Lane Visitor

Yeah im kinda with you on that. The classic mysterious & provocative vaporwave vibes are hard to come across now that all of these labels and fans are taking it in a more straightforward direction and a music marketplace has been established. I don't think it harms the spirit, but it just makes it not as "insider" or obscure as it once was. I still have a hard time with mentally filing ambient/drone/idm/dream pop/chill out as vaporwave, feels like it waters it down a bit. But on the other hand if the community & genre is inspiring all kinds of offshoots and even just new takes on unrelated pre-existing subgenres, then im all about it, and hey maybe that aspect of it will eventually turn out to have been just as or even more important and powerful than Eccojams & Floral Shoppe. This genre just feels like such a personalized experience for me, like I can listen to the Hologram Plaza cassette every day, and its so goddamn vapor for me, it doesnt even have to be labeled such. Good authentic vaporwave never gets old.

Agreed, well said!

Nice idea, glad to see people taking action to keep the community alive, regardless of what our take is on sampling ethics... Consider this though, on the flip side, how ironically fitting and kind of awesome would it be if heavy-sample-based vaporwave producers were forced to smuggle and distribute their releases deeper into the nets via filesharing / torrents, or elsewhere in order to keep it from takedowns due to copyright violations. Imagine a dedicated deep web of sorts just for classic style vaporwave cassettes runs and marketplace. Just how fucking CYBERPUNK would that be?!? Maybe this is vaporwave's metaphysically intended ®evolution. Unite technophiles, hackers, and phreakers!

Oh shit, thats right now that you mention, it would probably be a clash of the hyper-creatives lol

Imagine a collaboration between James Ferraro (or Lopatin) and David Lynch... Just imagine... And speaking of, it just occurred to me now... how the hell has Richard never worked in some fashion with David Lynch?? Or w/ David Cronenburg...

Welcome To The Information Age

goddamn i am LOVING this record:

Just microwaved some corn tortillas and put some hot sauce on them as a cheap snack cuz im broke it was actually really good

thats an awesome story if true. soul slinger is one of my fav djs Man. I'm really curious what you have in there. Definitely snap some pics or make an inventory ( I only really care about the Jungle records tho :D ). I bet there's some gold in there. It's funny you mention the HAB vinyl. Just today, for some reason, I was regretting a memory of when I was in college. I was at a friend of a friend's place and he had a crate of records that I was thumbing through. He was an ex-raver and said he didn't spin anymore and barely listened to the records. He told me I could take whatever I wanted. He had a lot of great stuff, including the HAB 1 & 2 vinyls... not to mention a ton of other great stuff. I thought he was just fucking with me so I didn't take anything, but I think he was actually dead serious. He probably thought that I must have no clue about good music because who else would knowingly pass on those kinds of things? Anyway, it wasn't a smart move. Wow, can't believe it's been 3 years since I posted about this.. Well, I finally got around to cataloging the first these, just posted only one so far, but it's like the holy grail.. Afrika Bambaataa & DJ Soul Slinger - Fire - original acetate. Just listed it on Discogs with some photos: Discogs entry I made: https://www.discogs.com/Afrika-Bambaataa-vs-DJ-Soul-Slinger-Fire-/release/8307087 Soul Slinger still hasn't come to pick these up off me (although we've exchanged some emails and he's a real cool dude).. I guess I've been holding now for like 7 yrs lol

dude congrats! thats awesome.. looking forward to checking that out. scott over at ailanthus is such an amazing guy :)

yeah samei mean like a lot of the time i either want something that takes me back to how i felt at a radically different stage in my life, or something that goes a step further & causes me to have some realization about the nature of time, my sense of identity, and how it's informed by popular culture. A lot of vaporwave just makes me go, "oh yeah, that's a sound from the before times", or "oh yeah, a lot of producers my age grew up with computers & an intuitive understanding of art as a communal, often referential practice". which is fine by me but like the stereotypical cheesy 80s pop slowed down sound just doesn't interest me in terms of actual sounds (most cases) Totally... Ive noticed that many of the images and concepts usually grab my interest while only a small percentage of those albums contain music that I have interest in. However, there are certain artists or labels whose output I can pretty much always count on to enjoy like Lux, CatCorp, of course all of Vek's stuff, etc... and there are the once in a while random brilliant releases like the recent Western Digital or US Golf 95 and boatloads of others that I love. *** Snob alert*** I don't typically like those loosely tied together eclectic vapor albums without uniform concepts or atmospheres, ya know the ones whose cover art images always look so tasty and neon with absurdly warped pop art collages and stuff, but usually there's like no direction on those... It's like a pool of seapunk/pc music-fused vapor-trap w flourishes of soul samples and funny water drop sounds and chiptune and then some nice ambient textures .. And then [enter microgenre here]... Usually great grooves and sound design and mixing but almost always little focus or purpose. Don't get me wrong I like dada and eccentricity but I guess I just like my vapor to serve as background muzak rather than at the forefront demanding focus. And then there are those suuper generic (not in a good way) vaporwave-just for sake of it releases where almost every track is either recognizable stuff like Barry White, or Marvin Gaye samples or Madonna/MJ instrumentals pitched down a tad or easy listening stuff that youd almost recognize from soundtracks etc, like as if a 15 yr old just did a yt search for "easy listening" and mp3 ripped literally the first result that comes up --most likely herb alpert / james taylor / carpenters etc and threw it into ableton, looped the intro and exported lol. BS Yeah so im super specific w my vaporwave lol.. Its gotta be reeeaally weird (or extremely mundane, thus making it weird in effect), really conceptual, reaally intentional (unless of course the producer is talented enough to make me confused as to whether there was focused intention or sheer unintentional genius at play- like PrismCorp or Internet Club)... This is partly why I love mallsoft-- you almost always know what youre gonna get, its consistent, forgettable, generic, it's background, and yet its still surreal and adventurous because it takes you to another place. Its an echo of an echo of an echo that may or may not exist. Thats how i like my vaporwave.

... And this one too... https://malloffuturepast.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-to-crystal-valley-mall

Discovered a great mallsoft release tonight... Might be a favorite of mine alongside Palm Mall & Hologram Plaza... http://dmtrec.bandcamp.com/album/christmas-at-crystal-valley-mall

+1!

Oh wow, if was strapped w cash right now id pick that up for sure

^ LOL! https://americanangelworks.bandcamp.com/releases so this release is more like retrowave here, but im loving this.. all orig and the guy used only a yamaha sy-85 and cakewalk 3.0 lol

i love eyeliner!

Hi Yeezy!

removed to prevent jinx

btw, thanks for sharing that release of yours on here... i dug it so much that i added it to my personal top vapor releases of the year list that someone on r/vaporwave asked ppl to post https://www.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/comments/3ywyre/2015_albums_of_the_year/

I'm not sure if i posted this here but i just love the shit out of it.. great original compositions: https://commercialdreamsltd.bandcamp.com/album/neigborhood-watch

Good news here, lock that creepo up!

Anytime Pur!

Great mixes, enjoying right now, thanks!

Digging this super epic Symbols mix compiled by nmesh.. Great eclectic fusion here... Honored he included a donovan / catcorp collab track on it <3 http://www.smbls.net/news/2015/12/23/symbols-mix-series-009-nmesh https://soundcloud.com/smbls/symbols-mix-series-009-nmesh-1