Vaporwave

[joshuatxuk]

 

That's by far one of the most thought out, well articulated posts I've seen on watmm. lol.. Couldn't agree more sir.

 

"Miley Cyrus has no clue about anything, but her PR team probably spend hours every day reading Hipster Runoff, trying to make her image ironic enough."

 

 

lolol 100% truth.. i miss reading that site btw. carls made me laugh for sure!

 

 

Ah, thanks.

 

It is still kind of funny, but I stopped reading it a few years ago after I read the shockingly genuine/serious post about carls rethinking the whole model and what should be done going forward. I really only read it for a period of less than sex months, but it was for sure funny. It's still funny actually. I'm just so NOT in that group of people though, but it's a good thing to be aware of.

 

The current post about "Is the Scene Still Alive" is kind of sad, and funny.

 

 

Is the website down? Won't load. It's amazing that such a snarky site also coined the term "chillwave"

 

HR had an epic article about Indie music being dead (last year or early this year) that was blunt, super generalized but rather damning nonetheless. It also had one of my favorite internet comments ever:

 

 

it was the Best of Coasts, it was the Worst of Coasts

 

As for the Miley thing, I think the PR comment is dead on. Her staff is probably industry execs on bluetooth 24/7 and some godawful college age interns. I actually think she's fairly self-aware and even intelligent (she is musically apt) and she's only 20 for fuck's sake. She's been surrounded by the entertainment industry since birth, and rather than completely go off the grid or simply follow directions she's fucking around and probably doing a lot of what she wants professionally. It's a unique case really. Not saying she's not utterly ridiculous of course, but I'm not 100% skeptical of her either.

 

Continuing what Lane and Sheath have said, there's actually one thing that we don't have now: a cooling off a period. Co-opting and re-appropriation of the underground and edgy by established artists isn't new. The difference is there used to be years of discussion and debate before it was "settled" critically. Madonna gotten away with it, and while I question her sincerity, she's damn good at it. David Bowie and Bjork had entire albums rooted and timestamped by their interest in certain trendy and groundbreaking music scenes. That's what that Shallow Rewards video articulated so well regarding seapunk and vaporwave's dilemmas.

[luke viia]

I feel like this is worth posting right about now, especially @ 13:40 where I think he's dead on about the earnest but misguided ire over Rihanna's use of Jerome LOL's work and seapunk in general, 16:20 is fucking dead-on imo:

 

http://youtu.be/SgD79cWde0I

 

ok, lol

i can't believe i just watched that whole thing, i'm such a hip bastard

 

but i liked his bit about about no-single-90's to remember. and what he says at 14:20 or so made some sense. if you're going to put some shit you really believe in on the internet, and it takes off, you might need to be ready to be co-opted, like it or not... i wonder if people will, on average, start to recreate "scenes" as they were, locally, before the internet came about in full force... like a more active approach to being underground or staying local.

 

i'm a fuckin' square though, no idea how that stuff works

Edited November 14, 2013 by luke viia

[joshuatxuk]

ok, lol

i can't believe i just watched that whole thing, i'm such a hip bastard

 

 

I watched his entire series on vimeo before he took it down. His YT uploads were a godsend, I have become quite enamored by his work. His twitter account is perpetually pissy and hilarious in tone.

[sheatheman]

 

I feel like this is worth posting right about now, especially @ 13:40 where I think he's dead on about the earnest but misguided ire over Rihanna's use of Jerome LOL's work and seapunk in general, 16:20 is fucking dead-on imo:

 

http://youtu.be/SgD79cWde0I

 

ok, lol

i can't believe i just watched that whole thing, i'm such a hip bastard

 

but i liked his bit about about no-single-90's to remember. and what he says at 14:20 or so made some sense. if you're going to put some shit you really believe in on the internet, and it takes off, you might need to be ready to be co-opted, like it or not... i wonder if people will, on average, start to recreate "scenes" as they were, locally, before the internet came about in full force... like a more active approach to being underground or staying local.

 

i'm a fuckin' square though, no idea how that stuff works

 

 

Usually that type of thing pisses me off, and in his own way, he is, or at least could legitimately be accused of trying to "get in front" of something, but the way he talks about it is so fluid and considered. I watched the whole thing too. Hahaha. Also, while it does sort of make him look like he is trying to brand himself with the video, you have to give it to him for actually appearing when most "music writers" view obscurity as a must. His words have a lot more power because he is speaking right into the camera. I would like to have a conversation with him. If I used twitter regularly, I would follow him, but for now I will just browse his feed.

