Vaporwave

[prdctvsm]

new catsystemcorp:

https://catsystemcorp.bandcamp.com/album/oasys

https://catsystemcorp.bandcamp.com/album/oasys-2

 

 

https://cgisland.bandcamp.com

 

https://shotte.bandcamp.com

[Lane Visitor]

new catsystemcorp:

https://catsystemcorp.bandcamp.com/album/oasys

https://catsystemcorp.bandcamp.com/album/oasys-2

 

 

https://cgisland.bandcamp.com

 

https://shotte.bandcamp.com

That new CatCorp is so good right? Total weather channel vibes.. I made sure to purchase a cassette right away (:

[Lane Visitor]

Um 2814 featured in ROLLING STONE

 

Proof that vaporwave isn't just "internet meme", sorry haterrrzzzzz

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-new-artists-you-need-to-know-november-2015-20151125/2814-20151124

Edited November 25, 2015 by Lane Visitor

[purlieu]

When the new 2814 drops it's going to be crazy. I wonder how many copies it'll be? There's definitely a hype now.

The 2xLP edition of the second album is set to go in a few weeks, a thousand fucking copies!

[purlieu]

The first track off Birth of a New Day was uploaded to the Dream Catalogue Soundcloud today to promote the vinyl issue and it's had over 13,000 plays already.

[Npoess]

[purlieu]

Commercial Dreams Ltd. is rebranding as Commercial Dreams Records. To mark the end of the former, there's a free 76 track compilation: https://commercialdreamsltd.bandcamp.com/album/the-commercial-dream

[delet...]

now it's mainstream, i'm not sure i like the vapourwave kids anymore than the hipster ones (saw a couple on some out and about in austin TX that lee-anne macadoo did for an infowars bit). Instead of bad 80's opshop buys, they've move into the 90's. Same ironic bs. Same up themselves in crowd douchery.

 

Not knocking the music peepaz though don't worry. There's ok things here and there as with most things. But with expansion of the scene this always happens as posers jump in. Plus the clothes and haircuts are shit. seriouslor.

[TubularCorporation]

You could really see people setting themselves up as gatekeepers/taste arbiters/starmakers/hypemongers in the Vaporwave scene last year, not surprised this year is the year it finally went mainstreamish.

[delet...]

coming off as a tad bitter there methinks! the 90s was never exempt from vaporwave. a great deal of the material sampled on floral shoppe was from the 90s for starters. if you're going to find something to criticise about where it's at, i'd say that one annoying thing is that any lush, harmonious electronica will be considered vaporwave if the visual / aesthetic side of things is appropriated by the artist. also, the media of the 90s is more varied and interesting just imo.

 

this in no way relates to anything i said, par for the course for a mgf post then. heh.

[roasty]

Npoe's posts make me feel this thread should be merged with Dank Memes

[Lane Visitor]

I dont that id say its mainstream quite yet.. Easily on its way there though. Until multiple releases described as vaporwave start showing up on pitchfork and we start to hear bits of lo fi muzak samples in top 40 pop / hip hop, i think its still pretty fringe.. Although i think we could be almost there.

[roasty]

dank memes will go mainstream first

[purlieu]

I really hate the word ironic when it comes to vaporwave. Somehow seems to suggest that it's a 'so bad it's good' thing, people only like it because of what it references rather than for what it is. Some people seem to be uncomfortable with anything that consciously references something else and thus presume it must only be liked ironically. I like vaporwave because I think it sounds nice, and find some of the concepts it explores intriguing. Why the fuck would I spend my time being into something 'ironically'?

[Npoess]

Npoe's posts make me feel this thread should be merged with Dank Memes

 

Dank memes and vaporwave are pretty inseparable me thinks.

 

I really hate the word ironic when it comes to vaporwave. Somehow seems to suggest that it's a 'so bad it's good' thing, people only like it because of what it references rather than for what it is. Some people seem to be uncomfortable with anything that consciously references something else and thus presume it must only be liked ironically. I like vaporwave because I think it sounds nice, and find some of the concepts it explores intriguing. Why the fuck would I spend my time being into something 'ironically'?

