Vaporwave is Dead, Long Live Vaporwave
The A E S T H E T I C
A meme?
An art style?
Strange music for sad Millennials?
All of the above and more. Never before have I been so enamored with... whatever this is. I stumbled upon it years ago and it struck a chord so deep, so foundational to my very being, that I’ve been obsessed ever since.
Vaporwave is an Internet music microgenre, aesthetic and meme that emerged in the early 2010s. Originating from experimental genres like Post-Noise and Hypnagogic Pop, its sound is defined by the use of chopped, slowed-down, and reverb-heavy samples from 1980s and 1990s smooth jazz, R&B, and lounge music. The music creates a surreal, melancholic, and nostalgic atmosphere, evoking the uncanny feeling of wandering through a deserted shopping mall or hearing muzak from a forgotten corporate training video.
The aesthetic's visual style is a distinct collage that blends certain elements of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the interior design of malls and lobbies (classical Greco-Roman statues and columns, palm plants, pink and cyan pastel colors, tiled floors, Memphis Lite patterns), Japan's 1980s economic boom, retro commercials, retro computers, 1990s web design, early CGI, and logos of obsolete brands.
Vaporwave is widely interpreted as an ambiguous critique and parody of consumer capitalism and technological utopianism, using the "dead" aesthetics of a recent past to evoke a sense of nostalgia for a future that never materialized. Aesthetics Wiki
The F E E L S
Nostalgia for a place I’ve never been, for a time that never happened. The smell of an empty mall in the early 90s, the sound of muzak over tinny speakers. Laughter by the pool and evenings falling asleep to grainy VHS rentals. Quiet streets under buzzing neon.
The sights and sounds of vaporwave elicit memories of lives lived many times over, during eras still full of promise and potential. It’s both gut-wrenching and joyous.
I don’t think my words can properly convey the feeling, but this was an attempt.
This always reminds me of my wife