Hypnagogic pop

Last updated

Hypnagogic pop (abbreviated as h-pop) is pop or psychedelic music [5] [6] that evokes cultural memory and nostalgia for the popular entertainment of the past (principally the 1980s). It emerged in the mid to late 2000s as American lo-fi and noise musicians began adopting retro aesthetics remembered from their childhood, such as radio rock, new wave pop, synth-pop, video game music, light rock, and R&B. Recordings circulated on cassette or Internet blogs and were typically marked by the use of outmoded analog equipment and DIY experimentation.

Contents

The genre's name was coined by journalist David Keenan in an August 2009 issue of The Wire to label the developing trend, which he characterized as "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory." [7] It was used interchangeably with "chillwave" or "glo-fi" and gained critical attention through artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro. [5] The music has been variously described as a 21st-century update of psychedelia, a reappropriation of media-saturated capitalist culture, and an "American cousin" to British hauntology.

In response to Keenan's article, The Wire received a slew of hate mail that derided hypnagogic pop as the "worst genre created by a journalist". [5] Some of the tagged artists rejected the label or denied that such a unified style exists. [5] During the 2010s, critical attention for the genre waned, although the style's "revisionist nostalgia" sublimated into various youth-oriented cultural zeitgeists. Hypnagogic pop evolved into vaporwave, with which it is sometimes conflated.

Characteristics

Hypnagogic pop is pop or psychedelic music that draws heavily from the popular music and culture of the 1980s [8] [6] [9] – also ranging from the 1970s [10] to the early 1990s. [11] The genre reflects a preoccupation with outmoded analog technology and bombastic representations of synthetic elements from these epochs of pop culture, with its creators informed by collective memory as well as their personal histories. [12] Per the imprecise nature of memory, the genre does not faithfully recreate the sounds and styles popular in those periods. [1] In this way, hypnagogic pop distinguishes itself from revivalist movements. As authors Maël Guesdon and Philippe Le Guern write, the genre can be described as "revisionist nostalgia, not in the sense that 'everything used to be better' but because it rewrites collective memory with a view to being more faithful to an idea or a memory of the original than to the original itself." [13]

A compact cassette. Hypnagogic pop artists often use or emulate outdated cassette recording technology. Side A, TDK D-C60 20041220.jpg
A compact cassette. Hypnagogic pop artists often use or emulate outdated cassette recording technology.

Examples of specific sounds evoked by hypnagogic pop artists range from "ecstatically blurry and irradiated lo-fi pop" to "seventies cosmic-synth-rock" and "tripped-out, tribal exotica". [14] Writing for Vice in 2011, Morgan Poyau described the genre as "making awkward bedfellows out of experimental music enthusiasts and weird progressive pop theorists." [15] He described a typical manifestation of the style as featuring long tracks "saturated with echo, delay, smothered guitars and amputated synths." [15] Critic Adam Trainer writes that, rather than a particular sound, the music was defined by a collection of artists who shared the same approaches and cultural experiences. He observed that their music drew from "the collective unconscious of late 1980s and early 1990s popular culture" while being "indebted stylistically to various traditions of experimentalism such as noise, drone, repetition, and improvisation." [16]

Common reference points include various forms of 1980s music, including radio rock, new wave pop, MTV one-hit wonders, New Age music, synth-driven Hollywood blockbuster soundtracks, [9] lounge music, easy-listening, corporate muzak, lite rock "schmaltz", video game music, [1] and 1980s synth-pop and R&B. [5] [17] Recordings are often deliberately degraded, produced with analog equipment, and exhibit recording idiosyncrasies such as tape hiss. [11] It employs sounds that were considered "futuristic" during the 1980s which, due to their outmoded nature, appear psychedelic out of context. [11] Also common was the use of outmoded audiovisual technology and DIY digital imagery, such as compact cassettes, VHS, CD-R discs, and early Internet aesthetics. [18]

Origins

Background and hauntology

In the 2000s, a wave of retro-inspired home-recording artists began dominating underground indie scenes. [19] The emergence of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, in particular, prompted journalistic discussion of the philosophical concept of hauntology, [20] most prominently among the writers Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher. [21] Later, the term "hauntology" was described as a British synonym for hypnagogic pop, [3] while hypnagogic pop was described as an "American cousin" to Britain's hauntological music scene, [22] [1] [23]

