Hypnagogic pop

Hypnagogic pop
Etymology	Hypnagogia
Other names	Chillwave glo-fi
Stylistic origins	Lo-fi 1980s pop psychedelia electronic radio rock noise light rock New Age new wave drone experimental muzak synth-pop Hollywood soundtracks R&B
Cultural origins	Mid 2000s, United States
Typical instruments	Guitars synthesizers
Derivative forms	Vaporwave
Other topics
Hauntology cultural memory downtempo pop

Hypnagogic pop is a style of pop music that developed in the mid 2000s among underground artists who drew on the music, popular entertainment, and recording technology of past decades, particularly the 1980s, to explore elements of cultural memory and nostalgia. The term, which references the dream-like state of consciousness known as hypnagogia, was coined by journalist David Keenan in an August 2009 issue of The Wire to describe "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory." Subsequently, it was deployed interchangeably with the labels "chillwave" and "glo-fi."

The genre grew out of American lo-fi and noise scenes, and would receive critical attention in the late 2000s through artists such as Ariel Pink, James Ferraro, and Neon Indian. It has been described as both a contemporary update of psychedelia steeped in popular culture and as an American cousin to the British hauntology scene.

Characteristics

File:Nobody here.png

A still from "nobody here," a 2009 video uploaded to YouTube by Daniel Lopatin consisting of looped samples of Chris de Burgh's 1986 hit "The Lady in Red" and the vintage computer graphic "Rainbow Road."

Journalist David Keenan coined the term "hypnagogic pop" to refer to a trend of mid-2000s artists who drew on musical and cultural sources subconsciously remembered from the 1980s and early 1990s while freeing them from their historical contexts and "hom[ing] in on the futuristic signifiers" of the period. Keenan alternately summarized hypnagogic pop as "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory" and as "1980's-inspired psychedelia" which engages with forgotten capitalist detritus of the past in an attempt to "dream of the future." Common reference points of the genre include various forms of 1980s music, including radio rock, new wave pop, MTV one-hit wonders, New Age music, synth-driven Hollywood blockbuster soundtracks, lounge music and easy-listening, corporate muzak, lite rock "schmaltz," video game music, '80s synthpop and R&B.

Recordings often used "deliberately degraded" or analog instruments and techniques, including tape hiss and FX. Also common was the use of outmoded audio/visual technology and DIY digital imagery, such as VHS cassettes, CD-R discs, and early Internet aesthetics. Critic Simon Reynolds wrote that the music is often "released as limited-edition cassettes and vinyl [before reaching] a larger audience through blogs and YouTube videos." Critic Adam Trainer noted its preoccupation with both decaying analog technology and the bombastic representations of synthetic elements in 1980s and '90s popular culture. He noted that the style was defined by a shared "musical approach" rather than a particular sound, and that it draws from "the collective unconscious of late 1980s and early 1990s popular culture" while being "indebted stylistically to various traditions of experimentalism such as noise, drone, repetition, and improvisation."

History

See also: Psychedelic music, Hauntology, and Chillwave

In his August 2009 piece for the The Wire, Keenan coined the term "hypnagogic pop" to refer to a developing trend of 2000s lo-fi and post-noise music in which varied artists began to engage with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. Among these artists were James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Ariel Pink, Zola Jesus, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Pocahaunted. He employed the psychological term hypnagogic as referring to the psychological state "between waking and sleeping, liminal zones where mis-hearings and hallucinations feed into the formation of dreams." "Hypnagogic pop" was quickly taken up by a variety of music blogs. Writing for Vice, Morgan Poyau described the emerging style as "making awkward bedfellows out of experimental music enthusiasts and weird progressive pop theorists." She described a typical manifestation of the style as featuring long tracks "saturated with echo, delay, smothered guitars and amputated synths."

By 2010, albums by Ariel Pink and Neon Indian were regularly hailed by publications like Pitchfork and The Wire, with the terms "hypnagogic pop", "chillwave", and "glo-fi" employed to describe the evolving sounds of such artists, a number of which had songs of considerable success within independent music circles. Pink was looked upon as a "godfather" to chillwave, and his work was commonly referenced in early discussions of hauntology. Pitchfork's Mike Powell characterized the technical flaws in his work as its "selling point: Without them, it would sound like the sweatless work of studio hacks; with them, it sounds like a horrorshow". Another review by Marc Hogan for Neon Indian's Psychic Chasms (2009) listed "dream-beat", "chillwave", "glo-fi", "hypnagogic pop", and "hipster-gogic pop" as interchangeable terms for "psychedelic music that's generally one or all of the following: synth-based, homemade-sounding, 80s-referencing, cassette-oriented, sun-baked, laid-back, warped, hazy, emotionally distant, slightly out of focus."

The work of hypnagogic pop artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro would soon inspire a subsequent internet-centric genre known as vaporwave, which amplified the experimental tendencies of the style. In a retrospective piece, the hypnagogic style was described by Ceasefire Mag's Dave Bell as the "American cousin" of Britain's hauntological music scene, which has also been discussed as engaging with notions of nostalgia and memory.

Critical response

See also: Vaporwave

Following the publication of Keenan's article, the genre became the subject of widespread critical discussion. Reynolds described it as an engagement with hyper-reality and a "21st-century update of psychedelia" in which "lost innocence has been contaminated by pop culture". He notes a particular concern with the "scrambling of pop time", suggesting that "perhaps the secret idea buried inside hypnagogic pop is that the '80s never ended. That we're still living there, subject to that decade's endless end of History." Critic Adam Harper noted among hypnagogic pop artists a tendency to "to turn trash, something shallow and determinedly throwaway, into something sacred or mystical" and to "manipulate their material to defamiliarise it and give it a sense of the uncanny." Writer Adam Trainer suggested that the style allowed artists to engage with the detritus of capitalist consumer culture in a way that focuses on affect rather than irony or cynicism. The genre has been likened to "sonic fictions or intentional forgeries, creating half-baked memories of things that never were—approximating the imprecise nature of memory itself". Luna Vega described it as "tak[ing] aspects of modern culture and nostalgia and transform[ing] them into new collective memories".

Some artists labeled with the "hypnagogic pop" tag, such as Neon Indian and Toro Y Moi, have rejected the label or denied that such a unified style exists. The Guardian called the hypnagogic tag "pretentious". New York Times writer Jon Pareles criticized the style as "annoyingly noncommittal music." In 2009, producer Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never) said: "I don't think the hpop tag is representative of a movement or constituted by a select group of artists. I see it more as a discussion about nostalgia and its subliminal effects on culture. I don't see anything wrong with the tag—it's just a way of engaging with a phenomenon."

Associated artists

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

• Ariel Pink
• Ducktails
• Emeralds
• Hype Williams
• James Ferraro
• LA Vampires
• Matrix Metals
• Neon Indian
• Oneohtrix Point Never
• Pocahaunted
• Puro Instinct
• Rangers
• Spencer Clark
• Sun Araw
• Toro y Moi
• Zola Jesus