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Is vaporwave still alive? I like just discovered this after reading babbling corpse. But even though I can find it all over youtube I keep seeing people say its dead. Seems quite cyb.....

>>7930 If it's not yet dead I really hope for it to die as soon as posible

>>7931 Why? I think you are being too cynical of Vaporwave. Sure at first, it looks like people are just copying each other and nobody has any original ideas. But when you actually try to find some artists that are good and have original ideas, Windows 96 for example, then you will know that in a sea of trash, you can find.... silver or gold.

vaporwave used to actually be anti-consumerist n soykaf before the fuarrrking masses got a hold of it and turned it into WOAH COOL A E S T H E T I C bullshit

>>7935 post links of vaporwave when it was cool?

>>7932 I reccomend bl00dwave for a good listen/and or new listeners. Srsly 10/10 windows96 already in here but anyways, the two of them

>>7931 You too. ...................

>>7935 >vaporwave used to actually be anti-consumerist never was nor was it ever intended to be

>>7932 It's true, I might sound too cynical but the few good things made on vaporwave are drowned in an ocean of soykaf that i don't think it's worth diving in. Aside of that for me vaporwave represent a clear example of art as content and that just is too soykafty for me

>>7935 WOAH COOL A E S T H E T I C is literally more important and culturally significant than some generic statement about capitalism bad

>>7930 I'm more genuinely astonished as to how you managed to just learn about vaporwave and its offshoots in anno domini 2021. like how can you be a lainanon and miss the cultural bandwagon this fuarrrking hard?

>>7997 This, I thought I was particularly late to the Vaporwave party having discovered it in 2014 and people were already claiming it was dead. But there always seemed to be two sides of "Vaporwave", the first everyone associates with just playing 80s b-sides slower, but then there was also the kind of music on Dream Catalogue which was called Vaporwave but sounded completely different apart from the slower tempo (I think they ended up rebranding it as Dreampunk instead of Vaporwave) and I always preferred the latter.

>>7996 Art is subjective and the beauty is everyone is entitled to have their own take on things, I agree WOAH COOL A E S T H E T I C is probably more closer to Vaporwave's meme origins, but I can see how feeling a sort of embittered nostalgia for the 80s and 90s through Vaporwave after living as an adult in the post-9/11 world makes sense. I for one think it would have been great living in an era when it was all BUY BUY BUY! IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!, rather than "well Lain, you can't very well expect to own a house if you keep meeting up with friends once every year.. try to take some responsibility with your money."

>>7930 It's kind of been raped from every random normal person on the internet using the aethetic but not really. But some of that's cool. It had it's time. There's plenty of it but it doesn't hit for me like it once did I suspect thats most people.

To me, vaporwave is all about the apogee of western civilization, or at least the parts of it that were borne out of the enlightenment: liberalism and all that. There's a quote at the end of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that I think speaks to this idea. >There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . >And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . >So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. Thompson is talking about the SF bay in the 60s, but vaporwave is saying a similar thing about all of America in the 80s. When the wave breaks and you look back at where it used to be, to see nothing but a high water mark, there's a sense of "oh, I guess that's all it amounted to huh?" as the riptide suction pulls you down. Here's a bit from one of my favorite songs (A New Kind of Water by This Heat), which was released in 1981 under the threat of nuclear annihilation. >We have moved from A to X / This welfare state is our progress / The size of it all carries us along / More equals better, it's what we want / Our energy is endless, it seems /It's there when we need it / We've got men on the job >We finance clinics to research / A cure for cancer, our least vague fear / A new kind of water / A new way of breathing / Always, somehow, a wonder cure-all / Turns up when we need it / We've got men on the job >You know from experience / The creature comforts, a house that's warm / Your body would choose all this / Of course! It's innate, we're selfish / But what if there's not enough to go round? / Defense is needed / They've got some odd men in odd jobs >We have moved from A to Z / This nuclear state is our demise / Fly away Peter, hide away Paul / Who can watch as the Earth burns, shatters, and dies? / Fail-safe, foolproof, we've heard that before / Good sense is needed / Let's hope we've got men on the job Anyway, back to vaporwave. I think its death is appropriate. If it had somehow resisted appropriation and commodification, if it had somehow managed to *mean* something substantial for more than an instant, then its central thesis would be contradicted. It would have made a better story if noble experiment came to an end through total nuclear war. Instead, we have something else, and I think if there's any value in things like vaporwave it's in helping us understand exactly what it is that we have now.

>>7935 I've heard takes that the genre pushes irony to its limit or that it portrays the eclipse of the future a la Mark Fisher. An anti-consumerist message is a tad cliché nowadays, so I'm glad I have heard better. Admittedly, you have to ask how forced some of the readings of the genre since the genre likely started out as a soykafpost (if you exclude it from the wider history of plunderphonics.)

I've heard some people describe it as "culture-jamming" / or "détournement" in the vain of Situationism. However accurate that seems to be is up to you. I find that it mostly lacks the pretense of radical art, so it kind of escapes the mechanism of recuperation.

>>7996 You're right. The flaws with capitalism are so clear, we hardly need some nostalgic hipster subcult to illustrate it for us.

Man I hope vaporwave isn't dead because then I'll never be able to listen to it ever again.

Vapor wave is dead of course it is. I'll be listening to it in the afterlife. Nigga.

Lain, get in here. I almost cried the first time I heard this, it is a beautiful album. >>7930 People have been saying vaporwave is dead as long as the genre has been around.

>>8381 That's not Vaporwave at all son, it's Dreampunk. There used to be a Dreampunk thread on here but it's dead, no idea if someone saved it. https://asurarevolver.net/album/rainforest-hill-i-ii https://bludhoney.com/album/--2 https://bludhoney.com/album/lonely-streets https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/2047 https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-dreampunk-vol-1 https://noproblematapes.com/album/visions-and-prophetic-dreams-a-dreampunk-compilation-vol-1

>>8383 I guess you're right, its just that I have always viewed it that way. Nonetheless, I'll check out those albums.

>>8386 check out vill4in and pure life, the best new era of dreampunk labels

>>7930 Kind of but spiritually it is. It got so oversaturated and overused that at this point it will never Gain back the feeling

>>8383 Dreampunk is a vaporwave subgenre, 100% confirmed by HKE by now.

>>7935 Zооmers destroy everything like termites. They are programmed this way.

>>8569 Some of them don't destroy things. But you are right, a ton of them just like to destroy anything that they find especially on the internet.

Yes. I actually run a label with a lotta vaporwave musicians on it. Heres the latest release from one of them >Url: https://tomscoffeerecords.bandcamp.com/album/evanesce-memories If anything I'm actually trying to sway away from vaporwave as thats literally the only genre I've been able to attract. I'll say this, vaporwave is here to stay. It wont always be popular but whats kinda nice is its a good way to start your own label

>>7930 Pic related is why people say it's dead. They have been saying it since day one.