 

He is in a different camp than I am though. I am concerned with pop music 0%, truly. And I do not think that there is any valid way to appropriate Rihanna or Adele into another form of music. People always say this for every decade, but the amount of actual musical talent and innovation in the industry right now is at an all time low because of the instant state of things. It kills everything. So I have never enjoyed sick distorted Rihanna remixes. I have never thought it was cool. I can't help but like Salem when I hear it, but I never bought it at the time, and did not participate in witch house or chillwave, though I was highly aware of chillwave and it drove me crazy.

 

And all of that said, the real truth is that this angst about genre branding and authenticity is strictly digital. Sure, Urban Outfitters plays whatever is streaming on Pitchfork/Gorilla vs Bear/Quietus/XLR8R, but all that the majority of shoppers and even employees are aware of is a general vagueness about summer in California, the beach, navajo colors, and basic geometric shapes.

 

~~

 

Take someone really popular, like Flying Lotus, who has garnered acclaim from many places. I was in LA a year ago, and I met up with a friend from instagram (for real), along with one of his friends. My friend's friend was a real intellihipster- fashion, philosophy, music- he got most of the marks for being in the hipster elite.

 

So I was sort of reluctant to ask him, since in my mind it had been kind of played out, but I eventually asked him about the LA beat scene, Flying Lotus and all that. He didn't know who Flying Lotus was. My mind was blown, and it made me realize that, even today, when cnn/npr/nytimes are writing and interviewing the musicians of "bass music," a term only used by writers who are just listening to it for the first time, the odds of running into someone who actually likes the music you do is rare. You have to be somewhere as concentrated as Austin (you have to be ON congress or in Farewell Books), or Williamsburg, and even there, you are still 10x more likely to run into someone who likes whatever current strain of indie rock is happening than someone who owns, at a bare minimum, the Warp essentials. Sure you know a few in college, but after college, forget it.

 

The real existence and awareness of these things is blown 1000x out of scale by social media sharing. And wherever a real scene is, more than half to 90% of people are there to get drunk/laid/recognized for their skills on their Rebel T3i, and the 10% who are creating the scene, at least half of them still see getting drunk/laid/recognized for their fashion as a perk.

[sheatheman]

Is the website down? Won't load. It's amazing that such a snarky site also coined the term "chillwave"

 

Weird, I looked at it a few hours ago. Not working for me either. Fun fact: Vektroid really liked chillwave, had a banner that said "keep ridin' that chillwave," and also wrote something about an idea of her (?) own called MSDOS wave. I happened upon that once on one of the many incarnations of vektroid web presences.

 

As for the Miley thing, I think the PR comment is dead on. Her staff is probably industry execs on bluetooth 24/7 and some godawful college age interns. I actually think she's fairly self-aware and even intelligent (she is musically apt) and she's only 20 for fuck's sake. She's been surrounded by the entertainment industry since birth, and rather than completely go off the grid or simply follow directions she's fucking around and probably doing a lot of what she wants professionally. It's a unique case really. Not saying she's not utterly ridiculous of course, but I'm not 100% skeptical of her either.

 

Continuing what Lane and Sheath have said, there's actually one thing that we don't have now: a cooling off a period. Co-opting and re-appropriation of the underground and edgy by established artists isn't new. The difference is there used to be years of discussion and debate before it was "settled" critically. Madonna gotten away with it, and while I question her sincerity, she's damn good at it. David Bowie and Bjork had entire albums rooted and timestamped by their interest in certain trendy and groundbreaking music scenes. That's what that Shallow Rewards video articulated so well regarding seapunk and vaporwave's dilemmas.

 

Miley is an abomination, sadly. I hope she can escape some day, but something tells me she doesn't want to. Monsters like her are created, and it is anyone's guess what goes on in a mind like that. I think it is pretty awesome that she had that fight with Sinead though.

 

No cooldown, just refresh/respawns, after a certain amount of pain.

 

I don't like how he dismisses accelerationism though, but he does it well. It's interesting how it is used in that article, but I don't think the shallow rewards guy or the dummy mag guy have given themselves more than a brief primer on it.

[Salvatorin]

has anyone seen the new miley cyrus website:

http://www.mileycyrus.com/

it is designed by teen witch I think

[sheatheman]

Also, Chris Ott, who WATMM mostly knows for his takedown of the Disintegration Loops below, made a "Eccojams Vol. 2" and uploaded it to his site Shallow Rewards but I can't seem to find the link (he deleted his content over a month ago but is slowly adding a few things like his vimeo videos onto YT) but I think I downloaded the .zip of it. I'll give it a listen at home and look into uploading it. He had made loop ambient music as the "Grace Note" so it's probably in that vein.

