I remember it was about two years ago that I was first introduced to Vaporwave,
it was an off chance click, a small little tap of the finger,
and because of that I saw something that made me say to myself with ideals of grandeur
comparable to those of the colonists for the first time coming into contact with the Native Americans of old...
What the fuck is this? After watching the video by the essayist behind This Exists
I remember first listening to that one song that everyone knows but just refers to as Macintosh Plus 420.
I thought it was pretty shit.
I remember listening to Blank Banshee's album with a picture of Laura Croft on the front and thinking to myself that it was just some
run-of-the-mill techno. I cleared my history after that for different reasons, but after that, I didn't really hear much about vaporwave for another year
I've always loved the '80s, something about it touched me. The roaring synths, the neon visuals,
I always thought they were pretty rad.
I'd always been raised listening to '80s music and a lot of it was staples in my parents house for the longest time.
So when a friend sent me a link to Saint Pepsi's Private Caller in 2015, something clicked. I remember that musical frisson
I felt as I closed my eyes and entered the faux '80s dystopia that the song evoked,
I listened to five albums over the next day. I was hooked.
As I looked more into the genre I was amazed at the variety
that existed and how I brushed off such a diverse and multifarious music subculture because of two albums.
I started back at the beginning listening to the two pioneers of the genre, Daniel Lopatin of Chuck Pearson's Eccojams and James Ferraro of Far Side Virtual.
As soon as it played that feeling came over me again, that subconscious association,
these ethereal and ghostly sounds with a world of dystopia and decay.
♪
And as I heard that first track, I was brought right back to 420.
No, not this shit, the song.
I listened to it again. There was something different about it, something new.
There was now a bearded black man on the cover and someone was rapping
about shorties and thots and in that moment I realized, wait this isn't the same video.
I kept listening to Vaporwave over the following months. In that time
I grew to love the Vaportrap of Blank Banshee, the Future Funk of Super Sex 420,
the hypnagogic VHS pop of S U R F I N G and the ethereal beauty of the flowing synths of 2814
and despite what I was listening to, it wouldn't have mattered if it was some remix Japanese funk tracks that some kid in Oregon
made or if it was some elevator music that pretentious hipsters would listen to one thing was the same:
the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃｓ
which serve in complete contrast to the multi-faceted nature of the genre. While it in and of itself in terms of audio can
Appeal to anyone from freaky funk junkies to those taskly touting tendencies toward easy listening
There's unity in the visual we see VHS and '80s visuals
Deep Purple's, pretentious circle jerks, fluorescent yellows and greens from even the most traditional Vaporwave albums to the most Avant-Garde
♪
Ｔｈｉｓ'ｓ ｓｏｍｅ ｇｏｏｄ ｓｈｉｔ.
What preceded Vaporwave was a multitude of artistic styles that embraced the 80's for what they were, or, at the very least, what we
in modernity want them to be, the neons and the visuals and the brisk synths to the sounds. In Chillwave and Synthwave
we see these taken to the extreme in artists like Kavinsky, Com Truise,
and Neon Indian.
what we see in Vaporwave are the remnants of these stylistic cues taken from these genres, taking on the purplish and blue hues of the
predecessors and degrading them, utilizing traditionally '80s aesthetics and turning them on their head, inverting their meaning in the process. Instead of the expertly composed
synthesized tracks of Timecop 1983, Vaporwave greets us with music stolen from decades ago, warping and eroding away at it
Almost to say, "Hey man, fuck you. The future sucks."
As Vaporwave continued to develop this overarching theme remained constant across all sub-genres as the consumerist
culture of the '80s came to be associated with Vaporwave and most prominently future funk. When we look at the music videos for
Saint Pepsi's Private Caller, Cherry Pepsi and Enjoy Yourself,
we see exactly this, a visual narrative based around the product that brings about energy and happiness in the actors,
interleaving beautiful commercials with often ethereal music to create a concurrent dichotomous appeal to pathos.
One which employs us to indulge in the consumerist culture of the '80s and '90s in the visual, while at the same time
exhorting us to reject it for its decadence and moral. Such an overt Marxist critique of modern cultures even illustrated in the very name
of the genre itself
alluding to both vaporware: imaginary products said to be released by corporations and to Marx's critique of the worker under capitalism whose energy facilitates the
transformation of solid goods produced by the
capitalist class for the consumption of the worker into a gaseous state, in the same way does Vaporwave take on the very sounds of
capitalism itself, elevator music and bright synths and subvert the meanings that they originally intended to convey but even when the marxist
underpinnings of the genre are disregarded
what remains perfectly constant within every Vaporwave song is an agreed upon ideal at the
manipulation of sound can create a world unique to each
individual listener, that the atmospheric tone of each and every piece of Vaporwave can make manifest this world
But Mister Hipster isn't Vaporwave a meme though like I saw it in one of those dank meme vine
comps 2016, extra edge edition, and come on Glue70 Nutshack
Oh, oh yes
Thank you for reminding me and it is fair to say that Vaporwave at the most superficial
level is now and always has been a meme. You look at people like
FrankJavCee who actively embrace the satirical nature of the genre for what it was
Cancer.
to understand Vaporwave, you must feel the vapor breathe in the vapor
be the vapor, taste the vapor
What's that taste you may ask? It's the taste of consumerist society and it tastes freaking delicious
Shitposting, circle jerking and irony have always been there
and now it's even a running joke in the comments section of every piece of Vaporwave to see how
experimental the music can become until people listen to it ironically and at times
I completely
understand because it takes a certain amount of anemic deficiency to listen to Macintosh Plus 420, 800% slower, one whole hour
But even then and there, there is beauty in the meme not even ironically
but literally so
you look at the vast amount of Vaporwave tagged vines and the Simpsonwave videos on YouTube and at first glance some avowed fans
of the genre may regard either as the sullying of something that once loosely stood for personal magnum opera through contiguous intonations
But when you look at Vaporwave for what it actually is
the meme it has become is the meme it was always destined to be, in the same way Vektroid
sampled a song from Diana Ross and turned it into an iconic droning piece of music
so too does Pyrocynical or Astros parody and mock it
and recontextualizing that which already was, it's given new meaning, in such a way Vaporwave as a meme is Vaporwave
as it already was, in the very context of what Vaporwave can be, and lives what it actually is
A huge monumental thank you to two amazing video editors Tim, the Enchanter and Cordi
Tim was amazing enough to give me some tips on some of the effects I could use to give my video some more aesthetic, as was Cordi he was actually
Happy enough to edit some of the video for me upon his request
Please show both of them some love they are
beautiful editors if you like the way, I edit my videos, you'll love the videos they make to Vaporwave heavy '80s inspired
just really awesome videos
I Hope you all got a kick out of this video
I tried to incorporate some more jokes than I usually do just in general
You know make the channel more comedic a little bit
But I did want to keep the overarching tone of the video a bit more serious simply because I really do enjoy Vaporwave
but if you like this style of video
I'd be happy to keep doing them because I think just
Commentating on videos is kind of it kind of gets bland after a while
I do like talking about a subject but for me it is a little bit more difficult to make it
comedic so to speak but if you like to style a video, then tell me in the comments, please leave a like
and subscribe
I'm a shill