A Light Genre History of Vaporwave and Relating Genre Elements

So where exactly did what we call Vaporwave come from? Where did all these sounds and following sonic qualities that show up in Vaporwave arrive? Aren't they just beeps and boops that sound electronic while other beeps and boops sound more real? What makes these individual and where did they come from? Well, despite Vaporwave being fairly recent musical pop-up, everything's got a history. From Aphex Twin to Macintosh Plus, this post is going to walk through some of that history.

Like was just said, Aphex Twin. Well, what's Aphex Twin's influence on Vaporwave today? Aphex Twin was a popular EDM/Techno producer in the 1990s but really hit his stride in the late 90s. Aphex twin was a popular mainstream audience by the late 90s despite having an experimental edge. Some people today might say the sound is "tryhard" or "edgy." What this is saying is that it almost has an accidental camp element. This could come from having dark sounds/themes or inserts like voice samples of "I'll eat your soul" and screaming/moaning. Either way you take it, either genuine or slightly too edgy, there are sonic elements within Aphex Twin's that can be linked up to Vaporwave. Let's look at two of Aphex Twin's biggest songs, Window Licker and Come to Daddy. First of all, both songs use a lot of vocal samples manipulated through synthesizers, now this isn't something Vaporwave now has exclusively, quite the opposite. Aphex Twin hit heavy critical claim with his latter 90s songs (you can can't 1992 as his first major achievement) and from that comes influence. Synthed voice samples are everywhere, even outside of electronic music groups. But nonetheless, synthed vocal samples do also find their spot in Vaporwave. Not just the usage of them but the amount of time they exist within the song. Vaporwave uses samples as the entire song backbone at the very least if not more in most cases generally. While Aphex Twin has lots of sample work in this track it isn't the same case. The influence still stands though. just look at the heavy vocal sampling in Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe. Come to Daddy is based around several vocal samples as his the other Aphex Twin track this post is bringing up, Window Licker. Window Licker is not only features an even more heavily manipulated vocal sample but also employs a consistently present bass line riff that is shifted and changed throughout. By the end, the bass taken from individual ringing notes and forced into a buzz. This kind of thing is recoverable in Blank Banshee's Ammonia Clouds, Venus Death Trap, and Hyper Object all off of the album "0." These three tracks find themselves doing a similar thing as Window Licker, but of course with their own creative style. For instance, Blank Banshee's tracks use bass that sounds much more like a physical bass guitar being plucked, sample or not.

Speaking of samples, this post wouldn't be able to talk about Vaporwave, a sample based genre of music, without talking about Plunderphonics. Plunderphonics was a sect of music coined by composer John Oswald in a 1985 essay. Plunderphonic music refers to music that is not sample based, but entirely a single sample source manipulated into a track with a beat and rhythm (sometimes this isn't also the case though.) It takes the sample and re-edits, speeds up, slows down, etc, and plays with it, but the sample source is the only thing introduced into the song (some tracks does use a backbeat though.) John Oswald has a track that is just Judy Garland from the wizard of oz saying "rainbow" from the track "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" slowed down to last over a minute. A more recent track from a Vimeo user named "jessethaulfilm" is Br Ba which takes the first episode of the show "Breaking Bad" and re-edits sounds of guns being pulled and Bryan Cranston being nervous into a punchy and quick beat. So it's easy to see the connection from Plunderphonics to Vaporwave, especially with some of the most mainstream and flagship tracks the genre has to offer being so based in a single sample area. Just look at what some call the Vaporwave album, Macintosh Plus' album Floral Shoppe. A lot of the tracks here are mainly a single sample being manipulated and played with into its own unique new track and then having a few new things placed on top (if any.)

From Floral Shoppe theres the opener, ブート(Booting.) This track is entirely the song "Tar Baby" from the artist "Sade" off of the 1985 album "Promise" just slowed down by a lot, re-edited, and with key words and parts repeated and reorder for musical effect. There are no other samples on top of this track beyond Tar Baby. "Booting" is truly one single sample edited and reshaped to make something different within  Vaporwave sonic qualities and thus at heart something within Plunderphonics' qualities as well.

Something worth mentioning in this short history is Muzak. Muzak (word trademarked back in 1954) is a term that refers to a brand ambient music that plays in elevators and stores. So how does this play into Vaporwave? These songs are most always put together to great a positive shopping or consumer environment. Because of this, most things within the designation of Muzak are almost always very soft, smooth, ambient, and attempt to put together a soothing sometimes totally harmonious musical environment. Now, some of these words do clash with some of the general attributes. Things like being constantly soft and consistently harmonious or non-dissonant/positive sounding. But at the same time some of these things work into Vaporwave well, such as ambience and a consumer environment. If you think about it, store music isn't such a ground up production anymore (but I'm no expert in the spread and usage of store music across the world) and elevator music seems to be something of the past. But that's how this jives back into Vaporwave. Exactly due to the fact that it is a bit of an older thing that has passed. Just look at Far Side Virtual.

Far Side Virtual is an album from James Ferraro that is first and foremost is an electronic Muzak work. It's a work that pulls together feelings of early computer programs and 90's/80's elevator music. Because of the aesthetic that it creates, basing itself in 80s/90s technology and consumerism ambiance, people also place it within the Vaporwave category. Though it's interesting because it does utilize samples to create its audio world (as Vaporwave and other sample based genres do), but at the same time many of the tracks and individual sounds in the album are created from the ground up. Everything from melodies to the digital voices going over menu options can often be found without base samples. So Far Side Virtual is kind of an artificial nostalgia creation that fits itself inside of the Vaporwave space due to those reaches at nostalgia within the electronic space. The same way Muzak as a whole has been reaching towards feelings of a different time and place (I.E. Nostalgia) for some time now. The influence on Vaporwave and the individuality of Muzak seems to be notable, and if anything, Vaporwave can always be found sampling Muzak for its own gain.

Lastly, Hardvapour is going to be brought up. Hardvapour is a Vaporwave subgenre that rose up in late 2015 and positioned itself in opposition to the Vaporwave sound with the release of End of the World Rave from Wolfenstein OS X. There's even an album titled "Vaporwave is Dead" featuring a monologue that states "...in the beginnings in the end of the world, vaporwave is dead." Think of Hardvapour as Vaporwave with a punk attitude, faster tempo, and much more musical influence from electronic dance music (like hardcore techno.) All of this, but with the core sampling and sample/aesthetic inspirations of Vaporwave. It completely considers itself the anti-vaporwave, vaporwave sound. This is something present in it's core values as a subgenre as mentioned above. It throws out the smooth muzak feelings and tones of the Vaporwave sound for something more aggressive, hard hitting, and swift. Hardvapour peaked with the release of "Hardvpour." a compilation album from DJ VLAD featuring many different Hardvapour tracks from a large assortment of producers, maxing out at 54 tracks. Since that, most say that the subgenre of Hardvapour has gone pretty quiet.

Today, Vaporwave is still changing and some say it's having it's "second life." We have albums that are very much emphasizing the new age roots of the genre like the self-titled album from New Gaia, and we also have Future Funk tunes from the artist Odaxelagnia and their recent LP "Vapor.wav" that are able to combine the hyperbolic and satirical view of the early Vaporwave visual aesthetic with a unique musical approach to make something new that satisfies the innate humour of the genre as well as the experimentation present in its identity. Vaporwave is something special. It has such a vague definition as to what it is that almost a mysticism surrounds what actually makes Vaporwave Vaporwave to the newcomer. The humor and the memes can also make that much harder, but once you clear through that fog you can clearly see how much creative opportunity exists within this and can still be defined as Vaporwave.