7 ms·

My mind just can't accept that this isn't a parody / publicity stunt.

gagege 8y ago
Vaporwave is always half-serious, half-ironic.
pjc50 8y ago
Maybe the right word is "novelty"; it's being done differently in a deliberately obsolete, retro way. Part of that gives it publicity. But it's also a real item. Like Warhol's signed soup cans.
32qwef 8y ago
I thought the same thing when all these punk and indie groups were releasing cassettes. Then I found out that most people didn't play the cassettes. They bought them because they look good on a shelf. The cassettes have a download code printed inside (Bandcamp will spit out a CSV), so when you actually want to listen to the music, most will redeem the code (or just stream it). So it's still pretty silly, but not as silly as I thought. I have to presume Floppy releases are similar (Who even has a floppy drive now a days?)
- patorjk 8y ago
  Not only similar, but exactly what the guy selling the floppies thinks: > "And a lot of these people, I don’t even think a lot of ’em play the shit. They just kind of put it on their shelf."
- achileas 8y ago
  It's art and nice to display. People do the same with vinyl records, comics, etc., definitely looks cool to have for collectors and lovers of old tech.
  - 32qwef 8y ago
    Yes. I actually kept some of the cassettes I was given, and they do look nice on a shelf. Plus it's a way to support the band. I once considered releasing a tape with no music on it. Just nice cover art. I wonder if anyone would know?
    - cl0ne 8y ago
      I have a copy of this "LP". It's just the cover art, no actual record inside. I guess that made some people pretty mad who actually bought it. https://www.discogs.com/Pigeon-Religion-Why-Do-You-Hate-Pigeon-Religion/release/2050979 https://www.discogs.com/Pigeon-Religion-Why-Do-You-Hate-Pige...
    - sincerely 8y ago
      SOPHIE did that with a CD once, right?
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Punks, at least, most certainly do listen to cassettes. Cassettes are cheaper to run in small quantities than vinyl. Cassette players are cheap and easy to find. Punk music sounds good on cassette. I'm not so sure about floppy releases. But there is probably some overlap between retrocomputing enthusiasts and vaporwave fans. Maybe they're the target market. At least floppies are thin; a shelf full of cassettes will fill up quickly.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Punks, at least, most certainly do listen to cassettes. And my wife, as well. She's not a punk, but she buys cassettes and listens to them, too. I assume because it brings back memories. Duran Duran, Beck, Prince, Police, etc... Used ones from the record store she picks up for about $2. New releases run more, but I don't ask. But she listens to them. We picked up a huge box of blank 90-minute NOS Maxell tapes at an antiques store recently, and she's busy recording her records to tape so she can listen to them via Bluetooth in her car (via battery powered BT dongle). She picked up several brand new tape players and boom boxes in Japan recently to make sure she has something to play her cassettes on. Though I've seen some at Amoeba, too. But they're just way more expensive in L.A. Never try to understand the logic of a hardcore music fan. See also: Tube anything.
  - 32qwef 8y ago
    > Punks, at least, most certainly do listen to cassettes. In my years playing punk / indie music (which only ended last year) I did find a few people who said they listened to the tapes. Most people told me they didn't have a tape player, and just bought the tapes for display. But there was maybe one or two people, the hardcore types, who found an old tape deck in a thrift shop, or had a used car with a tape deck. Even in those cases, I don't think tapes were for every day listening. I would see the same people playing music on their phone or what not. Tapes were for special occasions. > Punk music sounds good on cassette. I agree. So for certain projects, I used to record my music onto a tape, and then feed it back into the computer before I uploaded it. I don't know why more people don't do this.
    - nerdponx 8y ago
- gatesphere 8y ago
  I for one have a large modern tape collection (underground metal, noise, ambient, and sound-art mostly), and I play them quite regularly.
acconrad 8y ago
And yet it's a sub with 100,000 followers: https://old.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/ There's a sub-genre that dubs Vaporwave songs with Simpsons clips that has tens of millions of views on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simpsonwave https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simpsonwave It is indeed very real. Surreal, even.
- 27182818284 8y ago
  Simpsonwave is one of those things that reminded me just how great having the Internet is. I'm not in the community by any means, but as soon as I learned about it, I was so happy that it existed and that it had a community putting out work.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Simpsonwave really brought back my love of Memphis Horrorcore. Come & Get Yo Wig Split! (heavily sampled in one of those Ryan Celcius videos)
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  If you think that Simpsonwave is weird, just wait until you discover fashwave: https://thump.vice.com/en_uk/article/mgwk7b/fashwave-trumpwave-far-right-appropriating-electronic-music https://thump.vice.com/en_uk/article/mgwk7b/fashwave-trumpwa... It's literally the same as vaporwave, but with fascist titles and graphics. Reminds me a lot of neo-Nazis appropriating metal and punk. Vaporwave is a weird genre. It's really popular on the internet, but it never quite hit mainstream, I don't see clubs playing it and most of the artists seem to be self-releasing. A vaporwave artist had a gig here in Melbourne a couple of months ago (I can't remember who it was now), and I thought about going along just to see what kind of people actually listen to it in real life.
  - tgb 8y ago
    Well now I have Cybernazi in my Youtube history, guess I should read the article before clicking the Youtube link and then blithely clicking "okay" on the notice informing me that the video content has been flagged. Though I'm mostly just annoyed that they have replaced an "a" with a delta instead of an alpha.
21 8y ago
It's just hipsterism. Just like cassette players, mechanical type-writers, old IBM keyboards, VHS revival, taking pictures on film, so on.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Multicomp 8y ago
  Woah woah woah, I can see hipsterism being applied to most in that list, but the IBM keyboards do not apply IMO. Anecdote: Most hipsters I know give me guff about using mine, and extol the virtues of the ergonomic rubber dome or "fancy" Corsair rgb. Not judging their choice of kb, only pointing out nobody has said "wow your 1987 beige boat anchor is so cool I'm going to get one"
Apocryphon 8y ago
It's an aesthetic, or as they call it, an a e s t h e t i c. There's nostalgia in that style, when internet was 90s and simpler. When malls were flourishing and it looked like we were heading towards a comfortable consumerist end of history rather than a hyper-optimized automated dystopia. The Windows 95 phone could be considered vaporwave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405219
- EE84M3i 8y ago
  Small correction - ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ (e.g. Fullwidth unicode latin caps) would be more canonical. I believe it's intended to evoke use of fullwidth romaji in Japanese as a bit of a play on Japanese use of english words to sound cool.
  - danbolt 8y ago
    When I read text with the fullwidth latin unicode like that, it certainly feels more dreamlike. I think Vaporwave appeals to me a lot as tapes and the aesthetics of foreign-made (eg: Japan, Taiwan, etc.) electronics feel vivid in the fuzzier memories of my childhood. If the film Inception was made today, the photograph in the vault could have been an old VHS tape.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
chippy 8y ago
It is a music genre thats disguised as a joke or a joke thats disguised as a music genre.
bitwize 8y ago
It's both sincere and a parody. It harks back to the early 90s, the birth of the internet in the public consciousness, and the feeling that the primitive Windows and Mac machines we had were precursors to the Ono-Sendai cyberdecks we would soon be having. But there's a sense of "oh how naïve we were back then" to it.

