppe
is the ninth studio album by the American electronic musician Vektroid under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It is her ninth full-length album and was one of the first rel ...
'' (2011) established a blueprint for the genre, the movement built an audience on sites
Last.fm
Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...
,
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
and
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
while a flood of new acts, also operating under online pseudonyms, turned to
Bandcamp
Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...
for distribution.
Following the wider exposure of vaporwave in 2012, a wealth of subgenres and offshoots emerged, such as future funk,
mallsoft
Mallsoft (also known as mallwave) is a vaporwave subgenre themed after retro shopping malls.
Overview
Often based on corporate lounge music, it is meant to conjure images of shopping malls, grocery stores, lobbies, and other places of public co ...
and
hardvapour
Hardvapour is an Internet-based microgenre of music that emerged in late 2015 as a tongue-in-cheek response to vaporwave, departing from the calm, muzak-sampling capitalist utopia concept of the latter in favor of a gabber- and punk-influenced so ...
, although most have waned in popularity.
The genre also intersected with fashion trends such as
streetwear
Streetwear is a style of casual clothing which became global in the 1990s. It grew from New York hip hop fashion and Californian surf culture to encompass elements of sportswear, punk, skateboarding and Japanese street fashion. Eventually hau ...
and various political movements. Since the mid-2010s, vaporwave has been frequently described as a "dead" genre. The general public came to view vaporwave as a facetious Internet meme, a notion that frustrated some producers who wished to be recognized as serious artists. Many of the most influential artists and record labels associated with vaporwave have since drifted into other musical styles.
Later in the 2010s, the genre spurred a revival of interest in Japanese
ambient music
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It u ...
and
city pop
is a loosely defined form of Japanese pop music that emerged in the late 1970s and peaked in the 1980s. It was originally termed as an offshoot of Japan's Western-influenced "new music", but came to include a wide range of styles – including ...
.
Characteristics
Vaporwave is a hyper-specific subgenre, or "
microgenre
A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electr ...
," that is both a form of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
and an art style, although it is sometimes suggested to be primarily a visual medium. The genre is defined largely by its surrounding subculture, with its music inextricable from its visual accountrements. Academic
Laura Glitsos
Laura Glitsos (also known as Laura G) is a writer, academic and musician based in Perth, Western Australia. Glitsos continues as a performer and also works as an academic and lecturer at Curtin University and Edith Cowan University.
Musical ca ...
writes, "In this way, vaporwave defies traditional music conventions that typically privilege the music over the visual form." Musically, vaporwave reconfigures
dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded danc ...
from the 1980s and early 1990s
through the use of
chopped and screwed
Chopped and screwed (also called screwed and chopped or slowed and throwed) is a music genre and technique of remixing music that involves slowing down the tempo and deejaying. It developed in the Houston hip hop scene in the early 1990s by DJ ...
techniques, repetition, and heavy
reverb
Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...
. It is composed almost entirely from slowed-down samples
and its creation requires only the knowledge of rudimentary production techniques.
The name derives from "
vaporware
In the computer industry, vaporware (or vapourware) is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is late or never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Use of the word has broade ...
", a term for commercial software that is announced but never released. It builds upon the satirical tendencies of
chillwave
Chillwave (originally considered synonymous with glo-fi and hypnagogic pop) is a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It loosely emulates 1980s electropop while engaging with notions of memory and nostalgia. Common features inclu ...
and
hypnagogic pop
Hypnagogic pop (often abbreviated as h-pop) is pop or psychedelic music that evokes cultural memory and nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as American lo-fi and noise ...
, while also being associated with an ambiguous or ironic take on
consumer capitalism
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...
and
technoculture Technoculture is a neologism that is not in standard dictionaries but that has some popularity in academia, popularized by editors Constance Penley and Andrew Ross in a book of essays bearing that title. It refers to the interactions between, and po ...
.
Critic Adam Trainer writes of the style's predilection for "music made less for enjoyment than for the regulation of mood", such as corporate
stock music
Production music (also known as stock music or library music) is recorded music that can be licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media. Often, the music is produced and owned by production music libraries.
Background ...
for
infomercial
An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of dire ...
s and
product demonstration In marketing, a product demonstration (or ''"demo"'' for short) is a promotion where a product is demonstrated to potential customers. The goal is to introduce customers to the product in hopes of getting them to purchase that item.
Products offere ...
s. Academic Adam Harper described the typical vaporwave track as "a wholly synthesised or heavily processed chunk of corporate
mood music
Easy listening (including mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, no ...
, bright and earnest or slow and sultry, often beautiful, either looped out of sync and beyond the point of functionality."