 

http://youtu.be/Z1H1nyNRWAw

 

What thread did the spectacle of this takedown occur in? Sounds like some fun comments.

 

I bought dlp 1.1 for 49¢ from emusic, back when you could get away with that. Hahahaha.

[sheatheman]

has anyone seen the new miley cyrus website:

http://www.mileycyrus.com/

it is designed by teen witch I think

 

Seems legit. What musical disconnect though.

[manmower]

I'm curious about a slightly mysterious blip on the Rephlex radar, did they actually release one of these seapunk albums? It seems to be a fake label imprint like all the other new Rephlex stuff, i just didn't see anyone talking about it here. Did i miss the discussion? if no one knows what im talking about go to Grant's facebook page, but the part that made me think it wasn't rephlex official is he links to a bandcamp page.

I don't have FB but if you mean the Ultrademon album I think that one is commonly regarded as a Rephlex release mostly because of the 'fake label' + SRD distribution. I'm sure that's come up in the Seapunk thread in New Releases.

[sheatheman]

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

 

I made this in April, 2011. It's a story with music and pictures from the "Dead Mall" project my wife did in 2009.

Edited November 14, 2013 by sheatheman

[joshuatxuk]

 

I'm curious about a slightly mysterious blip on the Rephlex radar, did they actually release one of these seapunk albums? It seems to be a fake label imprint like all the other new Rephlex stuff, i just didn't see anyone talking about it here. Did i miss the discussion? if no one knows what im talking about go to Grant's facebook page, but the part that made me think it wasn't rephlex official is he links to a bandcamp page.

I don't have FB but if you mean the Ultrademon album I think that one is commonly regarded as a Rephlex release mostly because of the 'fake label' + SRD distribution. I'm sure that's come up in the Seapunk thread in New Releases.

 

 

Yeah it was mentioned there. I saw it was "Fire For Effect" and looks like discogs has Rephlex listed as well. So basically he self-released with SRD distribution and perhaps Rephlex assisted CD pressing?

 

Holy lol, saw this recommended with other seapunk and witchhouse FB pages: SalemBandFan

[joshuatxuk]

 

has anyone seen the new miley cyrus website:

http://www.mileycyrus.com/

it is designed by teen witch I think

 

Seems legit. What musical disconnect though.

 

 

Totally, like comparing an original painting to a printed copy used as fake artwork for a frame insert you buy at Target. Thats about as much connection there is.

[Salvatorin]

 

 

has anyone seen the new miley cyrus website:

http://www.mileycyrus.com/

it is designed by teen witch I think

 

Seems legit. What musical disconnect though.

 

 

Totally, like comparing an original painting to a printed copy used as fake artwork for a frame insert you buy at Target. Thats about as much connection there is.

 

well actually I think the teen witch fan club is really trying to bridge the gap between the undergrownd tumblrpunk and pop:

https://soundcloud.com/teenwitch/wrecking-ball-teen-witch-fan

(btw this is not good at all)

Edited November 14, 2013 by Salvatorin

[joshuatxuk]

OHH I had a feeling you were speaking of that Teen Witch, the Chicago web designer/DJ, not the actual fucking movie.

 

His new -t-shirt (I say that generously, it's really just AHHH Real Monsters fan art) showed up here.

 

 

So is this how all the tumblrcore seapunk and vaporwave kids make a living and/or supplement their trust funds?

[joshuatxuk]

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

 

I made this in April, 2011. It's a story with music and pictures from the "Dead Mall" project my wife did in 2009.

 

This is great! Perfect musical loop.

 

These are fun:

http://deadmalls.com/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2480247/Michael-Galinskys-Malls-Across-America-book-sheds-light-shoppers-defined-1980s.html

[Guest 20XX]

writing paragraphs

[Lane Visitor]

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

 

I made this in April, 2011. It's a story with music and pictures from the "Dead Mall" project my wife did in 2009.

 

Dude, this is awesome! Makes me feel like Im a little kid waiting at the mall outside of Robinsons May or Bloomingdales for my mom to come back while I space out sitting on one of those courtyard chairs in the middle of the walkway with all of the echoey muzak and chatter converging into one hazy ball of background noise as my 10-12 year old self fixates on the NIN CD i just discovered and bought at Circles CDs and Tapes. Those moments (:

[sheatheman]

Thanks LaneVis and Joshuatx.