Vaporwave is always half-serious, half-ironic.

Maybe the right word is "novelty"; it's being done differently in a deliberately obsolete, retro way. Part of that gives it publicity. But it's also a real item. Like Warhol's signed soup cans.

32qwef 8y ago

I thought the same thing when all these punk and indie groups were releasing cassettes. Then I found out that most people didn't play the cassettes. They bought them because they look good on a shelf. The cassettes have a download code printed inside (Bandcamp will spit out a CSV), so when you actually want to listen to the music, most will redeem the code (or just stream it). So it's still pretty silly, but not as silly as I thought. I have to presume Floppy releases are similar (Who even has a floppy drive now a days?)

patorjk 8y ago
Not only similar, but exactly what the guy selling the floppies thinks: > "And a lot of these people, I don’t even think a lot of ’em play the shit. They just kind of put it on their shelf."
achileas 8y ago
It's art and nice to display. People do the same with vinyl records, comics, etc., definitely looks cool to have for collectors and lovers of old tech.
- 32qwef 8y ago
  Yes. I actually kept some of the cassettes I was given, and they do look nice on a shelf. Plus it's a way to support the band. I once considered releasing a tape with no music on it. Just nice cover art. I wonder if anyone would know?
  - cl0ne 8y ago
    I have a copy of this "LP". It's just the cover art, no actual record inside. I guess that made some people pretty mad who actually bought it. https://www.discogs.com/Pigeon-Religion-Why-Do-You-Hate-Pigeon-Religion/release/2050979 https://www.discogs.com/Pigeon-Religion-Why-Do-You-Hate-Pige...
  - sincerely 8y ago
    SOPHIE did that with a CD once, right?
nerdponx 8y ago
Punks, at least, most certainly do listen to cassettes. Cassettes are cheaper to run in small quantities than vinyl. Cassette players are cheap and easy to find. Punk music sounds good on cassette. I'm not so sure about floppy releases. But there is probably some overlap between retrocomputing enthusiasts and vaporwave fans. Maybe they're the target market. At least floppies are thin; a shelf full of cassettes will fill up quickly.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Punks, at least, most certainly do listen to cassettes. And my wife, as well. She's not a punk, but she buys cassettes and listens to them, too. I assume because it brings back memories. Duran Duran, Beck, Prince, Police, etc... Used ones from the record store she picks up for about $2. New releases run more, but I don't ask. But she listens to them. We picked up a huge box of blank 90-minute NOS Maxell tapes at an antiques store recently, and she's busy recording her records to tape so she can listen to them via Bluetooth in her car (via battery powered BT dongle). She picked up several brand new tape players and boom boxes in Japan recently to make sure she has something to play her cassettes on. Though I've seen some at Amoeba, too. But they're just way more expensive in L.A. Never try to understand the logic of a hardcore music fan. See also: Tube anything.
- 32qwef 8y ago
  > Punks, at least, most certainly do listen to cassettes. In my years playing punk / indie music (which only ended last year) I did find a few people who said they listened to the tapes. Most people told me they didn't have a tape player, and just bought the tapes for display. But there was maybe one or two people, the hardcore types, who found an old tape deck in a thrift shop, or had a used car with a tape deck. Even in those cases, I don't think tapes were for every day listening. I would see the same people playing music on their phone or what not. Tapes were for special occasions. > Punk music sounds good on cassette. I agree. So for certain projects, I used to record my music onto a tape, and then feed it back into the computer before I uploaded it. I don't know why more people don't do this.
  - nerdponx 8y ago
gatesphere 8y ago
I for one have a large modern tape collection (underground metal, noise, ambient, and sound-art mostly), and I play them quite regularly.