Adding to its dual engagement with musical and visual art forms, vaporwave embraces the Internet as a cultural, social, and aesthetic medium. The visual
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
(often stylized as "", with
fullwidth
In CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) computing, graphic characters are traditionally classed into fullwidth (in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 全形; in CJK: 全角) and halfwidth (in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 半形; in CJK: 半角) characters. Unlik ...
characters)
incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design,
glitch art
Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. Glitches appear in visual art such as the film ''A Colour Box'' (1935) by Len Lye, ...
, and
cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
tropes,
as well as
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
,
Greco-Roman
The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were di ...
statues, and 3D-rendered objects.
VHS degradation is another common effect seen in vaporwave art. Generally, artists limit the chronology of their source material between
Japan's economic flourishing in the 1980s and the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
or
dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...
burst of 2001 (some albums, including ''
Floral Shoppe
is the ninth studio album by the American electronic musician Vektroid under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It is her ninth full-length album and was one of the first rel ...
'', depict the intact
Twin Towers on their covers).
History
Origins and precursors
Vaporwave originated on the Internet in the early 2010s as an ironic variant of chillwave
and as a derivation of the work of hypnagogic pop artists such as
Ariel Pink
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg ( ; born June 24, 1978), professionally known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from the popular music of the 1960s–1980s. His lo-fi music, lo-fi aesthetic and home ...
and
James Ferraro
James Ferraro (born November 6, 1986) is an American experimental musician, producer, composer and contemporary artist. He has been credited as a pioneer of the 21st century genres hypnagogic pop and vaporwave, with his work exploring themes relat ...
, who were also characterized by the invocation of retro popular culture. It was one of many Internet microgenres to emerge in this era, alongside
witch house,
seapunk
Seapunk is a subculture that originated on Tumblr in 2011. It is associated with an aquatic-themed style of fashion, 3D net art, iconography, and allusions to popular culture of the 1990s. The advent of seapunk also spawned its own electronic mu ...
,
shitgaze,
cloud rap
Cloud rap is a subgenre of Southern rap and trap music that has several sonic characteristics of lo-fi in its hazy, dreamlike and relaxed sound. Many music experts credit rapper Lil B and producer Clams Casino as the early pioneers of this style. ...
, and others.
Vaporwave coincided with a broader trend involving young artists whose works drew from their childhoods in the 1980s.
"Chillwave" and "hypnagogic pop" were coined at virtually the same time, in mid-2009, and were considered interchangeable terms. Like vaporwave, they engaged with notions of nostalgia and
cultural memory
Because memory is not just an individual, private experience but is also part of the collective domain, cultural memory has become a topic in both historiography ( Pierre Nora, Richard Terdiman) and cultural studies (e.g., Susan Stewart). These ...
. Among the earliest hypnagogic acts to anticipate vaporwave was
Matrix Metals
Sam Mehran ( ; August 17, 1985 – July 28, 2018) was an American-Australian musician, songwriter, and producer who co-founded the punk band Test Icicles and later formed the solo projects Matrix Metals and Outer Limits Recordings (OLR). His solo ...
and his album ''
Flamingo Breeze
''Flamingo Breeze'' is an album by American recording artist Sam Mehran, released under the alias Matrix Metals. The album was originally released in the summer of 2009 by the label Not Not Fun Records.
Release
The album was originally released ...
'' (2009), which was built on synthesizer loops. Around the same time,
Daniel Lopatin
Daniel Lopatin (born July 25, 1982), best known as Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American Experimental music, experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer and songwriter. His music has experimented with wikt:trope, tropes from ...
(Oneohtrix Point Never) uploaded a collection of
plunderphonics
Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and even ...
loops to
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
surreptitiously under the alias sunsetcorp.
These clips were taken from his audio-visual album ''
Memory Vague
''Memory Vague'' is a 2009 audio-visual project by Oneohtrix Point Never, the alias of electronic musician Daniel Lopatin. It was released as a limited-edition DVD-R by Root Strata on June 1, 2009.
Background
''Memory Vague'' compiles found foo ...
'' (June 2009).
Washed Out
Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr. (born October 3, 1982), known professionally as Washed Out, is an American singer, songwriter and record producer. Commonly associated with the chillwave genre in the 2010s, Pitchfork dubbed him "the godfather of chil ...
's "
Feel It All Around
Feel may refer to:
* Feeling
Music Bands
*Feel (New York band), a dance and R&B band
* Feel (Polish band), a pop rock band
Songs
* "Feel" (Kendrick Lamar song), 2017
* "Feel", by Phora, 2018
*"Feel", by Mahmut Orhan, 2016
* "Feel" (Kumi Koda song ...