Todd Ledford, owner of the music label Olde English Spelling Bee (OESB), attributed a correlation between the proliferation of hypnagogic pop and the rise of YouTube. [24] Reynolds attributed the origins of hypnagogic pop to Southern California and its culture. Trainer disagreed with Reynolds' assertion and said the style "arguably" emerged from numerous simultaneous scenes inhabited by artists working in a diverse form of "post-noise neo-psychedelia". [25] Pitchfork 's Marc Masters offered that it may have originated "less [as] a movement than a coincidence". [26] The music was often issued in the form of limited-edition cassettes or vinyl records before reaching a wider audience through blogs and YouTube videos. [9]

Formative artists

Ariel Pink performing in 2007 Ariel pink (3439870529).jpg
Ariel Pink performing in 2007

Ariel Pink gained recognition in the mid-2000s through a string of self-produced albums, pioneering a sound that Reynolds called "'70s radio-rock and '80s new wave as if heard through a defective transistor radio, glimmers of melody flickering in and out of the fog". [27] He identified Pink and the Skaters as the "godparents of hypnagogic", [28] but singled out Pink as the central figure to what he calls the "Altered Zones Generation", an umbrella term he designed for lo-fi, retro-inspired indie artists who were commonly featured on Altered Zones, an associate site for Pitchfork. [19] [nb 1] Tiny Mix Tapes ' Jordan Redmond wrote that Pink's early collaborator John Maus was also placed "at the nexus of a number of recent popular movements" including hypnagogic pop, and that Maus was as "much of a progenitor of this sound as Pink, even though Pink has tended to be the headline-grabber." [30]

R. Stevie Moore and Martin Newell were earlier artists who anticipated Pink's sound. [19] Matthew Ingram of The Wire recognized Moore's influence on Pink and hypnagogic pop: "through his disciple ... he has unwittingly provided the [genre's] template". [31] [nb 2] Another precursor to the genre was Nick Nicely and his 1982 single "Hilly Fields (1892)". Red Bull Music's J.R. Moore wrote that Nicely's "uniquely haphazard DIY aesthetic" and contemporary take on 1960s psychedelic pop "basically invented the sound of the 2000s Hypnagogic Pop movement decades beforehand." [33] [nb 3]

The Skaters were a noise duo consisting of James Ferraro and Spencer Clark, and like Pink, were based in California. [34] In the mid-2000s, they released dozens of CD-Rs and cassettes of psychedelic drone music, after which Ferraro and Clark each pursued solo outings. [11] From 2009 to 2010, Ferraro's music evolved to be increasingly rhythmic and melodic, as Trainer describes, "an oversaturated sonic palette of cheesy pop reminiscent of early video game soundtracks and 1980s Saturday morning cartoons." [35]

Complex contributor Joe Price felt that the h-pop movement was "birthed" by Ferraro and "the vastly overlooked [Missouri artist] 18 Carat Affair". [36] In Reynolds' description, "other rising figures" from the original California scene included Sun Araw, LA Vampires and Puro Instinct. He added: "Other key hypnagogues such as Matrix Metals and Rangers reside elsewhere but seem SoCal in spirit." [9] In a 2009 interview, Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) stated that Salvador Dalí and Danny Wolfers were the "godfathers of hpop". He identified other progenitors to be DJ Screw, "retro kids", Joe Wenderoth, Autre Ne Veut, Church In Moon and DJ Dog Dick. [37]

Etymology and initial popularity

The term "hypnagogic pop" was inspired by comments made by James Ferraro (pictured in 2012) and Spencer Clark. James Ferraro (cropped).jpg
The term "hypnagogic pop" was inspired by comments made by James Ferraro (pictured in 2012) and Spencer Clark.

Journalist David Keenan, who was known as a reporter of noise, freak folk, and drone music scenes, coined "hypnagogic pop" in an August 2009 piece for The Wire . [14] Keenan applied the label to a developing trend of 2000s lo-fi and post-noise music in which artists engaged with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. Inspired by comments by James Ferraro and Spencer Clark, and while invoking a similar concept discussed by Russian esotericist P.D. Ouspensky, Keenan employed the term "hypnagogic" as referring to the psychological state "between waking and sleeping, liminal zones where mis-hearings and hallucinations feed into the formation of dreams." [11] The term reportedly originated with a comment by James Ferraro about the notion that 1980s sounds had seeped into the unconscious of contemporary musicians while they were toddlers falling asleep and their parents played music in another room. [38] [ page needed ]