acconrad 8y ago

And yet it's a sub with 100,000 followers: https://old.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/ There's a sub-genre that dubs Vaporwave songs with Simpsons clips that has tens of millions of views on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simpsonwave https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=simpsonwave It is indeed very real. Surreal, even.

27182818284 8y ago
Simpsonwave is one of those things that reminded me just how great having the Internet is. I'm not in the community by any means, but as soon as I learned about it, I was so happy that it existed and that it had a community putting out work.
- busterarm 8y ago
  Simpsonwave really brought back my love of Memphis Horrorcore. Come & Get Yo Wig Split! (heavily sampled in one of those Ryan Celcius videos)
toomanybeersies 8y ago
If you think that Simpsonwave is weird, just wait until you discover fashwave: https://thump.vice.com/en_uk/article/mgwk7b/fashwave-trumpwave-far-right-appropriating-electronic-music https://thump.vice.com/en_uk/article/mgwk7b/fashwave-trumpwa... It's literally the same as vaporwave, but with fascist titles and graphics. Reminds me a lot of neo-Nazis appropriating metal and punk. Vaporwave is a weird genre. It's really popular on the internet, but it never quite hit mainstream, I don't see clubs playing it and most of the artists seem to be self-releasing. A vaporwave artist had a gig here in Melbourne a couple of months ago (I can't remember who it was now), and I thought about going along just to see what kind of people actually listen to it in real life.
- tgb 8y ago
  Well now I have Cybernazi in my Youtube history, guess I should read the article before clicking the Youtube link and then blithely clicking "okay" on the notice informing me that the video content has been flagged. Though I'm mostly just annoyed that they have replaced an "a" with a delta instead of an alpha.

21 8y ago

It's just hipsterism. Just like cassette players, mechanical type-writers, old IBM keyboards, VHS revival, taking pictures on film, so on.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Multicomp 8y ago
Woah woah woah, I can see hipsterism being applied to most in that list, but the IBM keyboards do not apply IMO. Anecdote: Most hipsters I know give me guff about using mine, and extol the virtues of the ergonomic rubber dome or "fancy" Corsair rgb. Not judging their choice of kb, only pointing out nobody has said "wow your 1987 beige boat anchor is so cool I'm going to get one"

Apocryphon 8y ago

It's an aesthetic, or as they call it, an a e s t h e t i c. There's nostalgia in that style, when internet was 90s and simpler. When malls were flourishing and it looked like we were heading towards a comfortable consumerist end of history rather than a hyper-optimized automated dystopia. The Windows 95 phone could be considered vaporwave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405219

EE84M3i 8y ago
Small correction - ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ (e.g. Fullwidth unicode latin caps) would be more canonical. I believe it's intended to evoke use of fullwidth romaji in Japanese as a bit of a play on Japanese use of english words to sound cool.
- danbolt 8y ago
  When I read text with the fullwidth latin unicode like that, it certainly feels more dreamlike. I think Vaporwave appeals to me a lot as tapes and the aesthetics of foreign-made (eg: Japan, Taiwan, etc.) electronics feel vivid in the fuzzier memories of my childhood. If the film Inception was made today, the photograph in the vault could have been an old VHS tape.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

chippy 8y ago

It is a music genre thats disguised as a joke or a joke thats disguised as a music genre.

bitwize 8y ago

It's both sincere and a parody. It harks back to the early 90s, the birth of the internet in the public consciousness, and the feeling that the primitive Windows and Mac machines we had were precursors to the Ono-Sendai cyberdecks we would soon be having. But there's a sense of "oh how naïve we were back then" to it.