The Curious History of Vaporwave

what the is vaporwave well join me on this journey to the past to learn about the history of this music genre the vaporwave is a micro genre formed Underground on the internet it started rearing its head in the early 2010s of course there was music of this genre previous to the 2010s but it was one of the first times it began being referred to as vaporwave it started out as an ironic take on chillwave and was not even a serious genre but it slowly did become one I for one am a fan of the drugged out slippery sound of vaporwave artists it started cementing itself into the internet Zeitgeist when 80s and 90s retro culture made a comeback with kids who grew up with it lots of artists were influenced by the Retro aesthetic that they experienced as a child like Matrix metals and Daniel lopatine before we get into that though let's take a short look at the genre that would act as a stepping stone for vaporwave to emerge like I mentioned previously chillwave which was coined in 2009 was a precursor to the vaporwave movement chillwave is a genre is described as emulating 1980s Electro pop and has a dream-like sound to its Melodies and instrumentation something I learned myself while researching this this was the fact that chillwave was one of the first genres of music to primarily evolve through the internet songs that would be categorized as chillwave existed before 2009 but the term was coined in 09 by a Blog called Hipster Runoff it was a satirical blog poking fun at micro genres and Indie artist who made music that was more incidental or whose sounds were primarily not musical before reading about this I did not even know there was a term for this type of music that is much more ambient and not as melodic you learn something new every day anyways the summer of 2009 was considered the summer of chillwave with artists blowing up like Neon Indian and washed out the crazy thing is Neon Indian was named one of the best new bands by Rolling Stone in 2010 for making what was later to be known as a joke genre one of the reasons this type of music became so prolific is because of its low budget style and low barrier to entry which resulted in an extreme saturation of artists trying to emulate the style it got so bad in fact that the term chillwave became a pejorative to describe the genre's shallowness and nostalgia fading I for one was never into this type of scene during its peak but looking back at it I kind of like the style of music but I digress by the mid-2010s the genre had faded Into Obscurity and is now viewed as a relic of the recent past alright now let's get the back to the actual topic of this video vaporwave one of the first times vaporwave started to form was when Daniel lopatin uploaded a bunch of plunderphonic Loops to his YouTube channel under the name Sunset Corp plunder phonic music is built from older known works of art and edited or chopped together to create something new rather than building from scratch it was coined in 1985 and plunder phonics include more than just sampling songs but also movies TV shows or educational content from the past being spliced together with musical elements to create something new anyways these clips were pulled from his audio visual project called memory vague this project was not just simply an album though it contained found footage from old commercials animation and other music videos that were ironically sourced from other YouTube videos the visual aspect effects of vaporwave complement the audio portions to complete the aesthetic of the genre artists would use clip art gifts from the early days of the internet along with a wide spectrum of neon pastel or muted colors or images from the 80s and 90s in a collage form to create the cover art or videos for their projects some people would argue that vaporwave is actually more of a visual art medium rather than a musical one but that's a debate for another day I've seen the visual aspect of the genre described as surreal and absurdist and probably the most apt description of all was describing the visual style as abandoned shopping mall from the 90s what the anyways most vaporwave is considered to be a Chopped and Screwed repurposing of early 80s and 90s dance music however artists over the years have evolved and changed and most certainly are not boxed into that description some other notable early pioneers of the sub-genre include washed out with the project called feel it all around in 2009 which sampled the 1983 Italian dance song I Want You You by Gary Lowe this one song essentially became the poster child for the genre and was even mentioned by the publication Pitchfork some other interesting samples included sounds from the Nintendo Wii menu and Skype sound effects that were pitched down and drenched in Reverb a somewhat aloof comparison that I was thinking about myself was that weird trend of 8D audio on YouTube and how chillwave and vaporwave seeped their way into those types of videos whether it was subconscious or not anyway thank God that dumb trend is over I think by now we built a pretty clear picture of what vaporwave is so let's get into some of the early days of when the genre exploded one of the first recorded uses of the term vaporwave came in 2011 with an anonymous blog poster who was reviewing the album surf's pure hearts by girlhood however others say the term originated in a community of people on turntable FM which is a social media website that allows people to stream music together shortly after one of the first albums to properly be labeled as vaporwave was floral shop by vectroid in late 2011. this one album is credited as the album that truly defined the genre and would have a ripple effect making the genre explode into internet subculture the cover art for this album almost perfectly encapsulates the entirety of vaporwave itself with its bright yet somehow muted colors the Greek bust and an aesthetic that reminds me of that one episode of SpongeBob where Squidward gets locked in a freezer for two