 

That dead mall site is amazing. I've looked at if off and on over the years, I think.

 

There was one story, with pictures — I don't remember if it was on DM or not — but it was about a dead mall with someone actually living in it. I need to try and find that again.

 

Really resonates with me, because I used to have nightmares when I was around 4-5 yo, about getting locked in Mervyn's at night. The scariest part was all the lights were still on, and I could smell the perfume section, but there was this growing sense of dread as I would see the mannequins' blank faces, and as the dream progressed, just a 1st person view (Myst style) of the mall, going faster and faster, and starting to turn sideways somewhat, I would see the the mannequins' faces more and more, and the dream would end right before it felt like they were going to come alive.

 

 

 

 

[brian trageskin]

An essay on vaporwave

Are you sitting comfortably? Advancments in vaporwave can be linked to many areas. While much has been written on its influence on contemporary living, several of todays most brilliant minds seem incapable of recognising its increasing relevance to understanding future generations. Since it was first compared to antidisestablishmentarianism much has been said concerning vaporwave by global commercial enterprises, who are likely to form a major stronghold in the inevitable battle for hearts and minds. Keeping all of this in mind, in this essay I will examine the major issues.

Social Factors

While some scholars have claimed that there is no such thing as society, this is rubbish. When The Tygers of Pan Tang sang 'It's lonely at the top. Everybody's trying to do you in' [1] , they, contrary to my learned colleague Sir George Allen’s recent publication ‘Into the eye of , could not have been referring to eighteenth century beliefs regarding society. No symbol is more potent than vaporwave in society today. It provides standards by which we may judge our selves.

Special care must be taken when analysing such a delicate subject. On the other hand anyone that disagrees with me is an idiot. Clearly it promotes higher individualism and obeyence of instinct. As soon as a child meets vaporwave they are changed.

Economic Factors

Increasingly economic growth and innovation are being attributed to vaporwave. Of course, vaporwave fits perfectly into the Fish-Out-Of-Water model using the median instead of the mean, where possible.

Market

Value

Of

Gold

vaporwave

Clearly the graphs demonstrates a strong correlation. Why is this? Clearly the market value of gold, ultimately decided by politicians, will always be heavily influenced by vaporwave due to its consistently high profile in the portfolio of investors. In the light of this free trade must be examined.

Political Factors

Machiavellian politics is rife. Are our leaders justified in pursuing and maintaining political power? Comparing current political thought with that held just ten years ago is like comparing vaporwave now, and its equivalent in the 1800s.

Consider this, spoken at the tender age of 14 by the uncompromising Achilles Lionel Forbes Dickinson 'People in glass houses shouldn't through parties.' [2] Primarily, he is referring to vaporwave. It would be wise to approach the subject with the thought that 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all'. However this can lead to missing out important facts.

One of the great ironies of this age is vaporwave. Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

Conclusion

In summary, vaporwave parades along man's streets and man waves back. It enriches, brings glamour to an unglamorous time and it is human.

What a great essay. Finally a word from super-star Christina Paltrow: 'It's been nice educating you.' [3]

[1] Tygers of Pang Tang - The Cage - 1982 MCR Records

[2] Dickinson - I Am The Dickinster - 1999 Hughs Books

[3] My vaporwave! - Issue 4 - BFG Publishing

[Lane Visitor]

Thanks LaneVis and Joshuatx.

 

That dead mall site is amazing. I've looked at if off and on over the years, I think.

 

There was one story, with pictures — I don't remember if it was on DM or not — but it was about a dead mall with someone actually living in it. I need to try and find that again.

 

Really resonates with me, because I used to have nightmares when I was around 4-5 yo, about getting locked in Mervyn's at night. The scariest part was all the lights were still on, and I could smell the perfume section, but there was this growing sense of dread as I would see the mannequins' blank faces, and as the dream progressed, just a 1st person view (Myst style) of the mall, going faster and faster, and starting to turn sideways somewhat, I would see the the mannequins' faces more and more, and the dream would end right before it felt like they were going to come alive.

 

 

 

 

 

lol that sounds awesome! surely it probably scared the shit outta you as a kid haha

 

damn, look at those LUSH 90s utilitarian-style merchandise racks!

Edited November 14, 2013 by Lane Visitor

[joshuatxuk]

 

[1] Tygers of Pang Tang - The Cage - 1982 MCR Records

 

 

That whole thing was cracking me up but this was just perfect.