" (June 2009), which slowed down the 1983 Italian dance song "
I Want You" by
Gary Low
Luis Romano Peris Belmonte (born 7 June 1954), known by his stage name Gary Low, is an Italian singer. He recorded several musical works in both English and Spanish. His recording of "I Want You" is prominently sampled on Washed Out's "Feel It ...
, exemplified the "analog nostalgia" of chillwave that vaporwave artists sought to reconfigure.
Vaporwave was subsumed under a larger "
Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
aesthetic" that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the 2010s. In 2010, Lopatin included several of the tracks from ''Memory Vague'', as well as a few new ones, on his album ''
Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1
''Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1'' is an album by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the pseudonym Chuck Person. A plunderphonics and chopped and screwed album, ''Eccojams Vol. 1'' features songs that consist of looped samples fro ...
'', released in August under the alias "Chuck Person". With packaging that resembled the 1993 video game ''
Ecco the Dolphin
''Ecco the Dolphin'' is a series of action-adventure video games developed by Appaloosa Interactive (previously known as Novotrade International) and published by Sega. They were originally developed for the Mega Drive/Genesis and Dreamcast video ...
'', the album inspired a host of suburban teens and young adults to formulate what would become vaporwave.
Seapunk followed in mid-2011 as an aquatic-themed Tumblr subculture and Internet meme that presaged vaporwave in its concern for "spacey" electronic music and
Geocities
Yahoo! GeoCities was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and w ...
web graphics.
Like vaporwave, it was defined by its engagement with the Internet, an approach that is sometimes described as
post-Internet
Post-Internet is a 21st century art movement involving works that are derived from the Internet or its effects on aesthetics, culture and society.
Definition
Post-Internet is a loosely-defined term that was coined by artist/curator Marisa Olson ...
.
The musical template for vaporwave came from ''Eccojams'' and Ferraro's ''
Far Side Virtual
''Far Side Virtual'' is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on October 25, 2011 by Hippos in Tanks. Conceived as a series of ringtones, the album marked Ferraro's transition from his previous lo-fi recording appr ...
'' (October 2011).
''Eccojams'' featured
chopped and screwed
Chopped and screwed (also called screwed and chopped or slowed and throwed) is a music genre and technique of remixing music that involves slowing down the tempo and deejaying. It developed in the Houston hip hop scene in the early 1990s by DJ ...
variations on popular 1980s pop songs,
while ''Far Side Virtual'' drew primarily on "the grainy and bombastic beeps" of past media such as
Skype
Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...
and the
Nintendo Wii
The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...
.
According to ''
Stereogum
''Stereogum'' is a daily Internet publication that focuses on music news, reviews, interviews, and commentary. The site was created in January 2002 by Scott Lapatine.
''Stereogum'' was one of the first MP3 blogs and has received several award ...
''s Miles Bowe, vaporwave was a fusion between Lopatin's "chopped and screwed plunderphonics" and the "nihilistic easy-listening of James Ferraro's
Muzak
Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments. The name has been in use since 1934, and has been owned by a division or subsidiary of one or another company ever since. In 1981, Westingh ...
-
hellscape
A hellscape is a harsh environment, an unpleasant place, or a scene thought to resemble hell. A depiction of hell in a work of art is called a hellscape."hellscape, n.". OED Online. December 2020. Oxford University Press.
The earliest known us ...
s".
A 2013 post on a music blog presented those albums, along with Skeleton's ''Holograms'' (November 2010), as "proto vaporwave".
Early scene
Vaporwave artists were originally "mysterious and often nameless entities that lurk the internet," Adam Harper noted, "often behind a pseudo-corporate name or web façade, and whose music is typically free to download through
Mediafire
MediaFire is a file hosting, file synchronization, and cloud storage service based in Shenandoah, Texas, United States. Founded in June 2006 by Derek Labian and Tom Langridge, the company provides client software for Microsoft Windows, macOS, L ...
,
Last FM
Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the Music download, tracks the us ...
,
Soundcloud
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming se ...
or
Bandcamp
Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...
."
According to Metallic Ghosts (Chaz Allen), the original vaporwave scene came out of an online circle formulated on the site
Turntable.fm
Turntable.fm is a social media website that allows users to collaboratively stream music. The website was co-founded by Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein in January 2011 after deciding their previous product, Stickybits, was not a viable business ...
. This circle included individuals known as Internet Club (Robin Burnett), Veracom, Luxury Elite, Infinity Frequencies, Transmuteo (Jonathan Dean), Coolmemoryz, and Prismcorp.
