Vaporwave

**Lane Visitor** · January 30, 2014

On 1/30/2014 at 2:00 AM, gmanyo said:

all of vaporwave and the rest of these net genres are basically a joke, only you arent supposed to laugh. like honestly the entire genre is based on sounding like shit. some people don't get the joke, other people just don't find it funny, and others think it's the best joke they've ever heard. that lifestyle song by dux content stuff is a prime example - the whole thing sounds like shitty internet anthems that go in the background of pirates vs ninjas flash videos and meme slideshows.

sort of applies to most postmodern art.

I get what you're onto, but I wouldn't go as far to say that vaporwave in its entirety is a joke... I think there are and can be humorous elements to some of the material that's out there, specifically the memes that are floating around with neon animated gifs of hamburgers, guns and roman pillars all twirling around each other.. I actually think a lot of vaporwave is subversive, dark, avante garde and highly artistic... PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises, James Ferraro, Eyeliner, Blank Banshee... of course, the vwave elements of Point Never.. .A handful example of the more innovative/originally composed stuff that's highly conceptual and very futuristic, but still uses retro-futurism and nostalgia to capture it's essence. It may look funny from the surface, but I actually think the automated culture, computer art, and the "virtual plaza" to me is more sinister, curious, and fascinating, and even beautiful than hokey, gimmicky or for the lolz (although there surely is a plethora of material that's thrown into the vaporwave genre that's a joke- won't argue with that). But I think the original intention still lives on, and will continue to live through whatever forms or labels it takes on as music/internet evolves.

**Lane Visitor** · January 30, 2014

to add, I think that vaporwave was indeed birthed in elements of parody/mocking/irony/tounge-in-cheek, that I won't argue with. But, I guess what I'm saying here, is the same is true with punk rock when it was born. Humorous, but sexy... Bratty and youthful, but wise ... dadaist, yet highly meaningful.. so anyway, I think there can be a paradox when it comes to these things...

I don't 100% disagree with you that a type of humor is involved here for sure, but it's more of a sophisticated humor, and with many of the worthwhile sides of vaporwave, that humor doesnt (or shouldnt) overshadow and dominate the other valuable aspects of the genre..

imo, vaporwave =/= rebecca black, bacon memes, overly clingy girlfriend type of humor.

note: some of the really bad seapunk or vaporwave that's like an already existing happy hardcore track with samples of people laughing, tagged on bandcamp as "pre-internet", "disney", "post-post-vaporwave", "vaporgay" etc etc etc... that stuff I won't even talk about, it's mostly garbage lol, and it shouldnt represent what the genre is as a whole).

Edited January 30, 2014 by Lane Visitor

**gmanyo** · January 30, 2014

definitely not a joke like bacon memes are a joke. its not even humorous most of the time.

**Lane Visitor** · January 30, 2014

lol true

sheatheman · January 30, 2014

On 1/30/2014 at 5:59 PM, Lane Visitor said:
But I think the original intention still lives on, and will continue to live through whatever forms or labels it takes on as music/internet evolves.

This is what I've been saying. It's something that has lived through numerous forms.

The issue is there needs to be real, original wit in the execution, and the problem is a lot of Vwave is imitated wit but not true wit.

sheatheman · February 1, 2014

Report on the Shadow Industry, by Peter Carey

Put on something slow and dark if you are listening to music...

Maybe this:

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Or this:

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Text:

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1.

My friend S. went to live in America ten years ago and I still have the letter he wrote me when he first arrived, wherein he describes the shadow factories that were springing up on the west coast and the effects they were having on that society.

"You see people in dark glasses wandering around the supermarket at 2 a.m. There are great boxes all along the aisles, some as expensive as fifty dollars but most of them are only five. There's always Muzak. It gives me the shits more than the shadows. The people don't look at one another. They come to browse through the boxes of shadows although the packets give no indication of what's inside. It really depresses me to think of people going out at two in the morning because they need to try their luck with a shadow. Last week I was in the supermarket near Topanga and I saw an old man tear the end off a shadow box. He was arrested almost immediately."

A strange letter ten years ago but it accurately describes scenes that have since become common in this country. Yesterday I drove in from the airport past shadow factory after shadow factory, large faceless buildings gleaming in the sun, their secrets guarded by ex-policemen with Alsatian dogs.