thousand years and comes out trapped in the embodiment of purgatory sadly though with all trends that start exploding it led to the destruction of the genre due to people creating uninspired copies and copious amounts of dull vaporwave music that was shared on YouTube 4chan and Last FM during early and mid-2012 vaporwave found a home on Tumblr as it became a popular way for users to decorate their profiles with the vaporwave aesthetic that we covered earlier this goes back to what we previously talked about where vaporwave is not just the genre of music but a culture the visual elements are just as important if not more than the actual music and Tumblr embrace it with open arms right around this time the album blank banshee's 0 was released by blank Banshee this album started cutting through the notion that vaporwave was an easy to make Dole sample heavy genre as the album contained a lot of trap inspired drums and Melodies to accompany the vaporwave style it was generally positively received by listeners at the time and would lead to more hybrid style tracks and albums fused with vaporwave this one album resulted in a flood of artists putting their songs and albums on bandcamp and Publications like tiny mixtapes and dummy mags started covering the movement vaporwave was still well underground at this point but that was about to change in March of 2012 when the New York Times wrote an article about c-punk which is a genre tangentially related to vaporwave not only that but later on Vox would create a short expose on that article as well as the music video Rihanna release that co-opted c-punk Aesthetics this put the subcultures of this type into the spotlight for the first time and it started gaining notoriety later that year the famous melon YouTuber Anthony fantano created a video review for the album Floral shop that we talked about earlier he wasn't that big a fan of the album and even mentioned how vaporwave was widely considered to be a joke by many however he also said something that rang true for me and that is that on the internet you can pretty much find anything you want and vaporwave is something that people wanted it sort of became something larger than itself this would solidify vaporwave as a genre and put even more eyes onto the subcultures forming around it however quickly after this things would get a little bit more crazy after the mainstream attention that vaporwave received many core fans and creators of the genre on 4chan and Reddit would attempt to split off many sub-genres of vaporwave including hard Vapor Mall soft and Future Funk I highly recommend you read about some of this stuff yourself because it's absolutely fascinating it's so weird and beautiful how the most unlikely of things pop up the internet because people from across the world connect and show interest and obscure stuff anyways Joe price a writer at complex would create an article on the happenings at this time related to the subculture and wrote many of The sub-genres Faded Into Obscurity and many didn't even make sense to begin with but things of all very rapidly on on the internet and less than a year later young lean an artist who is credited with being one of the first artists to gain popularity by fusing trap and rap elements into vaporwave would go on to inspire underground DJs to use YouTube's new live streaming function to host 24-hour radio stations of vaporwave these live streams were accompanied by visuals taken from Nintendo 64 games such as Zelda and Mario this one event would lead to the slow Resurgence of the genre as well as the visual aesthetic young lean is still a wildly popular artist and you can see the shadows of these genres pop up here and there even in his newer Works he sort of made vaporwave cool again and showed the world that you can Infuse those type of Aesthetics into your own music and art a few things happened after that in 2015 Rolling Stone published a list of 10 artists you need to know one of which being 2814 which was a vaporwave artist they stated that the album birth of a New Day by the same artist was an unparalleled success within a small passionate pocket of the Internet only a short while later MTV would Rebrand their logo and look inspired heavily by sea punk and Vapor visual Styles if that wasn't enough the single hotline bling came out by Drake in July of 2015. the song was popular with vaporwave producers and would go on to inspire tons of remixes of the song at this time it seemed like vaporwave had stabilized in its status and internet meme culture and had a solid fan base especially on sites like bandcamp and Reddit however to anyone directly outside of the subculture it was still seen as essentially a joke genre and not to be taken seriously to me vaporwave seems to have a pretty rich history from its Inception all the way to the present day it's a perfect example of how many different phases a small chunk of the internet can go through and how the smallest of communities can reach the biggest of audiences and not just reach them influence them as well if any of this stuff interests you guys I highly recommend you go and check out some of the music these artists make I personally think reading about people's own little pocket of the internet is awesome and seeing how other communities ebb and flow is always interesting anyways thank you guys for watching stay safe out there and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: a funny looking squash

Views: 11,371

Keywords: fl studio, a funny looking squash, vaporwave, simpsons wave, vaportrap, vapormeme, a brief history, theory lesson, frankjavcee, music theory lesson, frank jav cee, baphomet, yung bae, future funk, jazz theory, sad boys, yung lean, aesthetics, bass guitar, plunderphonics, nostalgia music, esprit, reupload, saint pepsi, george clanton, music, bass music, history of vaporwave, history of chillwave, history, hardvapour, yung lean history, floral shoppe, blank banshee 0

Id: SP4b3sZxjc8

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022