Numerous producers of this online milieu took inspiration from
Ramona Xavier's ''
New Dreams Ltd.'' (credited to "Laserdisc Visions", July 2011).
The first reported use of the term "vaporwave" was on an October 2011 blogpost by an anonymous user reviewing the album ''Surf's Pure Hearts'' by Girlhood, however, Burnett has been credited with coining the term as a way to tie the circle together.
Xavier's ''
Floral Shoppe
is the ninth studio album by the American electronic musician Vektroid under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It is her ninth full-length album and was one of the first rel ...
'' (credited to "Macintosh Plus", December 2011) was the first album to be properly considered of the genre, containing all of the style's core elements.
Vaporwave found wider appeal over the middle of 2012, building an audience on sites like Last.fm,
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
and
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
.
On Tumblr, it became common for users to decorate their pages with vaporwave imagery. In September,
Blank Banshee
Patrick Driscoll (born June 28, 1987), known professionally as Blank Banshee, is a Canadian artist, musician and producer from Saint John, New Brunswick. He rose to popularity in 2012 with his album ''Blank Banshee 0'', which combined traditiona ...
released his debut album, ''
Blank Banshee 0
''Blank Banshee 0'' is the debut studio album by Canadian artist and producer Blank Banshee. It was released for free via Bandcamp on September 1, 2012.
Background and composition
In 2010 Patrick Driscoll and Curtis "Cormorant" Ferguson began p ...
'', which reflected a trend of vaporwave producers who were more influenced by
trap music
Trap is a subgenre of hip hop music that originated in the Southern United States during the 1990s. The genre gets its name from the Atlanta slang word "trap", a house used exclusively to sell drugs. Trap music uses synthesized drums and is ch ...
and less concerned with conveying political undertones.
''Bandwagon'' called it a "progressive record" that, along with ''Floral Shoppe'', "signaled the end of the first wave of sample-heavy music, and... reconfigured what it means to make vaporwave music."
After a flood of new vaporwave acts turned to Bandcamp for distribution, various online music publications such as ''
Tiny Mix Tapes
''Tiny Mix Tapes'' (also ''TMT'' or ''tinymixtapes'') is an online music and film webzine that focuses primarily on new music and related news. In addition to its reviews, it is noted for its subversive, political, and sometimes surreal news, a ...
'', ''Dummy Mag'' and ''
Sputnikmusic
Sputnikmusic is an American music community website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites. The format of the website is unusual in that it includes both professional and amateur c ...
'' began covering the movement.
However, writers, fans, and artists struggled to differentiate between vaporwave, chillwave, and hypnagogic pop,
while Ash Becks of ''The Essential'' noted that larger sites like ''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'' and ''
Drowned in Sound
''Drowned in Sound'', sometimes abbreviated to ''DiS'', is a UK-based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway. Founded by editor Sean Adams, the site features reviews, news, interviews, and discussion forums.
History
''D ...
'' "seemingly refused to touch vaporwave throughout the genre's two-year 'peak'."
Common criticisms were that the genre was "too dumb" or "too intellectual".
Wider popularity
In November 2012, seapunk aesthetics were appropriated in music videos by the pop singers
Rihanna
Robyn Rihanna Fenty ( ; born February 20, 1988) is a Barbadian singer, actress, and businesswoman. Born in Saint Michael and raised in Bridgetown, Barbados, Rihanna auditioned for American record producer Evan Rogers who invited her to the ...
and
Azealia Banks
Azealia Amanda Banks ( ; born May 31, 1991) is an American rapper, singer and songwriter. Raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, she began releasing music through Myspace in 2008 before being signed to XL Recordings at age 18. In 2 ...
. The exposure catapulted the subculture to the mainstream, and with it, vaporwave. That same month, a video review of ''Floral Shoppe'', published by the YouTuber
Anthony Fantano
Anthony Fantano ( ; born October 28, 1985) is an American music critic and YouTuber who runs the YouTube channel The Needle Drop and its tie-in website. He discusses and reviews music from a variety of genres in his YouTube videos and on his we ...
, helped solidify the album as the representative work of vaporwave, but was also credited as a pivotal moment in the decline of the genre. Soon after vaporwave was spotlighted in the mainstream, it was frequently described as a "dead" genre. Such pronouncements came from the fans themselves.
Following the initial wave, new terms were invented by users on 4chan and Reddit who sought to separate vaporwave into multiple subgenres.
Some were created in jest, such as "vaportrap", "vapornoise" and "vaporgoth".
Further subgenres included "eccojams", "utopian virtual", "
mallsoft
Mallsoft (also known as mallwave) is a vaporwave subgenre themed after retro shopping malls.
