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Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, 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, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.
Floral Shoppe is the ninth studio album by the American electronic musician Vektroid under the alias Macintosh Plus, released on December 9, 2011 by the independent record label Beer on the Rug. It is her ninth full-length album and was one of the first releases of the 2010s microgenre known as vaporwave to gain popular recognition on the Internet. Since then, Floral Shoppe has been considered by some critics to be the defining album of the style.
Lee Arthur Carter, known professionally by his stage name Viper, is an American rapper, producer and actor. Viper has been producing music since childhood, but he received widespread attention online for his 2008 album, You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack. The prolific nature of his work, together with his commitment to self production, has garnered him a cult following as an outsider artist, with comparisons drawn to rapper Lil B and musician Wesley Willis. He is also regarded as one of the originators of cloud rap.
No Stairway is the debut studio album of Glassine, the musical project of Danny Greenwald, first released online and later issued on cassette worldwide by the label Patient Sounds, in April and August 2015, respectively. The title is a reference to a line from the 1992 film Wayne's World. The album garnered significant attention from music journalists for its compositional and production technique. In two Guitar Center stores, Greenwald tapped people playing instruments on his iPhone, and used snippets of these low-quality trackings as loops or synth patches, playing some of them through effects pedals or 4-track machines. The "dystopian" environment of Guitar Center shops and his desire to record something without a budget while in New York City is what inspired his idea to use samples of recordings of people playing instruments and build compositions out of them. On Fact's year-end list of best Bandcamp releases, No Stairway came in at number 19.
Birth of a New Day is the second studio album by English-American electronic music duo of dreampunk producers Hong Kong Express and Telepath, both collaborating under the alias 2814, released on January 21, 2015, by HKE's record label Dream Catalogue. With the popularity of vaporwave in the early to mid-2010s, the duo experimented with the genre by not using any form of samples to compose the album, thus becoming notable for being one of the first vaporwave releases not to include such production techniques. 2814 stated that they wanted it to "have a strong sense of place"; its themes reflect the dark worldviews of HKE.
Blank Banshee 0 is the debut studio album by Canadian artist and producer Blank Banshee. It was released for free via Bandcamp on September 1, 2012.
Dark Web is a studio album by American producer Keith Rankin, known by his stage name Giant Claw, released in September 2014 worldwide by the labels Orange Milk Records, Noumenal Loom, and in Japan by Virgin Babylon. Dark Web depicts the idea of existing cultures and music coming together to form, in the words of Orange Milk, "new compositional tools." As such, its melodies are executed from a combination of half-second-length snippets of vocal samples from pop and R&B songs. Dark Web follows Giant Claw's typical style of samples and MIDI compositions but with more influences of modern music than Rankin's previous records. Dark Web garnered a favorable critical response for its odd tone and landed in the year-end lists of publications such as Tiny Mix Tapes and CMJ.
Pharma is a double album by American vaporwave producer Alex Koenig, also known as Nmesh. It was released August 4, 2017 on Orange Milk Records. It follows the same vaporwave style as other Nmesh albums like Nu.wav Hallucinations (2013) and Dream Sequins (2014).
Blank Banshee 1 is the second studio album by Canadian musician and producer Blank Banshee. It was released as a free digital download via Bandcamp on October 20, 2013.
Mega, is the third studio album by Canadian musician and producer Blank Banshee. It was released via Bandcamp on October 10, 2016.
You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack is the fifth studio album by American rapper and producer Viper. It was released on February 19, 2008, through his own homemade record label, Rhyme Time Records, and later released physically by indie record label Animated Music. It is the most well known of all of his albums, gathering a cult following in the years since its release. Viper himself has been quoted as saying it is his favorite album he has made.
Patrick Driscoll, known professionally as Blank Banshee, is a Canadian artist, musician and producer from Saint John, New Brunswick. He rose to popularity in 2012 with his album Blank Banshee 0, which combined traditional elements of vaporwave with trap music, a style now known as vaportrap. Blank Banshee's music has been described as a "balance of abstract ambience and dance-able trap".
Keith Rankin is an American electronic musician who records under the alias Giant Claw, a largely vaporwave and psychedelic music project. He is also known for the vaporwave project Death's Dynamic Shroud, wherein he joined in 2014.
