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Changed caption for first image slightly. Vaporwave has been around longer but Vektroid (under the pseudonym MACINTOSH PLUS) was the one who made it popular
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| color = black
|image= File:Floral Shoppe Alt Cover.jpg
|image= File:Floral Shoppe Alt Cover.jpg
|caption= The original album cover for ''[[Floral Shoppe]]'' by [[Vektroid|Macintosh Plus]]. This album is considered to be one of the earliest examples of Vaporwave.
|caption= The original album cover for ''[[Floral Shoppe]]'' by [[Vektroid|MACINTOSH PLUS]]. This album is considered to be one of the earliest mainstream examples of Vaporwave.
| stylistic_origins = {{hlist|[[Hypnagogic pop]]|[[chillwave]]|[[plunderphonics]]|[[New-age music|new-age]]|[[Lounge music|lounge]]|[[elevator music]]|[[chopped and screwed]]|[[city pop]]|[[dance-pop]]|[[smooth jazz]]|[[funk]]|[[nu-disco]]|[[Ambient music|ambient]]|[[cyberpunk]]|[[Contemporary R&B|R&B]]|[[punk ideologies|punk]]<ref name="electronic">{{cite web | url=http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/columns/pattern-recognition/vol-8-5-the-year-in-vaporwave/ | title=Pattern Recognition Vol. 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave | publisher=[[Electronic Beats]] | date=December 5, 2013 | accessdate=February 8, 2014 | author=Harper, Adam}}</ref><ref name=Thumpsup>{{cite web | url=http://thump.vice.com/words/is-vaporwave-the-next-seapunk | title=Is Vaporwave The Next Seapunk? | publisher=[[Vice (magazine)]] | date=December 27, 2013 | accessdate=April 10, 2014 | author=Lhooq, Michelle}}</ref>}}
| stylistic_origins = {{hlist|[[Hypnagogic pop]]|[[chillwave]]|[[plunderphonics]]|[[New-age music|new-age]]|[[Lounge music|lounge]]|[[elevator music]]|[[chopped and screwed]]|[[city pop]]|[[dance-pop]]|[[smooth jazz]]|[[funk]]|[[nu-disco]]|[[Ambient music|ambient]]|[[cyberpunk]]|[[Contemporary R&B|R&B]]|[[punk ideologies|punk]]<ref name="electronic">{{cite web | url=http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/columns/pattern-recognition/vol-8-5-the-year-in-vaporwave/ | title=Pattern Recognition Vol. 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave | publisher=[[Electronic Beats]] | date=December 5, 2013 | accessdate=February 8, 2014 | author=Harper, Adam}}</ref><ref name=Thumpsup>{{cite web | url=http://thump.vice.com/words/is-vaporwave-the-next-seapunk | title=Is Vaporwave The Next Seapunk? | publisher=[[Vice (magazine)]] | date=December 27, 2013 | accessdate=April 10, 2014 | author=Lhooq, Michelle}}</ref>}}
| cultural_origins = {{hlist|Early 2010s|[[Cyberculture]]}}
| cultural_origins = {{hlist|Early 2010s|[[Cyberculture]]}}

Revision as of 01:07, 6 August 2016

Not to be confused with Vaporware.
Vaporwave
File:Floral Shoppe Alt Cover.jpg
The original album cover for Floral Shoppe by MACINTOSH PLUS. This album is considered to be one of the earliest mainstream examples of Vaporwave.
Stylistic origins
Cultural origins
Typical instruments
Subgenres
  • Future Funk
  • Mallsoft
  • Vaportrap
  • Eccojams
  • Hardvapour
  • Utopian Virtual
  • Faux-Utopian
  • Hypnagogic Drift
  • Broken Transmission
  • Futurevisions
  • Late Night Lo-Fi
  • VHS Pop
  • Vapormeme
  • Oceangrunge
Other topics

Vaporwave (also vapourwave)[3] is a music genre and art movement that emerged in the early 2010s among Internet communities. It is characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist fascination with retro cultural aesthetics (typically of the 1980s, 1990s, and early-mid 2000s), video games, technology, postmodernism, Japanese culture and advertising, and styles of commercial and popular music such as lounge, smooth jazz and elevator music. Musical sampling is prevalent within the genre, with samples often pitched, layered or altered in classic chopped and screwed style.[2][4][5]

Central to the style is often a critical or satirical preoccupation with consumer capitalism, popular culture, and new-age tropes.[2] The visual style of vaporwave, as seen on album covers and in art videos accompanied by the music, is commonly referred to as "aesthetics" (often stylized as "Ａ Ｅ Ｓ Ｔ Ｈ Ｅ Ｔ Ｉ Ｃ Ｓ").[6]