Overview
Often based on corporate lounge music, it is meant to conjure images of shopping malls, grocery stores, lobbies, and other places of public co ...
", "future funk", "post-Internet", "late-nite lo-fi", "broken transmission" (or "signalwave"), and "
hardvapour
Hardvapour is an Internet-based microgenre of music that emerged in late 2015 as a tongue-in-cheek response to vaporwave, departing from the calm, muzak-sampling capitalist utopia concept of the latter in favor of a gabber- and punk-influenced so ...
".
Joe Price of ''Complex'' reported that "most
f the subgenresfaded away, and many didn't make sense to begin with.... The visual aspect formed faster than the sound, resulting in releases that look the same but fail to form a sonically cohesive whole."
![Yunglean (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Yunglean_%28cropped%29.jpg)
In 2013, YouTube began allowing its users to host
live stream
Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...
s, which resulted in a host of 24-hour "radio stations" dedicated to microgenres such as vaporwave and
lo-fi hip hop
Lofi hip hop (also known as 'chillhop'' and lofi beats to study to) is a form of downtempo music that combines elements of hip hop and chill-out music. It was popularized in the 2010s on YouTube and has been referred to as an Internet meme.
Ori ...
. The Swedish rapper
Yung Lean Yung may refer to:
* Yung (surname), Chinese surname
* Yung Joc, (born Jasiel Robinson in 1983), an American rapper
* Yung Wun, (born James Carlton Anderson in 1982), an American rapper
* Yung Berg, (born Christian Ward in 1985), an American rapper
...
and his Sad Boys collective inspired a wave of anonymous DJs to create vaporwave mixes, uploaded to YouTube and SoundCloud, that appropriated the music and imagery of
Nintendo 64
The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and Au ...
video games. Titles included "Mariowave", "Nostalgia 64", and "" ''
Dazed Digital
''Dazed'' (''Dazed & Confused'' until February 2014) is a bi-monthly British style magazine founded in 1991. It covers music, fashion, film, art, and literature. Dazed is published by Dazed Media, an independent media group known for producing ...
''s Evelyn Wang credited Lean with "allowing vaporwave to leak IRL
ndencouraging its unholy coupling with
streetwear
Streetwear is a style of casual clothing which became global in the 1990s. It grew from New York hip hop fashion and Californian surf culture to encompass elements of sportswear, punk, skateboarding and Japanese street fashion. Eventually hau ...
". She cited their associated fashion staples as "frowny faces, Japanese and Arabic as accessories, sportswear brands,
Arizona iced tea
Arizona Beverages USA (stylized as AriZona) is an American producer of many flavors of iced tea, juice cocktails, and energy drinks based in Woodbury, New York. Arizona's first product was made available in 1992, to compete with Snapple. Bo ...
, and the uncanny ability to simultaneously communicate in and be a meme."
At the end of 2013, ''Thump'' published an essay headlined "Is Vaporwave the Next Seapunk?".
Although the author prophesied that vaporwave would not end "as a joke" the way seapunk did, the genre came to be largely viewed as a facetious Internet meme based predominately on a retro visual style or "vibe", a notion that frustrated some producers who wished to be recognized as serious artists. Many of the most influential artists and record labels associated with the genre later drifted into other musical styles.
In 2015, ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' published a list that included vaporwave act
2814
2814 (stylized in fullwidth characters as 2814) is an English-American collaborative ambient and vaporwave project of the electronic musicians Luke Laurila and David Russo, also known as Telepath テレパシー能力者 (stylized as " ...
as one of "10 artists you need to know", citing their album as "an unparalleled success within a small, passionate pocket of the internet."
The album ''
I'll Try Living Like This
Death's Dynamic Shroud (also known as death's dynamic shroud.wmv under specific releases) is an American electronic and vaporwave trio consisting of James Webster, Tech Honors, and Keith Rankin. The band releases a large amount of music regularly ...
'' by Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv was featured at number fifteen on the ''
Fact
A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...
'' list "The 50 Best Albums of 2015", and on the same day
MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
International introduced a
rebrand
Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...
heavily inspired by vaporwave and seapunk, Tumblr launched a
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...
viewer named Tumblr TV, with an explicitly MTV-styled visual spin.
Hip-hop artist
Drake
Drake may refer to:
Animals
* A male duck
People and fictional characters
* Drake (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the family name
* Drake (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* ...
's single "
Hotline Bling
"Hotline Bling" is a song recorded by Canadian rapper Drake, which serves as the lead single from his fourth studio album ''Views'' (2016). The song is credited as a bonus track on the album. It was made available for digital download on July 31 ...
