Vaporwave is a micro genre of electronic music, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, RnB, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.
A internet meme made genre, bringing with it a wave of nostalgia based remixes of Muzak, a hyper stylized ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ, and a lot of Cyberpunk vibes.
*Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments. Elevator music, Cable News Breaks, and Retail Mood Music all can be described or considered Muzak.
Vaporwave, a counterculture music and art movement that radically embraces or I would even say celebrates the nostalgia of consumer capitalism. Vaporwave as a genre owes a lot of it's roots to something cyberpunk and anti capital in it's own right. Online Piracy, the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted content digitally without permission, such as music or software. The principle behind piracy has predated the creation of the Internet, but its online popularity arose alongside the internet. Vaporwave being a celebration of consumer nostalgia of the 80s and 90s, it can almost be seen paralleling a taking from similar growth to Online Piracy and it's growth alongside the Internet in the 80s and 90s. Which brings me to Plunderphonics.
Plunderphonics is a music genre in which tracks are constructed by sampling recognizable musical works. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative", and eventually explicitly defined in the liner notes of his Grayfolded album. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage. Oswald has described it as a referential and self-conscious practice which interrogates notions of originality and identity.
John Oswald in this essay goes on to say "A sampler, in essence a recording, transforming instrument, is simultaneously a documenting device and a creative device, in effect reducing a distinction manifested by copyright." Oswald worked primarily by taking samples of other people's songs and incorporates them into his own genre, which you can listen to some of his songs here John Oswald and Plunderphonics. And in spirit of John Oswald, use your latest edition of yt-dlp or youtube-dl to rip and mix your own. But this core of mixing and sampling other music is the strong root of a lot of Vaporwave music.
Vaporwave as a start and as mentioned previously began with taking samples or rips of popular 80s and 90s songs, slowing them down, and adding it's own flare of retro. Maybe adding some crackles and pops to a song to remake the sound of it being played on cassette, a very 80s/90s medium for music of the era. Taking for example Diana Ross's song It's Your Move slowing it down, and you just made the most iconic of all Vaporwave MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュ.
John Oswald (Canada, 1953), is one of the leading exponents of sound appropriationism. In the eighties, Oswald coined the term "Plunderphonics" to define his work, which questions issues like authorship, the record industry’s business model and the aesthetics of sound collage as a musical language.
Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative
Plunderphics, John Oswald
So why does this matter? Well from this idea from music theory is that if you take something second, you are either a ripoff, do it first and better, and you just made yourself a genre. Much akin to the forks and branches of software, or the hobbling together from junk parts (perhaps once pristine collections from a bygone age) of a cyberpunk dystopia. Vaporwave does something special and not only taking a sample from a decade and genre outside of it's own but instilling a feeling, capturing lightning in a bottle, the essence and feeling of that decade and genre. A carbonated C R Y S T A L P E P S I of music. Somehow both something we all know, but different and locked into a time maybe not experienced by the listener.
Much like Vaporwave mixes and samples from songs. it's aesthetics also are adapted and adopted from previous well know art from another decade, Busts of Helios, Rising suns over a refreshing Crystal Pepsi, and perhaps a pop-up window from Windows 95, all color framed and back dropped with neon pink, brings with it a feeling of something lost, or something longed to be experienced for the first time. NOSTALGIA. Vaporwave does something very well on it's own, creating wave and feeling of wistful regret to somehow go back in time to experience something you may not have, then go forward in time to experience the nostalgia. It is hard to find the right series of words or phrases to correctly describe this feeling, but thankfully the German's made one, Sehnsucht. A word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences. Adding in the iconography of an age long past but close enough to vaguely remember seals you the listener in to this Sehnsucht. Making you feel as if you did.
As the title says, Vaporwave is a different kind of Cyberpunk. For me Vaporwave instills the feeling of a retro futuristic age of a cold dark city gleamed over neon pink lights, advertisements caking the exteriors of buildings. You, a lowly deck jocky heading into your 3rd 16 hour shift at IOI SYSTEMS to jack in and pluck away at the keyboard. You make your way through the rainy streets passing by junkies skizzing out on the latest street drug and wetware vendors trying to start up a bizz on whatever stolen wares they got dropped. You are tired, but the latest stim is keeping you going. Cold and wet you enter your work's automatic doors on the uptown side of the city, you are greeted with bright warm light, hot managed air, the whir and chatter of our fellow wagers clocking into their deck, and of course... VAPORWAVE music playing in the background. You are anxious, but this dies down as the relaxing melodies of a previous age embraces your ears, like a grandmother's kiss or a warm glass of milk. It might be the stim coursing through your veins, but it also could be that this place makes you feel at ease. You don't want to work, you want to stay here working for as long as you can before your shift is over, and you are thrust back out into the cold, dark, rain of an uncaring cityscape. Because here at IOI SYSTEMS, you are not just employee decker #R3256234-1, you are family.
Vaporwave is often linked to an ambiguous relationship to consumer capitalism. And not only I think this that celebration of consumer capitalism is inherent to the genre to make it what it is, many academics, who break down the genre far better than I, have published many a work on this subject. This trend is originally cited to Adam Harper's 2012 Dummy article and its attempt to link the genre to punk rock and anti capitalist movements, "[Vaporwave] can be read as sarcastic anti capitalists revealing the lies and slippages of modern techno culture and its representations, or as its willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound.". And Grafton Tanner wrote in his book Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave And The Commodification Of Ghosts "...Vaporwave is one artistic style that seeks to rearrange our relationship with electronic media by forcing us to recognize the unfamiliarity of ubiquitous technology ... Vaporwave is the music of 'non-times' and 'non-places' because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space".
So for me and for some others, Vaporwave is not just a genre of music, but the music of the future. A future of music played in every Amazon warehouse, Google server farm, and vague non de-script office. A music for non places, remembering non times. A music to listen and not quite remember fonder times to, before clocking out and heading home to your single room apartment on floor 50 of some non building, in some non city. A Cyberpunk City.