What is Vaporwave?

Well, let me begin, Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music that originated on internet forums such as Tumblr and Reddit during the early 2010's and distinctively has no set location as to where it originated as it started online making it the first microgenre of music to be completely globalised. The term itself was apparently coined in 2011 by music producer Will Burnett, who used it to describe a style emerging among artists like Vektroid, whose July 2011 album New Dreams Ltd. was an early influence on the microgenre. It began as an aesthetic that was popularised by an obsession with 80's and 90's subculture using glitch art, early digital graphic design, roman busts, a fascination with tropical landscapes, Japanese culture and of course, the redistribution of old 80's elevator muzak inspired from funk, new age and smooth jazz.

This all began when two seemingly random “Proto-Vaporwave” albums with distinctively different styles merged to create what we now call Vaporwave. The first was an ironic mixtape called Eccojams Vol. 1 by the experimental electronical artist Oneohtrix Point Never, under the alias of Chuck Person in August 2010. It was a series of repetitive 80's hits that were slowed down and spliced apart, usually repeating themselves on the same course throughout the entire song and it was described to be a simple joke that Oneohtrix just did for fun. Regardless, it became a small internet sensation and ended up inspiring a host of suburban teens and young adults. The second was Far Side Virtual, an early electronic album by James Ferraro in October 2011, it used themes of globalisation and internet culture as an influence to create a mellow and upbeat digitalised ode to a rapidly changing world.

These two drastically different styles merged with a strange, largely unknown release called Floral Shoppe by Vektroid under the alias of Macintosh Plus in December 2011. It was a strange synthesis of 80’s soul and funk tunes slowed down, chopped up and repackaged as a bizarre eerie droning sound that made the listener easily uncomfortable. It quickly popularised helping the alias Macintosh Plus gather a small niche market for anyone who liked obscure 80’s elevator muzak. One song garnered a lot of praise and popularity in particular, リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー | (meaning Computing of Lisa Frank 420/Contemporary) featured It’s Your Move by Diana Ross slowed down. The track drones on the misheard lyrics of “It’s all in your heard” repeated multiple times over the course of seven minutes and would go onto become the face of Vaporwave when people thought about the microgenre as a whole.

Vaporwave was and still is mostly unknown to mainstream audiences after Floral Shoppe and was originally a joke in it itself due to it being a glorification of stealing other people’s art and marketing it under something else in oriental languages. However, after looking under the vaporwave tag on Bandcamp one can find hundreds if not thousands of obscure and bizarre pieces of slowed down stolen music, mostly made by young adolescents in the bedrooms of their suburban homes all across the world. It has been described by some as a digital punk movement with ideals that counter most national concepts of ownership by making Vaporwave an anonymous art for anonymous people which is why many may reconsider it from a joke to genius. Vaporwave continued to grow and has been for the past decade, but the question is, why are people making and still continually listening to this bizarre seemingly uninspired microgenre?

The term Vaporwave itself is quite an anomaly as it is essentially the combination of Vaporware and Waves of Vapor, ‘Vaporware’ is a business term to describe a product which is announced to the public but never actually released and ‘Waves of Vapor’ is a Marxist term to describe a perpetual repetition of ideals which are not concrete or meaningful in their philosophy. The etymology of the word is very pretentious but that is essentially the route of where this all came from, a critique on modern capitalism. In 2012, a producer under the pseudonym Internet Club released multiple albums that delved into this theme of capitalism with releases like Modern Business Collection and Banishing Vision, all of which borrowed elements from Floral Shoppe to create a counter-culture that instead of rejecting corporate ideals, embraced them. This in turn sparked a new market by making Vaporwave’s whole aesthetic approach based off a redistribution of old advertisements.

This ideal for the microgenre continued to dominate the tone of most Vaporwave releases with notable artists such as 猫 シ Corp. (meaning Cat System Corp.) and various others, this gave the genre a bad rap as it seemed to be stagnant in its development and was doomed to be an awkward phase of music which was shallow in meaning and production quality. Eventually, most releases were horribly put together messes just to undermine the true essence of what this microgenre was about, most people had already given up on the microgenre by this point and believed it to suffer the same fate that previous internet born microgenres went through. The phrase ‘Vaporwave is Dead’ seemed to carry itself around on internet forums and continued onwards to be the perceived reality of what was to become of the microgenre, Vaporwave seemed doomed to die in a pit of irony and cynicism unless something changed.