", released on July 31, also became popular with vaporwave producers, inspiring both humorous and serious remixes of the tune.
As of 2016, vaporwave albums, including ''Floral Shoppe'', continued to rank among the best-selling experimental albums on Bandcamp.
The scene also maintained a dedicated following on communities such as Reddit.
Price reported that, for those outside of these arenas, the genre was generally considered to be "a big joke". He added that "Users of the various vaporwave sub-Reddits will always take it very seriously for the most part, but even there people are discussing whether or not vaporwave is still going strong."
Despite their objections to the label, serious artists of the movement continued to be tagged as vaporwave.
In 2019, user comments that state "" remained ubiquitous on YouTube videos concerning the Internet.
George Clanton
George Clanton (also known by the monikers Mirror Kisses, ESPRIT 空想, and Kid's Garden) is an American electronic musician and singer-songwriter known for his involvement with the vaporwave music scene. He established his independent record ...
, a prominent figure in the genre, commented that the "vaporwave" banner still functioned well as a marketing tag for music that is not necessarily considered of the genre.
In September, he organized the first-ever vaporwave festival, 100% ElectroniCON, in New York City, where various artists associated with the genre such as
Saint Pepsi, Vaperror, Nmesh, 18 Carat Affair, and Clanton himself performed live, most of them for the first time in their careers.
Political appropriations
In December 2012, ''Dummy'' published what was considered the "definitive" article on vaporwave, authored by Adam Harper, in which he equated the genre to
accelerationist
Accelerationism is a range of Marxist and reactionary ideas in critical and social theory that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change and other social processes in order to destabilize existing systems a ...
political theory. The article had the effect of inspiring "a wave of content ambiguously celebrating a dystopian capitalism". In early 2016, the satirical publication Rave News reported that prominent vaporwave producers had scheduled an emergency summit in Montreal to discuss "creeping
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
" in the scene. Although the article was facetious, its comment section attracted many vaporwave fans who defended such political beliefs.
In August, ''
Daily Stormer
''The Daily Stormer'' is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt ...
'' founder
Andrew Anglin
Andrew Barret Anglin (born July 27, 1984) is an American neo-Nazi and conspiracy theorist, and editor of the website ''The Daily Stormer''. Through this website, Anglin uses elements of Nazism combined with Internet memes originating from 4cha ...
recommended that
alt-right
The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity during the mid-2 ...
members embrace
synthwave
Synthwave (also called outrun, retrowave, or futuresynth) is an electronic music microgenre that is based predominantly on the music associated with action, science-fiction, and horror film soundtracks of the 1980s. Other influences are drawn fr ...
instead of the rock genres traditionally associated with far-right movements, as he felt that synthwave represented the "Whitest music ever". His remarks popularized the musical and visual aesthetic dubbed "fashwave", an updating of fascist tropes inspired by vaporwave that was celebrated by many members of the alt-right.
In 2017, ''
Vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...
'' Penn Bullock and Eli Penn reported on the phenomenon of self-identified fascists and alt-right members appropriating vaporwave music and aesthetics, describing the fashwave movement as "the first fascist music that is easy enough on the ears to have mainstream appeal" and reflective of "a global cybernetic subculture geared towards millennials, propagated by memes like
Pepe the Frog
Pepe the Frog () is an Internet meme consisting of a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. Pepe originated in a 2005 comic by Matt Furie called ''Boy's Club''. It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspa ...
, and centered on sites like 4chan".
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''s Michael Hann noted that the movement is not unprecedented; similar offshoots occurred in
punk rock in the 1980s and
black metal
Black metal is an extreme metal, extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include Tempo#Beats per minute, fast tempos, a Screaming (music)#Black metal, shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted Electric guitar, guitars played with t ...
in the 1990s. Hann believed that, like those genres, there was little chance fashwave would ever "impinge on the mainstream".
By 2019, pink vaporwave-inspired hats that promoted 2020 presidential candidate
Andrew Yang
Andrew Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American businessman, attorney, lobbyist, and politician. Yang was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary. He is the co-c ...
became popular among his supporters. ''
National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...
'' commentator Theodore Kopfre reported that it was part of a trend indicating that Yang had "replaced
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
as the meme candidate."
Critical interpretations
Parody, subversion, and genre
Vaporwave was one of several microgenres spawned in the early 2010s that were the brief focus of media attention.
Users on various music forums, as quoted by ''
Vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...
'', variously characterized the genre as "chillwave for
Marxists
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectic ...
", "post-elevator music", and "corporate smooth jazz
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
pop".
