Lane Visitor

Have you guys heard this release? I know it's nothing new and its early era vapor, but I finally just listened to it last night for the first time and goddamn!!!

got. daaaaayum.

Just had Five Guys yesterday, and forgot to post But my gf and I are taking a trip to Moab, Utah (middle of nowhere desert town (where many films such as Mission Impossible 2, Breakdown, Indiana Jones, etc etc were shot) this weekend, and we're gonna seek out a really good mom and pop burger / steak joint for some burgers... most definitely going to be posting a pic of that for you fellow burgersluts (:

Track 6 is a slowed down version of the Bar theme from Streets of Rage 2. I hate when Vaporwave tracks steal a whole track and call it a new one. I have seen it with other video game soundtracks. Oh wow i didnt even notice... Speaking of Streets of Rage, did you hear about this vinyl release of the game's soundtrack?... http://data-discs.com/products/streets-of-rage?variant=1738192897

Anyone heard these newly unearthed Data Dream releases yet? classic stuff https://datadream.bandcamp.com/album/virtua

not that this has anything to do with vaporwave, but have any of you guys heard Arab Strap?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoIfuSo12Ic so good.. i grew up on the album Philophobia, where this song is from.. it's the best for breakups, cuz this guy with a thick Scottish accent just goes on and on in this ridiculous narrative through the whole release about some random high school breakup story involving jealousy, infidelity, crush, romance, young love.. but in this drunken absolutely at the bottom of the barrel attitude, slightly self deprecating, slightly suicidal, slightly deadpan. its amazing. aaaanyway :D someone should ban me cuz i strayed from the topic of the thread lol

i agree actually this is often my biggest gripe with the genre as well, especially the meme "artwork" and barrage of cookie cutter producers...it's especially the case with all the "future funk" albums after saint pepsi if fact, sometimes I have to take a break from browsing r/vaporwave because there's so much mediocre and flat out unoriginal crap, including rehashed discussions and topics, it literally drains me the only positive thing about this circle jerk derivative mentality is the community aspect of it - many are attracted to vaporwave because it's others kids making music and sharing it online for free...there's far more shallow and superficial attitudes among more popular electronic music genres, especially scenes in major cities where people are chasing after label contracts and becoming PR firm clients also t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 was a misleading example, his music is kind of a weird case b/c derivative name and album cover aesthetics aside him his music is some of the strongest out there (especially his collaboration project with hong kong express 2814) the most interesting vaporwave out there is often the most unassuming and/or the least involved with all the communities and fan cliques online...or were never formally labeled as vaporwave, stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Xv-5i6G5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFzgTWOh0Vw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvNwTtZvkkM it's an absolute benchmark for the genre imo - lot of vw fans don't idolize it which is a bit maddening +1 Yeah as much as im obsessed with vaporwave & love the community, sometimes i need a break from it too, as with anything (:

vaporwave is full of faux nostalgia, half the listeners were born after the era it evokes and/or pulls influence from...i suppose the appeal for some is the novelty of it, which I get, but I don't approach it like that at all i've always listened to it as another hauntology genre, so it's not quite nostalgic for me in the straightforward sense, but in a future past way (music that could of been but never was made with tech from a certain past era) after all it uses the word "vaporware" as a basis...so like the aesthetics and sounds are not like pure retro fetishism or re-hashing (like say 80s synth stuff or 60s psych rock) but instead an exploration of more forgotten and discarded new age, muzak, commercial jingles, etc., specifically late 80s / early 90s stuff. If done right it's cathartic emotionally even to me - a rediscovery of music I loved as a kid but either purposely ignored later on or simply forgot about. Most of the vaporwave I've heard is an exact copy of the same type of sound that new age synth musicians were doing in the '80s. It doesn't feel very new to me. Some '80s music (like Software's Digital Dance or Yasuaki Shimizu's Music For Commercials, for example) feels more vaporwave than actual vaporwave does.Yeah the stuff I like is halfway between that sound and the slowed down pop eccojams approach, t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 is a good example. It's moody too.That's one of the things that I really don't like about vaporwave. All the artists are trying to go for the exact same aesthetic. They all have a random English word in all lowercase or all capital letters with spaces after each one, followed by some Japanese word(s). It's like they all want to be as unoriginal and generic as possible. I wish they would just try to be themselves, because that's what art is supposed to be about. Nobody wants to listen to a musician who's just trying to be someone else. (On second thought, I just remembered that they actually do want to listen to someone who doesn't have a personality, and it makes me kind of sad tbh. Artists who just follow whatever trend is hip and try to brand their music to that trend as much as possible tend to get significantly more recognition and praise than artists who are doing their own thing entirely.)But its really not about "popularity" or "originality" or "hipness" at all... Vaporwave is not really a genre- it's more of a curation of new ideas and concepts, usually narrated through recycled parts from unexpected or strange sources. It's more of a found/ collage art movement. Most of the "artists" in the movement straight up pitch down and loop sequences of muzak and smooth jazz in order to create a specific mood or effect, so of course it's not original- the goal in much vaporwave is to use generic sources and turn into something weird- of often times so absurdly generic that it becomes original its own way. It's not really about trying to be original- its about capturing a specific feeling... Nobodys taking their vaporwave ep on the road or trying to chart on radio lol.. This is a weird anonymous Internet genre where we can openly collaborate and come up with bizzaro cyberpunk concepts using 80s / 90s / discount bin / cheesycorporate training video vibes- hence the japanese characters, weird glitch art, roman busts and surreal neon city scapes. It's weird, fun, dreamy, romantic, idealist, and fucked up. And that's why we dig it (: Imagine youre feeling sick and in bed all day and stumble onto weather channel cuz its slow canned artificial generic thoughtless vibes comfort you and numb your mind ... Thats what vaporwave is and why we like it.. We're all just trying to make albums that sound and look like the Weather Channel. You summed up my complaints with vaporwave better than I could myself. Thanks.Lol no problem... And i was trying to hold back from praising or criticizing the movement, but rather contextualize it onjectively, and convey my opinion that it's not quite a genre of music, it's more a form- a way of delivering music/art itself. It's kind of more of a tool. But recently, newer variations of it have sort of morphed into a genre, and now i see it as both a micro-genre and a non-genre at the same time, which makes it even more fascinating and attractive to me. I think of it as a utilitarian form of Internet-age concept art that uses music and imagery to convey its message (although that in turn kind of makes it genre).