History

Vaporwave emerged as an internet-birthed style loosely derived from the work of "hypnagogic pop" artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro in previous years.[7] Daniel Lopatin's 2010 release Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 and Ferraro's own Far Side Virtual are often credited for sparking vaporwave's development,[8][9][10] as is Macintosh Plus's Floral Shoppe.[11] In subsequent years, the genre has found wider appeal through websites such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Last.fm and 4chan. It continued to evolve in 2013 with acts like Blank Banshee and Saint Pepsi adopting sounds that "have a hint of virtual plaza but significantly transcend it".[1] Subgenres have also appeared, including mallsoft, which "conjures the muzak played in shopping malls".[1]

In 2015, MTV revealed a rebrand heavily inspired by vaporwave and seapunk.[12] Inversely, Tumblr launched Tumblr TV, with an explicitly 1990s MTV-style visual spin.[13] According to Jordan Pearson of Motherboard, Vice's technology website, this change would mean the death of the genre, as 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."[13] Artists often embrace classical sculpture, 1990s web design, computer renderings, glitch art, VHS, Cassette Tape, East Asian Artwork, and cyberpunk.[14]

In November 2015, according to a Rolling Stone "10 artists you need to know" list, 2814's album 新しい日の誕生 (Birth of a New Day) found success within a "small, passionate pocket of the internet."[15] 2814 cited Boards of Canada, Steve Roach, Vangelis, Burial and Sigur Rós as influences.[16] Since the release of this album, a lot of the new releases in the genre have moved towards a more atmospheric and ambient-heavy style. In the 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 of "The 50 Best Albums of 2015".[17]

Interpretations

Vaporwave has been described as "a degrading of commercial music" in an attempt to reveal the "false promises" of capitalism.[18] Music writer Adam Harper of Dummy Mag describes Vaporwave as "ironic and satirical or truly accelerationist"; noting that the name "Vaporwave" itself is both a nod to vaporware, and the idea of libidinal energy being subjected to relentless sublimation under capitalism.[18]

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".[19]

情報デスクVIRTUAL (Jouhou Desuku VIRTUAL), the alias of Vektroid, describes her album 札幌コンテンポラリー (Sapporo Contemporary) as "a brief glimpse into the new possibilities of international communication" and "a parody of American hypercontextualization of e-Asia circa 1995."[20]

Music educator Grafton Tanner argued in his 2016 book Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts that "Vaporwave is one artistic style that seeks to rearrange our relationship with electronic media by forcing us to recognize the unfamiliarity of ubiquitous technology."[21] He goes on in saying: "Vaporwave is the music of 'non-times' and 'non-places because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space."[22]

See also

2

References

  1. ^ a b c Harper, Adam (December 5, 2013). "Pattern Recognition Vol. 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave". Electronic Beats. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c Lhooq, Michelle (December 27, 2013). "Is Vaporwave The Next Seapunk?". Vice (magazine). Retrieved April 10, 2014.
  3. ^ "Near-death experiences and vapourwave - The Wireless". The Wireless NZ. January 14, 2016.
  4. ^ Simpson, Paul. "Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
  5. ^ Aux, Staff. "AUX". Aux. Aux Music Network. Retrieved 2 January 2016.
  6. ^ Minor, Jordan (June 3, 2016). "Drown yourself beneath the vaporwave". Geek.com. Retrieved June 12, 2016.
  7. ^ Bowe, Miles. "Band To Watch: Saint Pepsi". Stereogum. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  8. ^ Blanning, Lisa (April 5, 2013). "James Ferraro - Cold". Pitchfork. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Beks, Ash. "Vaporwave is not dead". The Essential. The Essential. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  11. ^ Gibb, Rory (November 8, 2012). "The Month's Electronic Music: Through The Looking Glass". The Quietus. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  12. ^ Lange, Maggie (August 29, 2015). "The Crowd-Sourced Chaos of MTV's Vaporwave VMAs". GQ. Condé Nast. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ Ward, Christian (January 29, 2014). "Vaporwave: Soundtrack to Austerity". Stylus.com. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  15. ^ "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.
  16. ^ C Monster (October 15, 2015). "Dream Catalogue (HKE, ２８１４)". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  17. ^ "The 50 Best Albums of 2015". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. December 9, 2015. Retrieved December 11, 2015.
  18. ^ a b Harper, Adam (December 7, 2012). "Comment: Vaporwave and the pop-art of the virtual plaza". Dummy. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  19. ^ Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. Faber and Faber Ltd., June 2011, ISBN 978-0571232086
  20. ^ 情報デスクVIRTUAL - 幌コンテンポラリー. Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  21. ^ Tanner, Grafton (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Alresford, Hants, UK: zero books. p. 10. ISBN 9781782797593.
  22. ^ Tanner, Grafton (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Alresford, Hants, UK: zero books. p. 39. ISBN 9781782797593.
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