Its circulation was more akin to an Internet meme than typical music genres of the past, as authors Georgina Born and Christopher Haworth wrote in 2017,
''Pitchfork'' contributor Jonny Coleman defined vaporwave as residing in "the uncanny genre valley" that lies "between a real genre that sounds fake and a fake genre that ''could'' be real."
Also from ''Pitchfork'', Patrick St. Michel calls vaporwave a "niche corner of Internet music populated by Westerners goofing around with Japanese music, samples, and language". ''Vice'' writer Rob Arcand commented that the "rapid proliferation of subgenres has itself become part of the "vaporwave" punchline, gesturing at the absurdity of the genre itself even as it sees artists using it as a springboard for innovation."
Speaking about the "supposedly subversive or parodic elements" of vaporwave in 2018, cultural critic
Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds (born 19 June 1963) is an English music journalist and author who began his professional career on the staff of ''Melody Maker'' in the mid-1980s. He has since gone on to freelance and publish a number of full-length books on music ...
said that the genre had been made redundant, in some respects, by modern
trap music
Trap is a subgenre of hip hop music that originated in the Southern United States during the 1990s. The genre gets its name from the Atlanta slang word "trap", a house used exclusively to sell drugs. Trap music uses synthesized drums and is ch ...
and mainstream hip hop. He opined: "What could be more insane or morbid than the subjectivity in a
Drake
Drake may refer to:
Animals
* A male duck
People and fictional characters
* Drake (surname), a list of people and fictional characters with the family name
* Drake (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* ...
record or a
Kanye
Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer.
Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ear ...
song? The black Rap n B mainstream is further out sonically and attitudinally than anything the white Internet-Bohemia has come up with. Their role is redundant. Rap and R&B... is already the
Simulacrum
A simulacrum (plural: simulacra or simulacrums, from Latin '' simulacrum'', which means "likeness, semblance") is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, u ...
, is already decadence."
In a 2018 ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' article that reported
the Monkees
The Monkees were an American rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose lineup consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was conc ...
'
Mike Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series ''The Monkees'' (1966 ...
's enthusiasm for the genre, author Andy Greene described vaporwave as a "fringe electronic subgenre that few outside irony-soaked meme enthusiasts have even heard of, let alone developed an opinion on."
Nesmith praised the genre and attributed its sound to be highly reminiscent of
psychedelic
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...
trips.
Music critic Scott Beauchamp wrote that vaporwave's stance is more focused on loss, the notion of
lassitude
Fatigue describes a state of tiredness that does not resolve with rest or sleep. In general usage, fatigue is synonymous with extreme tiredness or exhaustion that normally follows prolonged physical or mental activity. When it does not resolve ...
, and passive acquiescence, and that "vaporwave was the first musical genre to live its entire life from birth to death completely online".
He suggested that expressions of ''hypermodulation'' – precisely tuned "micro-experiences" resulting from social media algorithms funneling different people with similar interests into obscure topics – inspired both the development and downfall of vaporwave.
Capitalism and technology
Vaporwave is cited for espousing an ambiguous or
accelerationist
Accelerationism is a range of Marxist and reactionary ideas in critical and social theory that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change and other social processes in order to destabilize existing systems a ...
relationship to
consumer capitalism
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...
.
Numerous academic books have been published on this subject, a trend that was provoked by Adam Harper's 2012 ''Dummy'' article and its attempt to link the genre to punk rock and
anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and Political movement, movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economi ...
gestures.
In the article, he wrote that vaporwave producers "can be read as sarcastic anti-capitalists revealing the lies and slippages of modern
techno-culture and its representations, or as its willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound."
He noted that the name itself was both a nod to vaporware and the idea of
libidinal energy being subjected to relentless sublimation under capitalism.
Music educator Grafton Tanner wrote, "vaporwave is one artistic style that seeks to rearrange our relationship with electronic media by forcing us to recognize the unfamiliarity of ubiquitous technology... vaporwave is the music of 'non-times' and '
non-place
Non-place or nonplace is a neologism coined by the France, French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places" ...
s' because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space". Commenting on the adoption of a vaporwave- and seapunk-inspired rebrand by
MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
International, Jordan Pearson of ''Motherboard'', ''
Vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...
'' 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".
Beauchamp proposed a parallel between punk's "No Future" stance and its active "raw energy of dissatisfaction" deriving from the historical lineage of
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
dystopia, and vaporwave's preoccupation with "political failure and social anomie".
Michelle Lhooq of ''Vice'' argued that "parodying commercial taste isn't exactly the goal. Vaporwave doesn't just recreate corporate lounge music – it plumps it up into something sexier and more synthetic."