 

Had vaporwave hypnagogia last night - lots of involuntary dry casio drum fills and vaguely asian pop synth melodies.

[Lane Visitor]

oh dude, hypnagogic hullucinations are amazing.. it's hit or miss though.. they can be awesome or terrifying. I used to get them quite often. Now, if I sleep on my back, I'm almost guaranteed to have them, so i have to sleep on my stomach if I want a good night's rest.

[sheatheman]

 

 

[1] Tygers of Pang Tang - The Cage - 1982 MCR Records

 

 

That whole thing was cracking me up but this was just perfect.

 

Had vaporwave hypnagogia last night - lots of involuntary dry casio drum fills and vaguely asian pop synth melodies.

 

 

Yeah, that was pretty funny, but I think it was over my head.

 

I had vaporvisions last night too! Really this morning, but still.

 

~

 

Several weeks ago, something woke me up at about 4 am. I was laying as still as possible, but I was completely alert. Kept hearing very soft sounds, probably normal house creaks, but the main thing was that I felt like something was in the house, right outside of our door. Turns out my wife was awake too. After about 10 minutes of listening, she said "I feel like someone is here." I got up and checked it out -- nothing.

 

The reason I thought of this is hypnagogic hallucinations are probably similar, but it's extra strange when too people have the same thing.

 

I have those threshold visions often. A lot of times there is music, and sometimes I can remember it. I dreamed a weather channel song, once. It was the clearest thing ever. I woke up and hummed it into audacity or something. I would like to turn it into full fledged, sparkling session muzak, but I need to work out the chords.

 

I also had this vision, where I was on the veranda of a vast estate...

[jeremymacgregor87]

 

 

^.... but those aesthetics and that reaktor software shouldnt stop people from wanting to make cool vaporwave and related stuff... it's pretty lame ive already heard the whole "vaporwave is dead" call to actions from the uber hipsters.. yeah, just cuz cool styles are emerging and gaining more traction within a larger music community doesnt mean all creativity has been exhausted. but these styles have been around forever, before the term of the micro-niche genre was created.. kinda like with punk rock. punk may have "died" in 1977, but real punk rockers keep making punk rock lol- and some of the best punk rock shows were in 2001, in high school for me- my defining feeling and understanding of what punk rock meant .. only the trendy assholes and talentless hacks abandon a sound just cuz it starts to get bigger. with that said, i still don't think the sounds of Point Never or PrismCorp is going to be the next pop thing... Saint Pepsi or Macintosh Plus on the other hand, i could def hear Rihanna in 2015 singing over those types of dreamy surreal beats lol.

Those styles and images are part of a larger movement of ironic web 2.0 art that has been ping ponging across the web since 2009 or so. Greek Columns, glitchy MS paint drawings, Miami pink sunset cursive writing, but many styles lay claim to these visual elements, such as italo disco, electro, and many other popular styles whose respective consumers have never listened to Internet Club. The visual element is much more prevalent, across multiple genres, mainstream and not. But visual aesthetics are typically much more shallow than aural ones, and experience much easier transfluence via meme B2B connections (brain to brain), whereas audio aesthetics take maybe a 100x more time to assimilate to one's archetypal index.

 

There is a rush to say that vaporwave is dead, or that seapunk is dead, (both have similar visual language), but fashion/ visual aesthetics are by far the easiest to mimic and thus trickle through alt culture. Miley Cyrus has no clue about anything, but her PR team probably spend hours every day reading Hipster Runoff, trying to make her image ironic enough.

 

People have been posting triangles and upside down crosses and pentagrams and circles and Pink-Orange gradients for a solid 4 years. It seemed really cool to me in 2010, and I was cutting diamonds out of pictures in photoshop. I picked up on it pretty early, I think. I had a good conversation about this with a highly disposive art female who is always trying to be ahead of the curve. We reminisced about the prevalence of triangles in tumblr culture, or should I say cvltvre. But anyone can watch Miami Vice and say, hey, I want my album of sick beats and eletro synths to have a cover just like that. Anyone can draw a triangle in photoshop and use the paint bucket tool.

 

Fear not, for as I have been saying, the deeper concepts will endure and go largely unnoticed by the mainstream.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj-xBpQ0CI0

Nice words

[Alcofribas]

 

 

 

FACT (Foundation for Abstract Conceptual Thought)

 

 

 

Thank you.

oscillik is seen here wearing the most postmodern designs for true cultural affect