Among the artists discussed in Keenan's article were Ariel Pink, Daniel Lopatin, the Skaters, the Savage Young Taterbug, Gary War, Zola Jesus, Ducktails, Emeralds, and Pocahaunted. [11] [nb 4] According to Keenan, these artists drew on cultural sources subconsciously remembered from their 1980s and early 1990s adolescence while freeing them from their historical contexts and "hom[ing] in on the futuristic signifiers" of the period. [11] He alternately summarized hypnagogic pop as "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory" and as "1980's-inspired psychedelia" that engages with capitalist detritus of the past in an attempt to "dream of the future." [11] In a later article, Keenan identified Lopatin, Ferraro, Clark, and ex-Test Icicles member Sam Mehran as hypnagogic pop's "most adventurous proponents". [39]

Gnome-mime-sound-openclipart.svg
Sample of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's "Round and Round" (2010)
The Atlantic highlighted "Round and Round" as a "perfect" representation of hypnagogic pop's "breathless simplicity", [5] while Pitchfork wrote that it "evokes the sort of dusty 80s radio pop singles you find on defunct regional labels in thrift store bins." [40]
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Once "hypnagogic pop" was coined, a variety of music blogs wrote about the phenomenon. [15] By 2010, albums by Ariel Pink and Neon Indian were regularly hailed by publications like Pitchfork and The Wire, with "hypnagogic pop", "chillwave", and "glo-fi" employed to describe the evolving sounds of such artists, a number of which had songs of considerable success within independent music circles. [5] Pink was frequently called "godfather" of h-pop, chillwave or glo-fi as new acts that were associated with him (aesthetically, personally, geographically, or professionally) attracted notice from critics. [41] Some of his contemporaries, such as Ferraro, Clark, and War, failed to match his mainstream success. When this point was raised to Clark in a 2013 interview, he replied that Pink was simply "an ambassador of California, like the Beach Boys." [42]

In 2010, Pitchfork launched Altered Zones, effectively an online newsletter for hypnagogic acts. [39] Beginning that July, Altered Zones aggregated its content from a collective of leading blogs specializing in the movement. [14] By the end of the year, OESB, now known for its roster of hypnagogic acts such as Ferraro and Mehran, had grown to be one of the most prominent underground indie labels. [24] In January 2011, Keenan wrote that OESB was "the imprint most associated with H-pop" and "in many ways ... the label of 2010", although he mused, "[I]ts demographic has morphed from an early underground/Noise audience to being embraced by the fringes of indie and dance culture, helped by groups like Forest Swords, who muddy the line between H-pop and dubstep." [39]

Chillwave and vaporwave

"Chillwave", a tag used to describe a similar trend, [43] was coined one month before Keenan's 2009 article [44] and was adopted synonymously with "hypnagogic pop". [45] While the two styles are similar in that they both evoke 1980s–90s imagery, chillwave has a more commercial sound with an emphasis on "cheesy" hooks and reverb effects. [46] A contemporary review by Marc Hogan for Neon Indian's Psychic Chasms (2009) listed "dream-beat", "chillwave", "glo-fi", "hypnagogic pop", and "hipster-gogic pop" as interchangeable terms for "psychedelic music that's generally one or all of the following: synth-based, homemade-sounding, 80s-referencing, cassette-oriented, sun-baked, laid-back, warped, hazy, emotionally distant, slightly out of focus." [47]

The experimental tendencies of hypnagogic pop artists like Pink and Ferraro were soon amplified by the Internet-centric genre dubbed "vaporwave". Although the name shares the "-wave" suffix, it is only loosely connected to chillwave. [4] Sam Mehran was one of the earliest hypnagogic acts to anticipate vaporwave, with his project Matrix Metals and the 2009 album Flamingo Breeze , which was built on synthesizer loops. [48] That same year, Lopatin uploaded a collection of plunderphonics loops to YouTube inconspicuously under the alias sunsetcorp. These clips were later assembled for the album Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010). [36] Stereogum's Miles Bowe summarized vaporwave as a combination of "the chopped and screwed plunderphonics of Dan Lopatin ... with the nihilistic easy-listening of James Ferraro’s Muzak-hellscapes on [the 2011 album] Far Side Virtual ". [4] [nb 5]

