Jump to content

Vaporwave

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 216.69.46.40 (talk) at 13:42, 26 September 2016 (→2010–11). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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 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
  • Brutalwave
[citation needed]
Other topics

Vaporwave (or vapourwave)[3] is a music genre and art movement that emerged in the early 2010s and spread over the next half of the decade among various Internet communities. It is characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist fascination with retro cultural aesthetics (typically that of the late 1980s and early 1990s), entertainment technology, consumer culture and advertising, and styles of corporate and popular music such as lounge, smooth jazz and elevator music. Sampling is prevalent within the genre, with samples often pitched, layered or altered, sometimes in a classic chopped and screwed style.[2][4][5] Central to the style is often a satirical but not necessarily critical 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 "ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ", with "fullwidth" characters).[6]

History

2010–11

Vaporwave emerged as an Internet-birthed style loosely derived from the work of "hypnagogic pop" artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro.[7] Daniel Lopatin's 2010 release Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, Ferraro's own Far Side Virtual and Macintosh Plus's Floral Shoppe[8] are often credited for sparking the beginning and development of the vaporwave trend,[9][10][11] solidifying vaporwave as a genre and popularizing its newly found existence.

2012–14

In subsequent years, the genre found wider appeal, through websites such as Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube, Last.fm and 4chan.[1] It continued to evolve in 2012 with artists such as Blank Banshee releasing Blank Banshee 0,[12] Luxury Elite releasing III[13] and Saint Pepsi releasing Laser Tag Zero[14] adopting sounds that "have a hint of virtual plaza but significantly transcend it".[1] Artists such as Saint Pepsi and Luxury Elite started collaborating, popularizing the genre as a whole with the album Late Night Delight.[15] Sub-genres started to appear around this time, with the original three being vaportrap, future funk, and mallsoft,[citation needed] the latter of which "conjures the muzak played in shopping malls".[1] In 2013, Saint Pepsi released Hit Vibes[16] which pioneered the future funk sub-genre and changed the landscape and definition of vaporwave only being "slowed-down elevator-music".[citation needed] Yung Bae solidified this[citation needed] with the release of Bae[17] in 2014. Near the end of the years, a portion of the artists in the genre started to become more experimental,[citation needed] with artists such as Hong Kong Express releasing Làngmàn de Mèngxiǎng (浪漫的夢想, "Romantic Dream")[18] and 2047.[19]

2015–present

In 2015, MTV revealed a rebrand heavily inspired by vaporwave and seapunk.[20] Inversely, Tumblr launched Tumblr TV, with an explicitly 1990s MTV-style visual spin.[21] 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."[21] Artists often embrace classical sculpture, 1990s web design, computer renderings, glitch art, VHS, Cassette Tape, East Asian Artwork, and cyberpunk.[22]

In November 2015, according to a Rolling Stone "10 artists you need to know" list, 2814's album Atarashii Hi no Tanjō (新しい日の誕生, "Birth of a New Day") found success within a "small, passionate pocket of the internet."[23] 2814 cited Boards of Canada, Steve Roach, Vangelis, Burial and Sigur Rós as influences.[24] 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".[25]

Interpretations

Vaporwave has been described as "a degrading of commercial music" in an attempt to reveal the "false promises" of capitalism.[26] 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.[26]

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".[27] Jouhou Desuku Virtual (情報デスクVIRTUAL, "Virtual Information Desk"), an alias of Vektroid, describes her album Sapporo Contemporary (札幌コンテンポラリー, "Contemporary Sapporo") as "a brief glimpse into the new possibilities of international communication" and "a parody of American hypercontextualization of e-Asia circa 1995."[28]

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."[29] 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."[30] In his 2016 review of Hologram Plaza by Disconscious, an album in the mallsoft subgenre of vaporwave, Dylan Kilby of Sunbleach Media stated that "[t]he origins of mallsoft lie in the earliest explorations of vaporwave, where the concept of malls as large, soulless spaces of consumerism were evoked in some practitioner's utilization of vaporwave as a means for exploring the social ramifications of capitalism and globalization," but that such an approach "has largely petered out in the last few years in favor of pure sonic exploration/expression."[31]

Vaporwave has spawned several spinoff media types.