There had been a growing number or artists during 2012 and 2013 making albums mimicking the same sound of early Vaporwave but refraining from delving into the overused theme of capitalism and 80’s nostalgia. These artists were mostly inspired by a largely underground producer under the pseudonym of 骷 (meaning Skeleton) who released his self-titled album Skeleton in October 2010. It was a collection of spooky, slowed down songs that influenced a new wave of artists, all of which challenged the preconceived notion that Vaporwave only had one style and one overarching goal, they succeeded.

In September 2012, the Canadian producer Blank Banshee redefined the microgenre by adding a trap influence when he released Blank Banshee 0 which remixed obscure new age songs with trap drums and heavy bass drops. Infinity Frequencies, a Japanese producer who started making Vaporwave in mid-2012 with his first release Euphoria is best known for their computer trilogy spanning from 2013-2014, the three albums titled Computer Death, Computer Decay and Computer Afterlife are essentially a collection of strange eerie repetitive loops of elevator muzak. The off-putting sounds reflect a sense of emptiness and sterility, a reflection of the soulless existence of modern technology.

In January 2013, Eco Virtual released Atmospheres 第1 (meaning Atmospheres First 1), a whole album that combines samples and completely original music that mimics the sounds normally heard on a weather channel using slow drawn out melodies that were meant to be droning and uncomfortable for the listener. It grew in popularity and the artist remained anonymous stating that the whole appeal of Vaporwave is its use of remaining unknown. That in a world where nothing is private, it is refreshing to find something that feels like it was found in the dumpster of a thrift shop where it does not matter where it came from or who made it but only that it takes you elsewhere, somewhere distant from reality.

Unfortunately, this release was undermined by the growing size of meaningless 80’s nostalgia until a largely unknown artist in early 2014 under the pseudonym Hong Kong Express created a small band camp label with a twenty minute release titled Romantic Dream. It is described by the artist as “A mysterious romantic trip through the neon haze of a night in Hong Kong, a journey of subway carriages and fast cars, a love both lost and found and a connection between souls”. It was created to be intentionally melodramatic and cinematic as well as being just a simple side project for just a small-time producer, it eventually became the catalyst that changed everything about what Vaporwave was.

Dream Catalogue, a record label that releases music with a philosophy that designates Vaporwave as not to be about irony or capitalism but about telling a narrative through music. This revolutionised the way in which concept albums are created and in albums like 슈퍼마켓Yes! We’re Open (meaning Supermarket Yes! We’re Open) by 식료품Groceries (meaning Grocery Groceries), we see a simple collection of sounds normally heard in a rundown grocery store but changed in a way to tell a narrative of escapism and fantasy, a cruel realisation of hardships and monotony in a world that is constantly moving and changing. Dream Catalogue currently has over 150 releases, many of which tell stories of melancholic dreams or escapism to a distant world that is free of isolation and loneliness. The label has helped usher in a new wave of prolific artists that have been pushing the microgenre in a direction of positive growth, showcasing that the Vaporwave is not dead but simply reborn.

Artists like Golden Living Room, an independent artist who was notable for creating slow atmospheric ambient music with actual instruments, released Welcome Home on the label and in an interview with Hong Kong Express he discusses the development of the album and states “I’m from the old school, all of my dreamy synths are recorded using a Yamaha DX7, Boss DD-7 and a Fender Concert Series Tube Amp, I also have about five or six other Yamaha synths plus a bunch of guitars and other random instruments like a Sitar.” Going back to trap influenced Vaporwave, we see Vaperror, an underground producer who utilises computer sounds as his drum kit to create ethereal dreamy beats in a popular release titled Mana Pool in June 2014, it pushed the boundaries of the microgenre into a more mainstream and conventional style that can be easily appreciated by casual listeners.

All these artists helped start something new in the Vaporwave moment, it was only natural for several popular releases trying to branch out and redefine the microgenre to be replicated by newer less popular artists. This began a new wave of sub-genres, all of which embracing the central idea of Vaporwave but focusing on only one aspect in particular. Many Vaporwave subgenres would be formed during the early to mid-2010s with some of these being Eccojams, Utopian Virtual, Faux-Utopian, Hypnagogic Drift, Broken Transmission, Mallsoft, Futurevisions, Late Night Lo-Fi, VHS Pop, Future Funk, Vaportrap etc.

Probably the most popular of the Vaporwave subgenres, Future Funk originated in 2012 with several underground releases that mimicked the kind of upbeat funky groove with a Vaporwave twist, it was heavily influenced by new disco bringing in a new style of futurism and contemporary music. It was officially branded as its own subgenre when a young producer under the alias Saint Pepsi released Hit Vibes in May 2013, it was a collection of remixed 80’a pop hits that were heavy on bass drums and repeated choruses turning what was originally catchy soul tunes into energetic dance beats.