Writers, fans, and artists struggled to differentiate between hypnagogic pop, chillwave, and vaporwave. [50] The term "vaporwave" is generally attributed to an October 2011 blog post that discussed the hypnagogic album Surfs Pure Hearts by Girlhood. [50] Adam Harper surmised that the author cited the work as "vaporwave" instead of "hypnagogic pop" possibly because they were unfamiliar with the latter term. He jokingly remarked of "a special place in hell" for those who attempt to separate the three genres: "it's a back room where Satan forever explains the differences between death metal, black metal and doom metal." [50]

According to Harper, vaporwave and hypnagogic pop share an affinity for "trash music", both are "dreamy" and "chirpy", and both "manipulate their material to defamiliarise it and give it a sense of the uncanny, such as slowing it down and/or lowering the pitch, making it, as the term goes, ‘screwed’." [10] Of differences, vaporwave does not typically engage in long tracks, lo-fi productions, or non-sampled material, and it draws more from the early 1990s than it does the 1970s and 1980s. [10] Vaporwave has a stronger musical connection to chillwave than to hypnagogic pop for its sampling of slowed-down synth funk. [50]

Impact and criticism

The vaporwave Internet meme amplified notions of self-referential irony and satire in hypnagogic pop. Wikiwave 00000.png
The vaporwave Internet meme amplified notions of self-referential irony and satire in hypnagogic pop.

David Keenan's original Wire article incited a slew of hate mail that derided the "hypnagogic pop" label as the "worst genre created by a journalist". [5] As the movement's popularity grew, the analogue lo-fi aspirations of Pink and Ferraro were taken up by "groups with names like Tape Deck Mountain, Memory Tapes, Memory Cassette – and turned into cliché." [51] Both chillwave and vaporwave had been conceived as tongue-in-cheek, hyperbolic responses to such trends. [10] [52]

Keenan became disenchanted with artists of the movement who streamlined their sound [53] and "chillwave" came to serve as a pejorative for such acts. [54] In the 2010 Rewind issue of The Wire, Keenan said that h-pop had "migrated from a process designed to liberate desire from marketing formulas to a carrot in the mouth of a corpse that has proved irresistible to underground musicians looking for an easy route to mainstream acceptance." [39] [nb 6] He invoked chillwave as "one of the more meaningless sobriquets applied to the new future pop visions" and "a much more appropriate description of the mindless, depoliticised embracing of mainstream values that H-pop has come to be associated with." [39]

Some of the tagged artists, such as Neon Indian and Toro y Moi, rejected the h-pop tag or denied that such a unified style exists. [5] [nb 7] The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey called the hypnagogic tag "pretentious", [58] while New York Times writer Jon Pareles criticized the style as "annoyingly noncommittal music". The latter described a showcase of such bands at the 2010 South by Southwest festival as "a hedged, hipster imitation of the pop they're not brash enough to make". [5] Altered Zones contributor Emilie Friedlander prophesied in 2011 that Ariel Pink, John Maus, James Ferraro, Charles Free, Spencer Clark, and R. Stevie Moore would be remembered as musicians who "elevated the crackle and grain of low-fidelity recording ... and made the vocabulary of pop music and the preoccupations of the avant-garde seem a lot less incompatible than much of the previous century had implied." [59] However, like Keenan, she later wrote of her disenchantment with the movement following the "deliberately cringeworthy" example of Ferraro's Far Side Virtual. [53] [nb 8] Weeks after the album's release, Altered Zones shut down. [53] [nb 9] OESB also went defunct the same year. [61]

Usage of "hypnagogic pop" has since diminished, [62] although the genre's "imagined sonic past" has sublimated into various pop culture zeitgeists. [63] Likewise, an affinity for the retro proved itself as a hallmark of 2010s youth culture. [53] In a 2012 interview, Pink acknowledged that he was aware that he "was doing something that sounded like the trace of a memory you can't place" and argued that such evocations had become so ingrained into modern music that "people take it for granted". [64] On websites such as Drowned in Sound, Dummy Mag, and Electronic Beats, hauntology and hypnagogic pop were ultimately supplanted by an interest in post-Internet artists. [61]