That being said, I also love vaporwave in a very unironic way.

[FinePrimitiveSounds]

vektroid and chuck person have a very tongue in cheek vibe and then people found more and more genuine beauty underneath it all. something like that...

 

Yeah, but chuck sampled a lot of 0ughties pop tracks, so it's a different kind of irony, more like trying to extract SOME beauty from tween plastique

[Thiefinger]

What does irony even mean here? Yeah, the 80's were cheesy and the 90's dorky, but are we really laughing at them secretly here? For me it's more like romanticising those things with a bit of melancholic nostalgia.

[Lane Visitor]

Was going to keep all aspects of this release absolutely secret aside from the 1 limited cassette copy and the person that found it, as well as the 3 or 4 people who won the virtual puzzle that got the digital versions, but I decided to post 1 track from the CRS 2.1 secret cassette release onto Soundcloud for people to hear. It's a major departure from the previous Donovan work, in that it's all minimal experimental ambient. Not planning to abandon the muzak/corporate jazz sounds, this was just a flirtation with the darker side of things and tied to my CRS 2.0 release, and CRS series that are conceptually related to the Fincher film The Game:

 

 

 

 

 

More info on this release and the IRL / virtual scavenger hunt that it was a part of:

 

imgur.com/a/uk4OE
www.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/comme…assette/?sort=new
www.discogs.com/Donovan-Hikaru-CR…e/release/7622767

Edited November 27, 2015 by Lane Visitor

[Thiefinger]

 

 

 

That was pretty cool.

[Lane Visitor]

 

 

 

 

That was pretty cool.

 

 

Thanks dude, i appreciate that :D

[purlieu]

Yeah, I was really surprised when I heard it on Soundcloud earlier, wasn't what I was expecting at all. Really good though.

[Lane Visitor]

Yeah, I was really surprised when I heard it on Soundcloud earlier, wasn't what I was expecting at all. Really good though.

Really appreciate that man! Yeah definitely a little changeup (:

[prdctvsm]

yeh lane dat track iz dope g ! free downlode p pls (;

[Lane Visitor]

 

 

vektroid and chuck person have a very tongue in cheek vibe and then people found more and more genuine beauty underneath it all. something like that...

 

Yeah, but chuck sampled a lot of 0ughties pop tracks, so it's a different kind of irony, more like trying to extract SOME beauty from tween plastique

 

oh yeah totally, but it is all 'dated pop music' i guess is what i mean.

 

What does irony even mean here? Yeah, the 80's were cheesy and the 90's dorky, but are we really laughing at them secretly here? For me it's more like romanticising those things with a bit of melancholic nostalgia.

agree. but i mean it seems as though it started out as 'secretly laughing' and became more 'romantic' over time

 

 

lovely washed out ambiance, lane! any reason for the shift in styles? just trying some new shiz?

 

 

 

yeh lane dat track iz dope g ! free downlode p pls (;

 

Wow, thank you guys for the kind words.. Im super honored, seriously.

 

@mesh, So, yeah, I've always loved making ethereal, moody atmospheric stuff in general, but never released anything like that before, and thought that with all this focus on the movie The Game that I've doing with the CRS 2.0 release, I thought it would be really fun to make a sort of companion album- of all dark ambient mysterious material- to to that EP, and call it CRS 2.1- I released it on a secret cassette tape - one sole copy - that I hid in San Fran for a scavenger hunt for a chosen person to find-- in which someone did find it, and he posted his photojournal online (imgur.com/a/uk4OE).

 

@prdctvsm, thanks dude - for sure, ill send you an mp3 of that first track if you wanna DM me with your email (: .. you should def check the full LP if you liked that one.

 

Anyway so the track you guys heard is from that tape- which I just released a digital version of the full LP, minus several cassette-only tracks, here: https://donovanhikaru.bandcamp.com/album/crs-21 very SAW II / William Basinski - influenced (:

 

Fun times!