I love this album

There are absolutely bad vaporwave producers out there like any other genre.. Prob the majority of releases are pretty run of the mill / bad. I know what you're getting at, but for the overtly sample-based vaporwave stuff, i don't think it's intended to be judged as music make "made" by its creator.. It s more of a curation, an idea, concept, a mix, like as if they were djs. Straight up sample-only producers are not claiming to be musicians. It's a collective exchange. Now a lot of the more original content stuff like Blank Banshee, Eyeliner, HKE, etc- I would put into a different category as they often compose / produce. There are just different movements within the genre and there could be a really talented original content vaporwave producer just as there could be a really talented all-sample-based one.

I personally don't use samples in any of my Donovan Hikaru material because I prefer to keep it all original, it's fun for me to make midi jams and i like the exercise of sometimes trying to make stuff that sounds like sampled material, even though it's actually my midi production using fx/pitch to sound sampled. It's kinda meta, i know but it's satisfying for me. And I don't think the idea of any vaporwave is irony- i think its bizarreness, absurdity, awkwardness, cheesiness, etc- aspects often rejected in the music world and passed off as silly or hokey.

So ironically badly produced, same-sounding sampled ambient music, released on obsolete music formats, collectively ripping off one or two artists' aesthetic, is not a gimmick? Well I can only speak from my own idealistic interpretation of what vaporwave means to me, so if you see it as a gimmick, I can't really argue against that... But I can definitely see how that can be interpreted as a gimmick.., but at the same time the idea of a gimmick is something that's tied to identity, for the purpose of gaining popularity... It would seem absurd to market anonymity.

Vaporwave is kind of the opposite of trying to be unique. In a world where art & culture is so incredibly splintered into a gazillion niches, subgenres, communities, movements , flavors, styles etc, and therefore anyone who wants to stand out from the crowd is told they must do something COMPLETELY, unequivocally, painstakingly, absurdly "unique" and absolutely life-alteringly ONE OF A KIND in order to get attention, acceptance, love, credit, money, reward rather than simply making great content and working hard to put it out, society has accumulated this syndrome where gimmick not only comes before art, where drama not only comes before message, but where they completely envelope any redeeming quality that that content /art had or could have had... And many times (see the Kardashians empire), gimmick and drama IS the content itself... Why? Because the channels of modern-day information /entertainment / culture are a breeding ground for our ADD/small-talk/sexuality/ego-obsessed/dumbed down culture. Vaporwave is a fun little movement that poses the hypothetical question... "What if the opposite route that we're told we need to take in order to stand out was taken?... What if I just took a Diana Ross loop, slowed it down, glitched it out, threw some Japanese characters and Roman busts on the cover, and called something pretentious, and created a whole little world of other weird highly conceptual "works" - all using shit i found from the web, and presented as an "artist" but stayed anonymous? In a way, it seems like the ultimate gimmick, because its so simple, thoughtless, random... But also effective and vibey. But Vaporwave isn't a gimmick- it's a cultural statement about doing the extreme opposite of putting unique-ness and identity and ego behind one's "work". And because of this, it's complete freedom in a cultural, artistic, idealistic sense- something that's often hard to achieve in a world where the concept of authorship is so absurdly inflated that it often trumps the content itself.