Cultural interpretations

Simon Reynolds described hypnagogic pop as a "21st-century update of psychedelia" in which "lost innocence has been contaminated by pop culture" and hyper-reality. [9] He notes a particular concern with the "scrambling of pop time", suggesting that "perhaps the secret idea buried inside hypnagogic pop is that the '80s never ended. That we're still living there, subject to that decade's endless end of History." [9] Guesdon and Le Guern posit that "the hypnagogic movement can be seen as an aesthetic response to the growing feeling that time is speeding up: a feeling that often proves to be one of the fundamental components of advanced modernity." [13]

Adam Trainer suggested that the style allowed artists to engage with the products of media-saturated capitalist consumer culture in a way that focuses on affect rather than irony or cynicism. [18] Adam Harper noted among hypnagogic pop artists a tendency "to turn trash, something shallow and determinedly throwaway, into something sacred or mystical" and to "manipulate their material to defamiliarise it and give it a sense of the uncanny." [10]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ In response to Reynolds' argument, critic Adam Harper wrote that Pink's "largely rock-based" music lacked "the pop-art pastiche of hypnagogic pop," and that instead of "the progenitor [of] the AZ Generation, Pink can easily be understood as the youngest member of this mid-80s Cassette Culture Generation." [19] Pink believed that his own music, while heavily indebted to 1960s pop, is not classifiable in any genre. [29]
  2. ↑ Specifically, Moore's 1976 debut album Phonography . [31] Pink was a devout fan of his work and shared the same musical approaches, although Moore denies that they sound similar. After the two collaborated in the 2000s, Moore's exposure increased as a result of Pink's solo success. [32]
  3. ↑ Nicely returned to live performances in 2008, after a long absence from the public, sharing concert billings with Pink and Maus. [33]
  4. ↑ Also mentioned were Dolphins into the Future, Sora Eros, Infinity Window, Orphan Fairytale, and the Super Vacations. [11]
  5. ↑ Another artist considered by some to be a hypnagogic precursor to vaporwave is 18 Carat Affair. [49]
  6. ↑ In particular, he criticized Best Coast for leaving behind Pocahaunted to start a "simplistically twee-pop group that seems to exist solely to dance to whatever tune her current corporate sponsors – Converse, Target, Eskuche – care to call". [53]
  7. ↑ Daniel Lopatin said: "I don't think the hpop tag is representative of a movement or constituted by a select group of artists. I see it more as a discussion about nostalgia and its subliminal effects on culture. I don't see anything wrong with the tag—it's just a way of engaging with a phenomenon." [55] Ariel Pink similarly found such tags to be simply a means of framing artists in an interesting way. [56] John Maus rejected the "hypnagogic pop" tag, as he did not intend his music to evoke 1980s nostalgia. [30] James Ferraro was uncertain whether he belonged under the h-pop umbrella and believed that the genre was "not really an influence on me". [57]
  8. ↑ Writing for a 2019 retrospective on chillwave, Friedlander expressed that Keenan "wasn't wrong in thinking that lo-fi music was becoming a piece with the industry to which it once represented an alternative". She followed in his disillusionment after the release of Far Side Virtual, "a half-joking reclamation of the laptop that ... made me realise how out-of-hand the whole lo-fi conceit had become." [53]
  9. ↑ The announcement came on November 30, 2011, [60] the same day the website published an artist feature on Ferraro. [59]

Related Research Articles

Downtempo is a broad label for electronic music that features an atmospheric sound and slower beats than would typically be found in dance music. Closely related to ambient music but with greater emphasis on rhythm, the style may be played in relaxation clubs or as "warm-up or cool-down" music during a DJ set. Examples of downtempo subgenres include trip hop, ambient house, chillwave, psybient and lofi hip hop.

Chill-out is a loosely defined form of popular music characterized by slow tempos and relaxed moods. The definition of "chill-out music" has evolved throughout the decades, and generally refers to anything that might be identified as a modern type of easy listening.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lo-fi music</span> Music aesthetic

Lo-fi is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate stylistic choice. The standards of sound quality (fidelity) and music production have evolved over the decades, meaning that some older examples of lo-fi may not have been originally recognized as such. Lo-fi began to be recognized as a style of popular music in the 1990s, when it became alternately referred to as DIY music. Some subsets of lo-fi music have become popular for their perceived nostalgic and/or relaxing qualities, which originate from the imperfections that define the genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Keenan</span> Scottish writer and author

David Keenan is a Scottish writer and author of four novels.

