Vaporwave
How anonymous producers turned corporate muzak and 1980s detritus into the Internet's first post-ironic music genre
- The Review That Made It Canon
- The Turntable.fm Circle
- When Fascists Discovered the Aesthetic
In this issue
- 01Chapter 1The Scene2 min
- 02Chapter 2Key PlayersMembers
- 03Chapter 3Defining the SoundMembers
- 04Chapter 4StoriesMembers
- 05Chapter 5Legacy and InfluenceMembers
- 06The castWho was thereMembers
- 07In their own wordsHear them tell itMembers
- 08Essential recordsThe records that made itMembers
- 09The labelsWho put it on recordMembers
- 10Chronology2009 to 2019Members
- 11StoriesThe stories behind itMembers
- 12PlacesWhere it happenedMembers
- 13ConnectionsWhere it ledMembers
The Scene
June 2009: Daniel Lopatin uploaded plunderphonics loops to YouTube under the alias sunsetcorp. Clips drawn from his audio-visual album Memory Vague. The same summer, Matrix Metals released Flamingo Breeze, synthesizer loops anticipating the slowed-down nostalgia that would define a genre not yet named. Washed Out slowed Gary Low's 1983 Italian dance track “I Want You” to syrupy crawl on “Feel It All Around,” crystallizing chillwave's analog nostalgia—the substrate from which something stranger would emerge.
August 2010: Lopatin assembled those YouTube clips into Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, packaging that mimicked the 1993 video game Ecco the Dolphin. The cassette taught suburban teenagers you could loop forgotten commercial music, slow it down, add vibrating echoes, and create something that felt like memory degrading in real time. “A DIY practice that didn't involve any specialized music tech knowledge,” Lopatin later explained—the appeal was the minimal barrier to entry. James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual arrived in 2011. Bright, earnest simulation of corporate stock music and infomercial soundtracks. The templates were in place.
Read the rest of this issue, and every other one.
The full essay, the cast (Macintosh Plus (Ramona Langley), Daniel Lopatin (Chuck Person / Oneohtrix Point Never), James Ferraro and more), the records, the chronology and the stories. About 14 minutes of reading, with the music a click away.
Start your 7-day free trialThen $5 a month. Cancel any time.8 albums, and the stories behind them
- 1
It gave vaporwave its founding technique of looping and slowing forgotten music into something haunted.
- 2
It became vaporwave's accidental manifesto, with cover art and sound that defined the genre's identity.
- 3
It shows vaporwave's other pole, built entirely from corporate muzak and product-demonstration sounds nobody called music.
- Far Side Virtual
- Flamingo Breeze