The shadow factories have huge chimneys that reach far into the sky, chimneys which billow forth smoke of different, brilliant colors. It is said by some of my more cynical friends that the smoke has nothing to do with any manufacturing process and is merely a trick, fake evidence that technological miracles are being performed within the factories. The popular belief is that the smoke sometimes contains the most powerful shadows of all, those that are too large and powerful to be packaged. It is a common sight to see old women standing for hours outside the factories, staring into the smoke.

There are a few who say the smoke is dangerous because of carcinogenic chemicals used in the manufacture of shadows. Others argue that the shadow is a natural product and by its very nature chemically pure. They point to the advantages of the smoke: the beautifully colored patterns in the clouds which serve as a reminder of the happiness to be obtained from a fully realized shadow. There may be some merit in this last argument, for on cloudy days the skies above our city are a wondrous sight, full of blues and vermilions and brilliant greens which pick out strange patterns and shapes in the clouds.

Others say the clouds now contain the dreadful beauty of the apocalypse.

2.

The shadows are packaged in large, lavish boxes which are printed with abstract designs in many colors. The Bureau of Statistics reveals that the average householder spends 25 percent of his income on these expensive goods and that this percentage increases as the income decreases.

There are those who say that the shadows are bad for people, promising an impossible happiness that can never be realized and thus detracting from the very real beauties of nature and life. But there are others who argue that the shadows have always been with us in one form or another and that the packaged shadow is necessary for mental health in an advanced technological society. There is, however, research to indicate that the high suicide rate in advanced countries is connected with the popularity of shadow sales and that there is a direct statistical correlation between shadow sales and suicide rates. This has been explained by those who hold that the shadows are merely mirrors to the soul and that the man who stares into a shadow box sees only himself, and what beauty he finds there is his own beauty and what despair he experiences is born of the poverty of his spirit.

3.

I visited my mother at Christmas. She lives alone with her dogs in a poor part of town. Knowing her weakness for shadows I brought her several of the more expensive varieties which she retired to examine in the privacy of the shadow room.

She stayed in the room for such a long time that I became worried and knocked on the door. She came out almost immediately. When I saw her face I knew the shadows had not been good ones.

"I’m sorry," I said, but she kissed me quickly and began to tell me about a neighbor who had won the lottery.

I myself know, only too well, the disappointments of shadow boxes for I also have a weakness in that direction. For me it is something of a guilty secret, something that would not be approved of by my clever friends.

I saw J. in the street. She teaches at the university.

"Ah-hah," she said knowingly, tapping the bulky parcel I had hidden under my coat. I know she will make capital of this discovery, a little piece of gossip to use at the dinner parties she is so fond of. Yet I suspect that she too has a weakness for shadows. She confessed as much to me some years ago during that strange misunderstanding she still likes to call "Our Affair." It was she who hinted at the feeling of emptiness, that awful despair that comes when one has failed to grasp the shadow.

4.

My own father left home because of something he had seen in a box of shadows. It wasn’t an expensive box, either, quite the opposite – a little surprise my mother had bought with the money left over from her housekeeping. He opened it after dinner one Friday night and he was gone before I came down for breakfast on the Saturday. He left a note which my mother only showed me very recently. My father was not good with words and had trouble communicating what he had seen: "Words Cannot Express It What I Feel Because of The Things I Saw In The Box Of Shadows You Bought Me."

5.

My own feelings about the shadows are ambivalent, to say the least. For here I have manufactured one more: elusive, unsatisfactory, hinting at greater beauties and more profound mysteries that exist somewhere before the beginning and somewhere after the end.

http://notifbutwhen.com/copia/dark-stores/

**gmanyo** · February 1, 2014

empty stores omg

February 1, 2014

okay watumm i need the opinions.

i have a little show coming up, it's at an media arts exhibition opening.. the exhibition is called FULL SATURATION.

so we are 2 guys and we have 2 machinedrums... currently exploring plunderphonics by live-resampling iPods with the MD's....

so far, kind of sounds like an amateur hour rendition of Gescom's track Megamix, depends on the source material...

the idea is to basically stand there and operate the iPods & do some twiddling on the MD....

So I thought, hey why don't do it with corporate music. Thus, I just invented a new genre, and I call it vaporwave. lol j/k

But then I had a better idea: what if we use OPN's 7 bla whatever as sample source? do you get it? IRONY? lol? what do I win? innit.

srsly watmm what do you think of this.

(I'm also programming a software for the visuals right now, but haven't really thought about the kind of imagery that will be shown yet. will depend on the capabilities of the software..)