Psychedelic music is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as DMT, LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin mushrooms, to experience synesthesia and altered states of consciousness. Psychedelic music may also aim to enhance the experience of using these drugs and has been found to have a significant influence on psychedelic therapy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Mehran</span> American-Australian musician, songwriter, and producer

Sam Mehran was an American-Australian musician, songwriter, and producer who co-founded the punk band Test Icicles and later formed the solo projects Matrix Metals and Outer Limits Recordings (OLR). His solo work differed substantially from Test Icicles and was often produced in a lo-fi manner. He received little critical notice in his lifetime, a Dazed Digital editor commented, however, "Mehran possessed an incomparable talent that belied his relatively low public profile." His first album as Matrix Metals, Flamingo Breeze, was described as a pioneering work of the vaporwave genre.

Chillwave is a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It is characterized by evoking the popular music of the late 1970s and early 1980s while engaging with notions of memory and nostalgia. Common features include a faded or dreamy retro pop sound, escapist lyrics, psychedelic or lo-fi aesthetics, mellow vocals, slow-to-moderate tempos, effects processing, and vintage synthesizers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oneohtrix Point Never</span> American musician

Daniel Lopatin, best known as Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer, and songwriter. His music has utilized tropes from various musical genres and eras, sample-based composition, and complex MIDI production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ariel Pink</span> American musician, singer, and songwriter (born 1978)

Ariel Marcus Rosenberg, professionally known as Ariel Pink, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose work draws heavily from the popular music of the 1960s–1980s. His lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded albums proved influential to many indie musicians starting in the late 2000s. He is frequently cited as "godfather" of the hypnagogic pop and chillwave movements, and he is credited with galvanizing a larger trend involving the evocation of the media, sounds, and outmoded technologies of prior decades, as well as an equal appreciation between high and low art in independent music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Ferraro</span> American musician (born 1986)

James Ferraro is an American experimental musician, producer, composer, and contemporary artist. He has been credited as a pioneer of the 21st century genres hypnagogic pop and vaporwave, with his work exploring themes related to hyperreality and consumer culture. His music has drawn on diverse styles such as 1980s electronic music, easy listening, drone, lo-fi, sound collage, and R&B.

<i>Far Side Virtual</i> 2011 studio album by James Ferraro

Far Side Virtual is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on October 25, 2011 by Hippos in Tanks. Conceived as a series of ringtones, the album marked Ferraro's transition from his previous lo-fi recording approach to a sharply produced, electronic aesthetic that deliberately evokes sources such as elevator music, corporate mood music, easy listening, and early computer sound design. The album has been interpreted as engaging with themes such as hyperreality, disposable consumer culture, 1990s retrofuturism, advertising, and musical kitsch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaporwave</span> Online musical genre and visual aesthetic

Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music and a subgenre of hauntology, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s, and became well-known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970s elevator music, R&B, 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, stylized Ancient Greek or Roman sculptures, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.

<i>Chuck Persons Eccojams Vol. 1</i> 2010 album by Daniel Lopatin

Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 is a 2010 album of remixes by American electronic musician Daniel Lopatin under the pseudonym Chuck Person. Its tracks consist of chopped, looped samples of various songs—including popular songs from the 1980s and 1990s—processed with effects such as delay, reverb, and pitch shifting; the results highlight mournful or existential moments from the sources. It was used as an initial template for the vaporwave internet microgenre.

<i>Night Dolls with Hairspray</i> 2010 studio album by James Ferraro

Night Dolls with Hairspray is a studio album by American electronic musician James Ferraro, released on October 31, 2010 by Olde English Spelling Bee. Described as a "cycle of bubblegum pop songs," its lo-fi sound draws on sources such as 1980s pop culture tropes, B-movies, and glam punk. The album garnered generally favorable reviews from critics, and was called a "weirdo masterpiece of the 21st century" by Impose.

A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electronic music. Some genres are sometimes retroactively created by record dealers and collectors as a way to increase the monetary value of certain records, with early examples including Northern soul, freakbeat, garage punk, and sunshine pop. By the early 2010s, most microgenres were linked and defined through various outlets on the Internet, usually as part of generating popularity and hype for a newly perceived trend. Examples of these include chillwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, and vaporwave.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lofi hip-hop</span> Subgenre of hip hop

Lofi hip hop is a form of downtempo, lo-fi music that combines hip hop beats with elements of chill-out. The name refers to the unpolished, low fidelity production techniques common in the style. It was popularized in the 2010s on YouTube.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hauntology (music)</span> Musical genre

Hauntology is a music genre or a loosely defined stylistic feature that evokes cultural memory and aesthetics of the past. It developed in the 2000s primarily among British electronic musicians, and typically draws on British cultural sources from the 1940s to the 1970s, including library music, film and TV soundtracks, psychedelia, and public information films; often through the use of sampling.