Rain Temple is the third studio album by English-American electronic music duo of dreampunk musicians Hong Kong Express and Telepath, both collaborating under the alias 2814, released on July 26, 2016, by their record label Dream Catalogue. After the success of Birth of a New Day, one of the members stated that he wanted to "leave 2814 to rest", but he couldn't as he states that the project "just works so well for us both."
Dreampunk is a microgenre of electronic music characterized by its focus on cinematic ambience and field recordings, combined with various traits and techniques from electronic genres such as techno, jungle, electro, and dubstep.
Macross 82-99 is a Mexican electronic music producer and DJ from Mexico City, based out of Osaka, Japan. His music combines elements of plunderphonics, disco, jazz fusion, house, hip hop and city pop, and commonly makes use of video games, Japanese pop culture, as well as 80s and 90s anime, most notably Sailor Moon, as aesthetic tropes. Macross 82-99's 2013 albums ネオ東京 and SAILORWAVE, along with musical cohort Saint Pepsi's Hit Vibes, are commonly cited as the origin point for the "future funk" subgenre of vaporwave, which combines the sample-based production approach and visual language of vaporwave with French house and dance music influences. The "82-99" in the artist's stage name refers to the fact that Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the anime which sonically and visually inspired him during the beginnings of the project, was broadcast in 1982, while the story took place in the year 1999.
Jornt Elzinga, commonly known as Cat System Corp., is a Dutch musician regarded as a vaporwave musician that originated the mallsoft subgenre. He also previously recorded as Mesektet for his dark ambient releases.
News at 11 is the eighteenth studio album by Cat System Corp., the alias of Dutch electronic musician Jornt Elzinga. Released on September 11, 2016, it samples smooth jazz songs and clips from TV commercials as a tribute to the victims of the September 11 attacks. Inspired by a vaporwave mix featuring a picture of the burning Twin Towers, Elzinga produced News at 11 as a portrayal of "a parallel universe where it never happened." Initially intended to be a Weather Channel-themed release, the album was produced over the course of nine months. It was likened to the themes of author Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), while its relation to capitalism has been compared to Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism (2009).
Death's Dynamic Shroud is an American electronic and vaporwave trio consisting of James Webster, Tech Honors, and Keith Rankin. The band releases a large amount of music regularly as sample-driven mixtapes under the .wmv moniker, in addition to releasing more standard mainline albums.
Palm Mall is the ninth studio album by Cat System Corp., the alias of Dutch electronic musician Jornt Elzinga. Released on 2 October 2014, its nine tracks use samples of elevator music to explore shopping malls. Following the success of Hiraeth (2014), Elzinga drew inspiration from the Jay Rock song "Hood Gone Love It" in Grand Theft Auto V (2013), and produced Palm Mall as his first "serious try" at a mallsoft release. It was a turning point for Elzinga's music and is his favorite release of the Cat System Corp. discography, featuring participation of several other vaporwave musicians.
References
- ↑ Tiny Mix Tapes
- ↑ Lore: Vaporwave isn’t back; it was never dead // The Observer
- ↑ "@Ghostdia". Twitter. Retrieved 18 December 2018.
- ↑ "I'll Try Living Like This, by death's dynamic shroud.wmv". Bandcamp . Retrieved 2016-10-24.
- ↑ "Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv - I'll Try Living Like This". Discogs. Retrieved 18 December 2018.
- ↑ "The 50 Best Albums of 2015". Fact . Retrieved 2016-10-24.
- ↑ Name Your Price: May’s Best Bandcamp Releases - FACT Magazine
- ↑ Top 10 Electronic albums of the 2010s|RMU Sentry Media
- ↑ Midwest Hemorrhoid Treatment Center on YouTube
- ↑ CSI: NY - They're a Cancer, Living in the Streets Like Dogs on YouTube
- ↑ Syoko - Criminal Shuffle on YouTube
- ↑ Nelly Furtado - Turn Off The Light (Official Music Video) on YouTube
- ↑ TEMPURA KIDS - One Step on YouTube
- ↑ Sound Drama "Two People" Introductory Chapter [The Legend of Zelda: Sound & Drama on YouTube]
- ↑ Beserk OST - Earth on YouTube
- ↑ Syoko - Erewhon on YouTube
- ↑ WhoSampled
