I've been pretty close to vaporwave "scene" in 2013–2015. Despite still liking the muzak aesthetics of this self-styled "genre", I must admit it's absolutely devoid of any artistic merit, with the exception of exactly one release—Virtua.zip.
The irony is, the actual '80s music did vaporwave a hundred times better than vaporwave itself. Listen to Dire Straits—Your Latest Trick ( youtu.be/0YTh1Wsqo2c ) or MJ's Human Nature ( youtu.be/7Y3dsAY_a_I ). You've just heard all vaporwave.
Listen to ABC—Lexicon of Love, this song for example: youtu.be/6lazXg2pAXk . You've just heard all future funk.
It's sad to admit this, but vaporwave is just a buzzword genre capitalizing playing on the '90s nostalgia craze, made to sell completely talentless excuse of music.
The fact that you only think one release is worth merit shows that you've never listened to the genre for more than a month
Carson Sullivan
Wrong. I've been listening to it for 2 years. Started from Skeleton, Vektroid, Internet Club, Saint Pepsi and worked my way through the rest until 2814 came out.
It's all shit of varying degrees. Some of it, like 情報デスクVIRTUAL, is simply mixtapes, nothing else. Other is either plunderphonics of the lowest quality or generic trendy electronics like trap/ambient/whatever, with "vaporwave" label slapped on it to market it to teens.
What could have justified vaporwave would be Games-style sytnhpop. Of course it didn't happen when some people make whole """albums""" in Audacity.
Logan Ramirez
Did you like games ep?
Bentley Sanchez
It's literally the tits, my most favorite vaporwave-related release. Channel Pressure is alright but with less cheesy synth goodness
Camden Hill
Should I start a Vaporwave band?
Jeremiah Fisher
I'll join if you let me
Alexander Davis
what do you wanna play?
Angel Cruz
I play guitar guy. And I can also fall asleep
Benjamin Stewart
What do you like about them user?
Isaac Gray
they're wormy
Benjamin King
nah buddy, you either have dumb standards, haven't actually found the cool stuff or get all your music from Sup Forums. either way, relax. i've found the minority of vaporwave is actually plunderphonics, and even if it does sample it's rarely a predominant theme throughout the song.
also, how is "mixtapes" derogatory? isn't that more referential towards a means of distribution than actual content?
w/e man, it's all cool. go through some label's discogs and i'm sure you'll find something that reaches whatever level you see virtua.zip (also your claim that anyone's bought any crap due to the cultural cache of vaporwave is balls-out bananas, bud)
>I've been pretty close to vaporwave "scene" in 2013–2015. wow oldfag right?
>protip: there hasn't been a worthwhile vaporwave release since 2012
Evan Lopez
> you either have dumb standards, haven't actually found the cool stuff or get all your music from Sup Forums I used to hang on /r/vaporwave and I've heard all their suggested albums. Heard a lot of stuff from labels like Beer on the Rug and so on.
This isn't the old talk about copyright. This is the talk about the quality of music labeled as "vaporwave". The overwhelming majority of it has no value to anyone except the vaporwave community, simply because it's just amateur electronics. When compared to any contemporary electronic music release, it sounds like beginner production. What goes for "aesthetics" in it is simply extensive reverb/chorus-layered production. That's it—that's literally the only requirement there is for music to "qualify" to be vaporwave.
Producers like to talk that no one understands them, that vaporwave simply has no boundaries and it didn't stay in one place… all while making painfully primitive music with said chorus/reverb effect. That's how we eventually got 2814. It's not a vaporwave album, it's just reverb. You can hear anything in it from nostalgia to assasination of JFK "Does It Look Like I'm Here?" by Emeralds is more vaporwave than this.
> also, how is "mixtapes" derogatory? 情報デスクVIRTUAL is literally a compilation of smooth jazz/new age from '80s/'90s, by other artists of course. No audible changes had been made to the material. You can hear the originals on whosampled.com/情報デスクVIRTUAL/ . It's not to say it's bad—it's great. But it's not the artist's work, plain and simple.
The problem with this kind of music is that it's almost always made by total hacks or is just plain plagiarism. No wonder all these videogame composers have no cred outside of their industry, let alone Japan. That's why the only people who listen to them in US are weebs.
Some of them did have good chiptune programming skills back in the day though, but otherwise, Japan just can't into music. Let's forget about this Sup Forums meme once for all.
Colton Sullivan
>in record store >see this >still don't approach because she bought a Beatles album
Owen Bell
Fuck off ignorant retard
Gabriel Thomas
You're right that it's shit, but in all the wrong ways.
Of course 80's pop does it better, but essentially it's all about the conceptuality of the genre. Really that's a big can of worms to open due to the fact people have so many different viewpoints on the concept.
What makes it "bad" is the fact that a majority of the artists stay in a bubble of this "concept" and don't go out of the foreground of the genre. It really breeds complacency, and the saturation of the genre certainly doesn't help.
Daniel Young
also because she's got one of those weird "tall and flat" butts
Joshua Garcia
> What makes it "bad" is the fact that a majority of the artists stay in a bubble of this "concept" and don't go out of the foreground of the genre. It really breeds complacency, and the saturation of the genre certainly doesn't help.
I agree fully, however the concept of vaporwave was pretty limited to begin with, never mind that I don't think it has enough to actually be called a "genre".
Adam Bell
Wasn't the point of Vaporwave to take vapid, pointless 80's-early 90's pop, fun and otherwise and mix it up to make something new that critiqued it?
Ian Scott
>Talks about how genre is a pointless vapid attempt at shallow vain artistic expression >Actively listens to it for 2 years
Did it really take you that long to come to the standard Sup Forums stance on the genre?
Asher Williams
I disagree, take a look at Eco Virtual and some of the Vektroid aliases, there was a lot of variety in their themes and works, it's unfortunate that people latched onto Floral Shoppe so hard and thought all vaporwave has to be le funny Alexander the Great and Windows 95 imagery
Cameron Howard
>I read the vaporwave wikipedia article and so now I'm an expert >calling artists like Sade "vapid, pointless 80's-early 90's pop"
Eli Martin
This guy knows the score. Sade is the embodiment of vaporwave
Nope
Not so actively. I gave it up several times. But it was memed so hard, I thought it just to have some substance. Needless to say I was pretty new to online music discussion to make this assumption.
They all come down to one pretty apparent thing: deeper levels of nostalgia for '80s–'90s. Not the shallow "dude DeLorean lmao" Outrun-style neon indie, but the later era and its unique zeitgeist