George Wayland Clanton Jr., also known by the monikers Mirror Kisses, ESPRIT 空想, and Kid's Garden, is an American electronic musician and singer-songwriter that emerged out of the vaporwave music scene in the early 2010s. He established his independent record label 100% Electronica in 2015, and in 2019 launched the first vaporwave music festival, 100% ElectroniCON.

Mallsoft is a vaporwave subgenre centered around shopping malls.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 William Basinski: Musician Snapshots. SBE Media. September 11, 2015. pp. Chapter 3.
  2. 1 2 Pounds, Ross (June 30, 2010). "Why Glo-Fi's Future Is Not Ephemeral". The Quietus .
  3. 1 2 Witmer, Phil (August 18, 2017). "Frank Ocean's "Seigfried" Builds on the Beatles' Production Legacy". Vice. Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 Bowe, Miles (July 26, 2013). "Band To Watch: Saint Pepsi". Stereogum . Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Hinkes-Jones, Llewellyn (15 July 2010). "Downtempo Pop: When Good Music Gets a Bad Name". The Atlantic.
  6. 1 2 Sherburne, Phillip (October 20, 2015). "Songs in the Key of Zzz: The History of Sleep Music". Pitchfork .
  7. ↑ Sherburne, Philip (May 22, 2012). "Last Step: Going to Sleep to Make Music to Sleep To". Spin Magazine . Retrieved 4 July 2016.
  8. ↑ Masters, Marc (July 18, 2011). "James Ferraro Night Dolls With Hairspray". Pitchfork .
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Reynolds, Simon (March 2011b). "'Hypnagogic pop' and the landscape of Southern California". frieze . No. 137. Retrieved July 4, 2016.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Harper, Adam (December 7, 2012). "Comment: Vaporwave and the pop-art of the virtual plaza". Dummy. Archived from the original on April 1, 2015. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Keenan, Dave (August 2009). "Childhood's End". The Wire . No. 306.
  12. ↑ Trainer 2016, pp. 410–412.
  13. 1 2 Guesdon, Maël; Le Guern, Philippe (2014). "Analogue Nostalgias". In K. Niemeyer (ed.). Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future. Springer. pp. 77–78. ISBN   978-1-137-37588-9.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Reynolds 2011, p. 345.
  15. 1 2 3 Poyau, Morgan (July 13, 2011). "The 80s Nostalgia Aesthetic Of Music's Hottest New Subgenre: Hypnagogic Pop". Vice Media . Retrieved August 15, 2016.
  16. ↑ Trainer 2016, p. 410.
  17. ↑ Despres, Sean (July 18, 2010). "Whatever you do, don't call it 'chillwave'". The Japan Times . Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  18. 1 2 Trainer 2016, p. 412.
  19. 1 2 3 4 Harper, Adam (April 23, 2014). "Essay: Shades of Ariel Pink". Dummy.
  20. ↑ Fisher, Mark (26 April 2010). "Ariel Pink: Russian roulette". Fact.
  21. ↑ Albiez, Sean (2017). Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 11. Bloomsbury. pp. 347–349. ISBN   9781501326103 . Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  22. ↑ Reynolds 2011, p. 346.
  23. ↑ Bell, David (September 18, 2010). "Deserter's Songs – Looking Backwards: In Defence of Nostalgia". Ceasefire Mag. Retrieved August 17, 2016.
  24. 1 2 Beauomont-Thomas, Ben (December 3, 2010). "Why Olde English Spelling Bee is creating a buzz". The Guardian .
  25. ↑ Trainer 2016, pp. 409–410.
  26. ↑ Masters, Marc (September 14, 2009). "The Decade in Noise". Pitchfork .
  27. ↑ Reynolds, Simon (January 19, 2011a). "Leave Chillwave Alone". The Village Voice . Archived from the original on January 8, 2021. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
  28. ↑ Reynolds 2011, p. 348.
  29. ↑ Viney, Steven (November 14, 2017). "Is Ariel Pink finally being sincere?". Double J.
  30. 1 2 Redmond, Jordan (March 30, 2012). "John Maus - We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves". Tiny Mix Tapes . Retrieved October 24, 2017.