This released quickly popularised making Future Funk the new sound of Vaporwave and it spread to other artists such as マクロスMacross 82-99 (meaning Macross Macross 82-99) who released Sailorwave in December 2013, a collection of Japanese disco songs in a funky ode to Sailor Moon, a popular Japanese manga and anime series. Yung Bae, a young producer originating from Portland Oregon, released the album Bae in July 2014, a collection of Japanese pop songs remixed with heavy drum and bass and a large amount of reverb.

On the flip side to Future Funk, there is Mallsoft, the glorification of utilising elevator muzak as it’s main inspiration, it relies heavily on a lot of reverb and making the music feel a part of a certain narrative for a certain location, it was deemed Mallsoft because of the growing number of releases particularly in 2013 of music that sounded like it was recorded from a shopping mall. Disconcious released Hologram Plaza in April 2013, a collection of droning 80’s funk tunes with heavy reverb and eerie treble reducer, this was the release that popularised the genre and made Mallsoft a distinct branch of this vast art movement.

In October 2014, 猫 シ Corp. released Palm Mall, a similar rendition to Hologram Plaza but delving deeper into the soul crushing reality of shopping mall consumerism, notable for being a good example of Vaporwave dealing with the theme of modern capitalism. 死夢Vanity (meaning Death Dream Vanity), a producer known for several releases on Dream Catalogue, released 遺却する Plaza (meaning Abandoned Plaza) on the label in January 2015, a collection of drawn out smooth jazz tunes creating a sensation of late night wandering, a journey through a desolate plaza all alone.

In August 2014, Dream Catalogue released what was to be known as their most controversial release in their library, it was titled Floral Shoppe 2 and was produced by a then unknown The Darkest Future, it was essentially an intentional mess of the Floral Shoppe album. The result was a split decision between fans which resulted in many debates on online forums as to whether the album was a joke or complete genius. Hong Kong Express later posted an explanation about the creation of this concept album by its creator revealing to be DarkPyramid, a producer on the Dream Catalogue label known for releasing Electrical Teardrops and A Heart Full Of Love, both of which dealing with the theme of android consciousness and love.

In it he mentions, “Earlier this week after exploring the new Vaporwave ultra-guide that has been floating around online, I was listening to one of the recommended albums in the classics section, namely Freed From The World by New Deluxe Life. I was wondering to myself as I was listening, what is this? While Vaporwave can be very challenging at times, this album just seemed to push the boundaries of experimentation further out than I had ever heard within the genre before to the point of becoming unlistenable. I wondered do people like this album because they are truly interested in such inaccessible, challenging and experimental music. This led to even further thought on the subject, how important is the aesthetic presentation to Vaporwave as a genre? Do we enjoy things more if it is presented with interesting imagery and less so if it is presented with something that is aesthetically displeasing? The Darkest Future is the trend I see in music, as we head further into the abyss, Vaporwave at its core is ultimately not a form of music but the first true post-music genre that has grown from being more than the tiniest niche into something of its own scene. While there have been other forms of post-music in the past even decades ago, Vaporwave is the first scene of its kind to really take it to the next level to the point where someone like Vektroid receives high praise for slowing down a Diana Ross sample and creating weird sounding loops out of it. What is innovative now is Vaporwave, because of its presentation, the music becomes more than just a song and instead something larger than that. This is ultimately the next innovation in music and people who say Vaporwave is dead are completely off base, I say instead that music is dead and may Vaporwave continue to live.”

Regardless of if you agree with his stance or not, whats important is that Vaporwave finally started to be converse as not a new genre but an art movement in general. In January 2015, Hong Kong Express and frequent collaborator and co-owner of the Dream Catalogue label Telepathテレパシー能力者 (meaning Telepath Telepathic), known for his ethereal dreamy releases, created 2814 - 新しい日の誕生 (meaning Birth Of A New Day), a dystopian concept album with all original music using drawn out piano chords, bladerunner-esque synthesisers and a heavy bass track. This album further expresses that Vaporwave is not a joke but a legitimate art form.

To quote Hong Kong Express, he describes Vaporwave in these terms, “Not every album has to be completely unique or have a heavy concept behind it and I’m not against heavy sampling if it is done inventively but if you’re just treating Vaporwave as any other genre like house or drum and bass and try to copy a formula because you think it has be that way then it shows a complete lack of inspiration. I think the most important thing to aim for in Vaporwave as a producer is to make something cinematic in effect, make the listener feel inexplainable feelings which is helped by the surrealism of the music. Culture is so fast-paced now that all this music is just passing noise, disposable almost, and I like that aspect of it a lot, I love going on Soundcloud and just listening to the stream knowing I may never hear these songs again and they will just disappear into the wind.”