 

p.s. - i already posted a new thread for this release under EKT new releases, but here's the cover art just so you guys can get a feel:

 

Edited November 28, 2015 by Lane Visitor

[joshuatxuk]

You could really see people setting themselves up as gatekeepers/taste arbiters/starmakers/hypemongers in the Vaporwave scene last year, not surprised this year is the year it finally went mainstreamish.

 

Dream Catalogue basically. It's basically the 2nd wave of vaporwave, which ironically started the same year many of the originators moved on and many fans declared it "dead"

 

Good or bad this label threw the sonic constraints out the window and brought it a lot more of the 90s idm, dnb, and ambient influences in. A lot of non-vaporwave labels have begun releasing vaporwave too, or adopted it. The quality of the genre is up, that's for sure, even if DC is kind of steering the aesthetics and "standards" of it into some arguably predictable places.

 

 

 

coming off as a tad bitter there methinks! the 90s was never exempt from vaporwave. a great deal of the material sampled on floral shoppe was from the 90s for starters. if you're going to find something to criticise about where it's at, i'd say that one annoying thing is that any lush, harmonious electronica will be considered vaporwave if the visual / aesthetic side of things is appropriated by the artist. also, the media of the 90s is more varied and interesting just imo.

 

this in no way relates to anything i said, par for the course for a mgf post then. heh.

 

uhhh yes it does. 1) delet being a cranky pants, check. 2) delet implying that the 90's fashion / influence is something new, check.

 

par 2

 

also dude you are in no position to complain about people being ironic and up themselves and douchey. just sayin'

 

 

The origins of vaporwave were indeed a bit joke-y and ironic, the memes just muddled that further, but true fans love this genre for the same reasons they love Boards of Canada or Ghostbox Recordings: it's music of a future past, aesthetics of a conceptional modern world that never was. It just happens to be for late 80s / early 90s American and Japanese stuff and unabashed in cheese and kitsch.

 

pitchfork have been well aware of the trend for years, i dunno if i'd consider them a barometer for that sorta stuff anyway as they are still more on the 'alternative' side of things, even if they are a juggernaut in that sense.

 

imo i think you know it's broken mainstream when big budget music videos start getting made and popping up on channel v and similar places. i feel like only the visual side of things has the potential to get big, and musically it'll be more like stuff that is inspired by but not technically vape. by that i mean slowed down and stuttery vektroid style compositions won't break into the mainstream but trap beats with 80s synths and 90s video game samples will.

 

also when the mtv video awards start showing signs of vape influence then we'll know for sure...oops

 

http://www.gq.com/story/mtv-miley-cyrus-vma-vaporwave-seapunk

 

 

Tiny Mixtapes, Dummy, and similar outlets are the only ones who have given vaporwave a lot of press. Hell, some Chicago newspaper wrote about it before (or right as) this thread about it was started.

 

Pitchfork isn't alt. Stereogum and everything owned by Spin aren't alt. All of them re-hash the same shit. If pitchfork wanted to blow up vaporwave it could of 2 years ago. They don't discover anything anymore, they haven't bravely heralded anything challenging in a decade. Unless it's a friend of an editor living in LA, Brooklyn, or London no undiscovered person is being "discovered" by pfork. It's a PR machine.

 

I don't think it will ever "break" into mainstream really. Arca and Evian Christ did Kanye's Yeezus production but they won't become EDM superstars or anything. Experimental and niche stuff, even if huge online, will remain just that, experimental and niche. Vaporwave has some existing crossover with beat scene, lo-fi electronic, the cassette scene, that SADBOYS stuff, etc. It's creeped into cloud rap to some degree. That's where it's creating influence - other underground scenes.

 

The seapunk and tumblrcore aesthetic mainstream crossover was short-lived and superficial, appropriate because many of its fans/followers were themselves. Same with chillwave and witch house, except it was a much faster burn out.

Vaporwave's lived this long because of tight-knit community. It's the core of the genre above all else at this point imo