Simpsonwave

Simpsonwave is a YouTube phenomenon that involves editing clips of the American animated television series The Simpsons set to various vaporwave songs. The clips are often filtered with purple tint and make use of VHS-esque distortion (heavy chromatic aberration is be used as well), giving the videos a hallucinatory and "transportive" feel.[32]

The first Simpsonwave video was created and uploaded to Vine by a user named Spicster, featuring a looping seven-second clip from the Simpsons episode "Bart on the Road" set to the song "Resonance" by the American electronic musician Home.[33][34] As of June 2, 2016, the vine has garnered 22.5 million loops.[33] YouTube user Hothi then created a video, titled "ＢＡＲＴ ＯＮ ＴＨＥ ＲＯＡＤ", with the seven-second visual looped and set to the full song; it has garnered more than 600,000 views, as of September 2016.[35]

While at home sick from school one day, Lucien Hughes[36][37][38][39] saw a few mashups of Simpsons clips with vaporwave songs by a person under the YouTube username midge, which was also posted on a Simpsons internet meme Facebook group titled "Simpsons Shitposting", one of the factors that contributed to the genre's publicity.[37] midge's mashups, as well as "ＢＡＲＴ ＯＮ ＴＨＥ ＲＯＡＤ" influenced Hughes to start making Simpsonwave videos of his own, therefore making content he labeled under the "Simpsonwave" name starting in February 2016.[35][37] By June 2016, his most popular video had more than a million views on Youtube.[35]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vaporwave.
2

References

  1. ^ a b c d Harper, Adam (December 5, 2013). "Pattern Recognition Vol. 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave". Electronic Beats. Archived from the original on Feb 23, 2014. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  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. ^ Gibb, Rory (November 8, 2012). "The Month's Electronic Music: Through The Looking Glass". The Quietus. Retrieved December 7, 2013.
  9. ^ Blanning, Lisa (April 5, 2013). "James Ferraro - Cold". Pitchfork. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ Beks, Ash. "Vaporwave is not dead". The Essential. The Essential. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  12. ^ "Blank Banshee 0, by Blank Banshee".
  13. ^ "III, by luxury elite".
  14. ^ "LASER TAG ZERO, by SAINT PEPSI".
  15. ^ "LATE NIGHT DELIGHT (Remastered), by SAINT PEPSI // LUXURY ELITE".
  16. ^ "Hit Vibes, by SAINT PEPSI".
  17. ^ "Bae, by YUNG BAE".
  18. ^ "浪漫的夢想, by Hong Kong Express".
  19. ^ "2047, by Hong Kong Express".
  20. ^ Lange, Maggie (August 29, 2015). "The Crowd-Sourced Chaos of MTV's Vaporwave VMAs". GQ. Condé Nast. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  21. ^ 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.
  22. ^ Ward, Christian (January 29, 2014). "Vaporwave: Soundtrack to Austerity". Stylus.com. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  23. ^ "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.
  24. ^ C Monster (October 15, 2015). "Dream Catalogue (HKE, ２８１４)". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved December 8, 2015.
  25. ^ "The 50 Best Albums of 2015". Fact. The Vinyl Factory. December 9, 2015. Retrieved December 11, 2015.
  26. ^ a b Harper, Adam (December 7, 2012). "Comment: Vaporwave and the pop-art of the virtual plaza". Dummy. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  27. ^ Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. Faber and Faber Ltd., June 2011, ISBN 978-0571232086
  28. ^ 情報デスクVIRTUAL - 幌コンテンポラリー. Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  29. ^ Tanner, Grafton (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Alresford, Hants, UK: zero books. p. 10. ISBN 9781782797593.
  30. ^ Tanner, Grafton (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Alresford, Hants, UK: zero books. p. 39. ISBN 9781782797593.
  31. ^ Kilby, Dylan (August 7, 2016). "Disconscious - Hologram Plaza - Sunbleach". Sunbleach Media. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  32. ^ Blevins, Joe. ""Simpsonwave" is the most wack, tripped-out Simpsons meme ever". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
  33. ^ a b Rodriguez, Krystal (June 2, 2016). "Is Simpsonwave a Real Thing?". Thump. Vice Media. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
  34. ^ Kurp, Josh (June 2, 2016). "'The Simpsons' Has Finally Inspired An Entire Music Genre". Uproxx. Woven Digital. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
  35. ^ a b c Maas, Sebastian (June 3, 2016). "Simpsonwave: Diese Simpsons-Musikvideos haben wir gebraucht" (in German). Bento. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
  36. ^ Lozano, Kevin (June 14, 2016). "What the Hell Is Simpsonwave?". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved June 22, 2016.
  37. ^ a b c Song, Sandra (June 6, 2016). "What Is Simpsonwave? A Brief Introduction Via Scene Staple, Lucien Hughes". Paper. Paper Communications. Retrieved June 8, 2016.
  38. ^ Minor, Jordan (June 3, 2016). "Drown yourself beneath the vaporwave". Geek.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
  39. ^ Robson, Kurt (July 7, 2016). "We spoke to the creator of Simpsonwave, and it's about to end". The Tab. Retrieved July 20, 2016.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Vaporwave&oldid=741275684"