  31. 1 2 Ingram, Matthew (June 2012). "Here Comes the Flood". The Wire . No. 340. Archived from the original on 2021-01-08. Retrieved 2017-11-03.
  32. ↑ Burrows, Tim (September 9, 2012). "R Stevie Moore". Dazed Digital .
  33. 1 2 Moores, J.R. (October 9, 2014). "Speaking to the cult king of psychedelia and influencer of Ariel Pink, Temples and more". Red Bull.
  34. ↑ Reynolds 2011, p. 347.
  35. ↑ Trainer 2016, p. 415.
  36. 1 2 Price, Joe (August 29, 2016). "Vaporwave's Second Life". Complex .
  37. ↑ Krinsley, Jeremy (2009). "DANIEL LOPATIN of ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER". Impose. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
  38. ↑ Reynolds 2011.
  39. 1 2 3 4 5 Keenan, David (January 2011). "Wake Up Call". The Wire . No. 323. p. 43.
  40. ↑ Schreiber, Ryan. "Best New Track: "Round and Round" by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti". Pitchfork Media . Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  41. ↑ Harper, Adam (March 2014). Lo-Fi Aesthetics in Popular Music Discourse (Thesis). Wadham College. pp. 334, 338. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  42. ↑ Lynch, Martin (February 20, 2013). "Spencer Clark". Bomb.
  43. ↑ Schilling, Dave (April 8, 2015). "That Was a Thing: The Brief History of the Totally Made-Up Chillwave Music Genre". Grantland .
  44. ↑ Trainer 2016, pp. 409, 416.
  45. ↑ Weiss, Dan (July 6, 2012). "Slutwave, Tumblr Rap, Rape Gaze: Obscure Musical Genres Explained". LA Weekly .
  46. ↑ Trainer 2016, p. 416.
  47. ↑ Hogan, Marc. "Review: Psychic Chasms - Neon Indian". Pitchfork. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
  48. ↑ Bulut, Selim (July 30, 2018). "Remembering Sam Mehran, one of underground music's most unique talents". Dazed Digital .
  49. ↑ Glitsos, Laura (January 2018). "Vaporwave, or music optimised for abandoned malls" . Cambridge. ProQuest   1973993186 . Retrieved 9 April 2022– via The Wikipedia Library.
  50. 1 2 3 4 Harper, Adam (July 29, 2013). "Essay: Invest in Vaporwave Futures!". Dummy.
  51. ↑ Reynolds 2011, p. 349.
  52. ↑ Britton, Luke Morgan (September 26, 2016). "Music Genres Are A Joke That You're Not In On". Vice . Archived from the original on March 31, 2017.
  53. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Friedlader, Emilie (August 21, 2019). "Chillwave: a momentary microgenre that ushered in the age of nostalgia". The Guardian .
  54. ↑ Bowe, Miles (April 21, 2019). "Macintosh Plus Floral Shoppe". Pitchfork.
  55. ↑ Keith, Kawaii (November 24, 2009). "Oneohtrix Point Never interview". Tiny Mix Tapes . Retrieved 15 August 2016.
  56. ↑ Raffeiner, Arno (September 14, 2017). "Interview: Ariel Pink". Red Bull Music Academy.
  57. ↑ "James Ferraro interview: "The city of dream."". Dummy. 2010. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  58. ↑ Lynskey, Dorian (February 25, 2010). "Chillwave or twee-fi? Pop's latest genre folly". The Guardian .
  59. 1 2 Friedlander, Emilie (November 30, 2011). "Artist Profile: James Ferraro". Altered Zones. Archived from the original on December 2, 2011.
  60. ↑ Maloney, Devan (November 30, 2011). "Altered Zones, DIY/Indie Blog Collective, Shutters After 16 Months". Billboard.
  61. 1 2 Harper 2014, p. 379.
  62. ↑ Howe, Brian (October 9, 2019). "On His Debut as Ssoft, a Chillwave Survivor Lets His Acid House Flag Fly". Indy Week.
  63. ↑ Wray, Daniel Dylan (May 12, 2020). "'My studio is an extra limb right now': bedroom pop, the perfect genre for lockdown". The Guardian .
  64. ↑ Bevan, David (August 21, 2012). "Ariel Pink: In Praise of Guilty Genius". Spin .

Works cited

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.