**Lane Visitor** · February 2, 2014

sounds cool to me! would love it see that (:

Cryptowen · February 2, 2014

searching youtube for reptilian/pleiadian/annunaki/other new age buzzwords provides oodles of source material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2M02YpE1Y

19 views in 3.5 years, this that OG vaporwave

something about the tonality of the tts program that runs at 0:22 scares the bejesus out of me

this one sounds like something out of an orb track

edit: also phling i like your idea - i dunno if sampling sample-heavy work leads to diminishing returns in terms of actual raw sound material (don't think so tho as there'd always be something gained in the effects & the audio compression and the etc.). Conceptually it's fair game

Edited February 2, 2014 by Cryptowen

**joshuatxuk** · February 2, 2014

On 2/2/2014 at 3:13 AM, Cryptowen said:
edit: also phling i like your idea - i dunno if sampling sample-heavy work leads to diminishing returns in terms of actual raw sound material (don't think so tho as there'd always be something gained in the effects & the audio compression and the etc.). Conceptually it's fair game

That's a good point, a lot of people seem to overlook that so much sampled music: hip-hop, d'n'b, house, techno, IDM, etc was all built around copies of copies of copies, sources were from cassettes, DATS, used records and through entry-level audio equipment. It's been colored with compression, bit-crushed, pulled from songs that sampled other songs, etc. A good example is the amen break: almost all amen break samples in early hip-hop aren't from the original Winston's 45rpm record but off the Breaks and Beats copy, which was slowed down.

This aspect of sampling is something that fascinates me, in hip-hop and turntablism it's almost like a meme ethos, early samples became canon.

http://vimeo.com/85228844

That's why I find my often miffed gut-reactions to say, something like this sample flip is a bit irrational. There's a whole generation of people sampling without restraint off mp3s and youtube, so there's no longer this invisible "gate" that dictates guidelines of what to sample or not sample. Distinctions like mash-ups vs remixing vs plunderphonics vs sampling are all up in the air.

**joshuatxuk** · February 2, 2014

Vaporwave-y new age demo tape from 1987 called Nextworld by Jaxon Crow I acquired awhile back (and shameless plugging of my blog)

Edited February 2, 2014 by joshuatx

sheatheman · February 3, 2014

Hey guys, read the story. Do my exercise. It will take 5 minutes and will change your life.

You don't have to listen to the music, but you shouldn't listen to something that isn't mysterious and quiet.

Josh: your blog is now bookmarked

**Lane Visitor** · February 3, 2014

Anyone planning on attending the Seattle Developers Summit this year? ...

Edited February 3, 2014 by Lane Visitor

February 3, 2014

yea so dunno, I think the visualizer will be a thing which generates and animates OSX UI elements, triggered by them beats....

will try to induce some vapours into it today, cuz so far it's basically just a jodi ripoff...

needs more gradients.

resampling 0PN had mixed results... will likely fall back to just totally oversaturated machinedrum drums.

sheatheman · February 8, 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIr603Pha3Y

Some taylor-made proto-wave. I have several like this that I am considering using as the sample library for a trilogy of ultimate Vwave, something that is a new and tru embodiment of what we all feel, and is also not a thieving co-opt.

Npoess · February 8, 2014

Anxiety Online by Blank Banshee is my fucking jam.

sheatheman · February 8, 2014

TAILOR-MADE*

Give me a new page, please...

GraveGlitcher · February 8, 2014

On 2/8/2014 at 10:16 PM, Ceerial said:
Anxiety Online by Blank Banshee is my fucking jam.

sheatheman · February 8, 2014

I know this has been the thread where Blank Banshee has been discussed, and that's fine, but it really isn't vaporwave. It has a similar subject matter (advanced coporatism) but I would group it with Fatima Al Qadari and that Humanity/MusicforYourPlants/Zoology/Exolab record, which are also brought up here

Kinda hard to classify it, I mean, I could do it but I don't want to. Doing so could mess it up.

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Basically it is a more ableton heavy crossover between some of the visuals of vaporwave (and less of the sonics), and the stuff on Diskotopia and ESP.

Edited February 8, 2014 by sheatheman

Npoess · February 8, 2014

Hail EmulatorWave!

Edited February 8, 2014 by Ceerial

February 8, 2014

[youtubehd]7OTeCk66AK8[/youtubehd]

February 8, 2014

each time I visit this thread it makes me feel really clever.

sheatheman · February 8, 2014

http://everglade.zoologyrecords.com/

February 8, 2014

[youtubehd]V4UZnmLhG4Q[/youtubehd]

This guy looks like he just came back from burning man.

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