History Main / Vaporwave

2012 saw the genre fragment heavily. Music/{{BlankBanshee}}'s seminal albums ''Blank Banshee 0'' and ''Blank Banshee 1'' defined the '''vaportrap''' subgenre, which added elements of TrapMusic to samples of computer chimes and New Age music. Meanwhile, SAINT PEPSI (now Skylar Spence) and others would fuse the vaporwave ethos with [[{{Disco}} nu-disco]], creating '''{{future funk}}''', a decidedly more upbeat approach. '''Dreampunk''' also emerged, creating futuristic soundscapes from field recordings and computerized abstractions. '''Mallsoft''' merged field recordings of nature and shopping malls with heavily reverberated {{ambient}} music to play on the genre's consumerist themes. '''Oceangrunge''' and '''hardvapor''' would also appear, hybridizing vaporwave with {{grunge}} and {{alternative rock}} (the former), and {{industrial}} and noise music (the latter), as rebuttals against the perceived anemic meekness of prior iterations of vaporwave.

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: For the uninitiated, vaporwave can seem like this.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdgkWg5uUDI "Moonside Swing"]] by Hirokazu Tanaka, from the 1994 video game ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}''. It takes the intro Ric Ocasek's (from Music/TheCars) 1986 song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3rXcGyVew Keep on Laughin']]" and employs sampling techniques similar to some tracks on ''Eccojams'' and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHjw6fcGO0 this track]] from Sacred Tapestry's ''Shader'' album. ''[=EarthBound=]'' featured similar edits with songs from Music/TheBeatles and Music/TheBeachBoys as well, and that game's score has itself been sampled and manipulated by some vaporwave projects.

** Leyland Kirby, under the name The Caretaker, would loop sections of pre-UsefulNotes/WorldWar2 big band music with liberal amounts of echo, reverb and vinyl crackle added. Starting in 1999, this alias would gain considerable critical attention until the project's end in 2019. Kirby, under his power noise music alias [=V/Vm=], also released over 200 songs of rave tracks given the same treatment as two albums: ''The Death of Rave (The Source)'' and ''The Death of Rave (Additional)'', both released in 2006. (Hell Interface's "Soylent Night" was also released through Kirby's now-closed label [=V/Vm=] Test Records.)
* WidgetSeries: The genre itself. Much of the accompanying artwork from the first wave (e.g., the page image) was actually trying to emulate weird Japanese promotional artwork and advertising. This is part of "the aesthetic" you'll see people talking about (and mocking) when discussing vaporwave.

Vaporwave (also called "vapor") is a genre of music that originated on TheInternet at the beginning of TheNewTens. Staples of the genre include the use of (and/or influence from) smooth jazz, R&B and Japanese CityPop[[note]]Funk, soul and pop songs from the 1980s[[/note]] from TheEighties and [[Main/TheNineties 90s]]; corporate iconography and sloganeering; early computer-generated artwork; symbols of capitalism and opulence; and a clear case of irony poisoning.

2012 saw the genre fragment heavily. Music/{{BlankBanshee}}'s seminal albums ''Blank Banshee 0'' and ''Blank Banshee 1'' defined the '''vaportrap''' subgenre, which added elements of TrapMusic to samples of computer chimes and New Age music. Meanwhile, SAINT PEPSI (now Skylar Spence) and others would fuse the vaporwave ethos with nu-disco, creating '''{{future funk}}''', a decidedly more upbeat approach. '''Dreampunk''' also emerged, creating futuristic soundscapes from field recordings and computerized abstractions. '''Mallsoft''' merged field recordings of nature and shopping malls with heavily reverberated ambient music to play on the genre's consumerist themes. '''Oceangrunge''' and '''hardvapor''' would also appear, hybridizing vaporwave with grunge and alternative rock (the former), and industrial and noise music (the latter), as rebuttals against the perceived anemic meekness of prior iterations of vaporwave.

'''Broken transmission''' (or '''signalwave''') abruptly shifts through samples and loops of commercials to evoke channel surfing and being endlessly bombarded with advertisements as a full-faced critique on mindless (un)ethical consumption under capitalism and an inverse to utopian virtual. And lastly, there's '''late night lo-fi''', a vaporwave counterpart to the lo-fi house and lo-fi hip hop genres. All of these genres more or less work with the same sample base of 1980s songs, but there's been a notable shift towards composing original tunes rather than simply sampling. This [[GenreBusting explosion of genre-blending abandon]] is considered the "second wave" of vaporwave.

Aesthetically, vaporwave incorporates a barrage of 1990s advertising iconography and sloganeering alongside images of buildings, beaches and other signs of opulence, littered with GratuitousJapanese (and later other languages). Many albums envision other worlds, generally informed by seminal CG animation like ''Animation/TheMindsEye'' series. Resorts on sunny beaches, landscapes with AlienGeometries, and an endless mall (often referred to as the "Virtual Plaza") are common. Some artists even envision high concepts for themselves; Replica Federation, for example, envisions their music as the soundtrack for a hitman and super-spy, chronicling his adventures. The cut-and-paste use of languages gives vaporwave the feel of globalization with all of the pros and cons entailed, and can lend the feeling of a [[CrapsaccharineWorld deceptively bleak, placidly dystopian]] future in which JapanTakesOverTheWorld and everyone orders take-out from the videophone on their boats. Despite some speculative journalism calling vaporwave a deconstruction of American capitalism, the genre does signal a complete ambivalence towards it (case in point: 猫 シ Corp.'s mallsoft album ''Palm Mall'' features sounds of placid consumerism while using the exact font of Pall Mall brand cigarettes on the album cover). It should be noticed that some artists like Music/{{Vektroid}} have publicly stated that their music is not intended to be anti-capitalist, while other artists are more critical.

* ContraltoOfDanger: What female vocals often end up sounding like.

** Weirdly with [[CountryMusic Country]] of all things, with one (admittedly very weird if successful) artist at the crux: Music/KaceyMusgraves's 2018 album ''Golden Hour'' evinces occasional vaporwave influences, most prominently on "Oh What a World" and in the lyric video for "High Horse", but also in occasional other spots elsewhere. One gets the odd sense that she spent a lot of time that year listening to vaporwave tracks. (It doesn't help that at about this time she started rendering her name as "K A C E Y M U S G R A V E S" on at least some social media.)

** death's dynamic shroud.wmv. Not only do they simply slow down and repeat vocal snippets, but sometimes actually pitch them up high, while also often editing or distorting them to the point of it sounding like it's coming from a [[UncannyValley malfunctioning robot.]] That, combined with a sound that mixes massively dark ambiances, heavy industrial influence, and plenty of glitching, their music is, as one commenter on the video stream for [[https://youtu.be/25YqRRvl9gk I'll Try Living Like This]] says, "[[NightmareFuel what it sounds like to disassociate.]]" The aforementioned I'll Try Living Like This, 신세기EVANGELIS, and 世界大戦OLYMPICS are prime examples.

* UncannyValley[[invoked]]: A couple of artists, INTERNET CLUB and Vektroid, have said they were [[InvokedTrope invoking]] this effect on the music they were sampling, with the latter mentioning the trope by name. It's unknown to us if others were doing the same, but it's likely.