In his 2019 book ''Hearing the Cloud: Can Music Help Reimagine The Future?'', academic Emile Frankel wrote that vaporwave was reduced to "a commercial shell of itself" by those who fetishized the 1980s and "retro synth-pop". He likened the scene to
PC Music
PC Music is a record label and art collective based in London and run by producer A. G. Cook. It was founded in 2013, making its music available on SoundCloud that year. Artists on its roster have included Hannah Diamond, GFOTY, Danny L Harle, ...
, a label that "was seen to warp from an ironic affirmation of commercialism, to become just regular pop.... Anything that uses irony as a method of critique runs the risk of misrecognition."
Offshoots and subgenres
Future funk
Future funk is a
French house
French house, also known as French touch, filter house and tekfunk, is a style of house music originally produced by French musicians in the 1990s. It is a form of Euro disco and a popular strand of the late 1990s and 2000s European dance m ...
-inspired offshoot that expands upon the
disco
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...
and
house
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
elements of vaporwave.
It involves much of the same visual imagery drawn from 1980s anime, with reference points including ''Urusei Yatsura'', ''Super Dimension Fortress Macross'' and ''Sailor Moon''.
Musically, future funk is produced in the same sample-based manner as vaporwave, albeit with a more upbeat approach.
Most of the music samples are drawn from Japanese
city pop
is a loosely defined form of Japanese pop music that emerged in the late 1970s and peaked in the 1980s. It was originally termed as an offshoot of Japan's Western-influenced "new music", but came to include a wide range of styles – including ...
records from the 1980s,
and the genre has led to an increased exposure of city pop music to western audiences.
Some of the most popular future funk artists include Macross 82-99, who pioneered the genre with his ''Sailorwave'' album series in 2013,
Other artists described as being the most popular in future funk include Skylar Spence (aka Saint Pepsi), Tsundere Valley, Ducat,
and Yung Bae.
Hardvapour
Hardvapour emerged in late 2015
as a reimagination of vaporwave with darker themes, faster tempos, and heavier sounds.
It is influenced by speedcore and gabber, and defines itself against the utopian moods sometimes attributed to vaporwave. Hardvapour artists include wosX and Subhumanizer.
Mallsoft
Mallsoft amplifies vaporwave's lounge music, lounge influences.
It may be viewed in connection to "the concept of malls as large, soulless spaces of consumerism... exploring the social ramifications of capitalism and globalization". Popular mallsoft artists include Disconscious, Groceries, Hantasi, and Cat System Corp.
Fashwave
Fashwave (from "fascist")
is a largely instrumental fusion of synthwave and vaporwave that originated on YouTube circa 2015.
It is also been described as an extremist subset of the non-extremist latter promoted by neo-Nazis. With political track titles and occasional soundbites,
the genre combines Nazi symbolism with the visuals associated with vaporwave and synthwave.
According to Hann, it is musically derived from synthwave,
while ''Heavy.com, Heavy'' contributor Paul Farrell writes that it is "considered to be an offshoot from the harmless vaporwave movement."
A similar offshoot, Trumpwave, focuses on
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
.
Others
* Vaportrap emphasizes samples from video games and early 21st-century computer software, and themes on angst, desolation and modern technology.
* Simpsonwave was a
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
phenomenon made popular by the user Lucien Hughes.
It mainly consists of videos with scenes from the American Animated series, animated television series ''The Simpsons'' set to various vaporwave tracks. Clips are often put together out of context and edited with
VHS-esque distortion effects and surreal visuals, giving them a "hallucinatory and transportive" feel.
*Late night lo-fi (or late-nite lo-fi): slowed down '80s pop and jazz that mimics recorded programs on old 4:3 (aspect ratio), 4:3 televisions.
*VHS pop: a more positive variant of late night lo-fi with richer sound and vibrant aesthetics.
*Utopian virtual: Using Ferraro's concept of a virtual life soundtrack with crisp and unreal early 3D computer graphics.
*Signalwave (or sometimes known as broken transmission): Sampling and distorting radio broadcasts, television programs and stations especially The Weather Channel.
[The Viability of Vaporwave, Moon Lvnding](_blank)
/ref>
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
What does the internet sound like? on The Irish Times
{{Authority control
Vaporwave,
2010s in music
2020s in music
2010s neologisms
21st-century music genres
American styles of music
Art pop
Contemporary art movements
Cyberpunk culture
Electronic music genres
Experimental music genres
Indie music
Internet memes introduced in the 2010s
Microgenres
Nostalgia
Aesthetics
Concepts in aesthetics