vaporwave is full of faux nostalgia, half the listeners were born after the era it evokes and/or pulls influence from...i suppose the appeal for some is the novelty of it, which I get, but I don't approach it like that at all i've always listened to it as another hauntology genre, so it's not quite nostalgic for me in the straightforward sense, but in a future past way (music that could of been but never was made with tech from a certain past era) after all it uses the word "vaporware" as a basis...so like the aesthetics and sounds are not like pure retro fetishism or re-hashing (like say 80s synth stuff or 60s psych rock) but instead an exploration of more forgotten and discarded new age, muzak, commercial jingles, etc., specifically late 80s / early 90s stuff. If done right it's cathartic emotionally even to me - a rediscovery of music I loved as a kid but either purposely ignored later on or simply forgot about. Most of the vaporwave I've heard is an exact copy of the same type of sound that new age synth musicians were doing in the '80s. It doesn't feel very new to me. Some '80s music (like Software's Digital Dance or Yasuaki Shimizu's Music For Commercials, for example) feels more vaporwave than actual vaporwave does.Yeah the stuff I like is halfway between that sound and the slowed down pop eccojams approach, t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 is a good example. It's moody too.That's one of the things that I really don't like about vaporwave. All the artists are trying to go for the exact same aesthetic. They all have a random English word in all lowercase or all capital letters with spaces after each one, followed by some Japanese word(s). It's like they all want to be as unoriginal and generic as possible. I wish they would just try to be themselves, because that's what art is supposed to be about. Nobody wants to listen to a musician who's just trying to be someone else. (On second thought, I just remembered that they actually do want to listen to someone who doesn't have a personality, and it makes me kind of sad tbh. Artists who just follow whatever trend is hip and try to brand their music to that trend as much as possible tend to get significantly more recognition and praise than artists who are doing their own thing entirely.)But its really not about "popularity" or "originality" or "hipness" at all... Vaporwave is not really a genre- it's more of a curation of new ideas and concepts, usually narrated through recycled parts from unexpected or strange sources. It's more of a found/ collage art movement. Most of the "artists" in the movement straight up pitch down and loop sequences of muzak and smooth jazz in order to create a specific mood or effect, so of course it's not original- the goal in much vaporwave is to use generic sources and turn into something weird- of often times so absurdly generic that it becomes original its own way. It's not really about trying to be original- its about capturing a specific feeling... Nobodys taking their vaporwave ep on the road or trying to chart on radio lol.. This is a weird anonymous Internet genre where we can openly collaborate and come up with bizzaro cyberpunk concepts using 80s / 90s / discount bin / cheesycorporate training video vibes- hence the japanese characters, weird glitch art, roman busts and surreal neon city scapes. It's weird, fun, dreamy, romantic, idealist, and fucked up. And that's why we dig it (: Imagine youre feeling sick and in bed all day and stumble onto weather channel cuz its slow canned artificial generic thoughtless vibes comfort you and numb your mind ... Thats what vaporwave is and why we like it.. We're all just trying to make albums that sound and look like the Weather Channel.

vaporwave is full of faux nostalgia, half the listeners were born after the era it evokes and/or pulls influence from...i suppose the appeal for some is the novelty of it, which I get, but I don't approach it like that at all i've always listened to it as another hauntology genre, so it's not quite nostalgic for me in the straightforward sense, but in a future past way (music that could of been but never was made with tech from a certain past era) after all it uses the word "vaporware" as a basis...so like the aesthetics and sounds are not like pure retro fetishism or re-hashing (like say 80s synth stuff or 60s psych rock) but instead an exploration of more forgotten and discarded new age, muzak, commercial jingles, etc., specifically late 80s / early 90s stuff. If done right it's cathartic emotionally even to me - a rediscovery of music I loved as a kid but either purposely ignored later on or simply forgot about. This!! Plus, for me, the nostalgic elements that exist in some of the vaporwave out there are 1000% outshined by vaporwave's other more important elements such as surreality, post-modernism, dada-ism, cyberpunk, dystopian futurism, the celebration of the contemporary mundane, etc. it just happens that 80s/90s atmospheres and sounds fit nicely with those elements in terms of creating that world and telling a story that may or may not have ever existed in the first place.

I care about vaporwave and neither does the person who made the album. I just care about the music. Consumerism has nothing to do with art and "aesthetics" is just a word used for art that relies on its image instead of its inherent quality. I'm not trying to argue with you or attack your tastes, it's just that none of that appeals to my taste. i agree.. vaporwave needs to be less about the aesthetics and consumerism, and more about the music jkjk the misinterpretation and resulting unintentional meta-ness of this interaction is beyond priceless lolol

goddamn that's sick! those characters all look like patrick nagel paintings, and the colors and stlyes and city lights look like outrun, synthwave/retrowave album covers.

wow! is that you??

https://01100001.bandcamp.com/album/arcadia-campus-virtual-tour

Digging me some Quality Head Profile

Still 24 copies remaining... https://adhesivesounds.bandcamp.com/album/crs-20

I'm officially deeming consumer Camera demos videos as the latest breed of post-vaporwave :D -esp those showing wildlife over a bed of prog hard rock grooves playing in the background.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PvZk1VijAQ

Nice stuff here too. Makes me wanna go shopping. Thanks brother!! Dude, your stuff is super good! That chillwavey vibe on Body is truly stellar. Nice work (: