Vaporwave is a music genre branching from electronic Chillwave. But the unique and iconic visual aesthetic cultivated alongside it is now, debatably, more popular and recognizable than the music itself. Vaporwave, as an aesthetic and movement, has been described as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern consumerism and the soulless glamour of late capitalism. Its purposeful vagueness has led to more overt and blatant offshoots of Vaporwave, like Fashwave (which attempts to co-opt a lot of Vaporwave symbolism to promote a fascist ideology) or Laborwave (which removes the ambiguity of Vaporwave's capitalist critiques in favor of promoting a Marxist ideology), though both of them also tend to blend in a lot of Synthwave aesthetics as well, leading to many people assuming the two aesthetics are the same.
Vaporwave, like many other aesthetics, gives you nostalgia. Even if you weren't around from the 1980s to early 2000s, both the images and music (mostly the music) send you to an era that once was.
Inspirations
One of the big early inspirations for the Vaporwave visual aesthetic draws direct inspiration from the Memphis Group, a name given to a group of post-modern designers and architects, founded in Milan, Italy by Ettore Sottsass in the early 1980s. The original group disbanded in 1988, but their influence still lives on to this day. During the group's heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was seen as a tacky product in its era, and its popularity faded by the mid-late 1990s. Toward the turn of the millennium, it began to gain appreciation from designers, collectors, and many of those with nostalgia and fond memories of the 1980s decade.
The bright colors and simple shapes would later inspire media and products aimed at children and youth of the era including Nickelodeon, MTV, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Discovery Zone, Gymboree, Trapper Keepers, toys, and many other staples of Kidcore, which given the time period it was popular in, makes it perfect to fit in with the Vaporwave aesthetic, since most members of the Vaporwave community were kids during the time the Memphis style was popular.
Origins
The genre emerged in 2011 from online communities, such as Turntable.fm. In subsequent years, it gained popularity through websites such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Last.fm, 4chan, and Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe. Its rise in popularity coincided with the decline of Seapunk and while the two certainly share similar aesthetic choices, there is a distinct difference between the two.
The key difference between Seapunk and Vaporwave is that Seapunk had a much more focused aesthetic on early '90s CG images and aquatic life. On the other hand, Vaporwave cast a broader net on its aesthetic cues, choosing to highlight the period from the 1980s to early 2000s (crossing over somewhat with the Y2K aesthetics of 1995—2004). It is debated when the period that Vaporwave is centered around ended; some mark the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as the ending point, while others mark the Great Recession and rise of social media in the late 2000s as the end point. There is an air of ambiguity of whether Vaporwave artists are either celebrating the rampant capitalism that birthed the Vaporwave aesthetics, ironically mocking the hollowness of a lot of these visual cues which mistakes shallowness for depth, or just happens to think they look or sound cool/nostalgic. It is generally left up to the listener as to what they think the artist meant with the final work.
DEAD MALL SERIES - The Vulnerable Marley Station Mall (Ft. Music by S U R F I N G from DEEP FANTASY)
Communities
There are several niche communities that fans from the vaporwave community gather and discuss and share vaporwave music. These are the r/vaporwave subreddit and Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe Member Forum.
Visuals
Popular visuals utilized in Vaporwave aesthetics can include, but are not limited, to Anime and cartoons, (often from the '70s to '90s but not always, ie. Sailor Moon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and even The Simpsons, as popularized by artist Lucian Hughes), drug use (almost always in the form of codeine syrup or lean, or pills), Classical sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoon, Consumerism (often displays brand names and logos, such as Adidas, Pepsi Cola, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Plus, PlayStation, Arizona Iced Tea, and Fiji Water), computer hardware and graphics from the '80s-early '00s (The Windows 95 operating system is used often in vaporwave artwork and edits, as are images of early computers such as the first of Apple's Macintosh PCs), city skylines, malls, sadness or distress (often employed to emphasize the ironic soullessness of the Vaporwave aesthetic, in a 'sad but aesthetically pleasing' kind of way), Liminal spaces (while on a creepier level, the surreal and nostalgic feeling goes quite well with this aesthetic), grids/lines/shapes (the inclusion of this in particular has led to some confusion with Synthwave aesthetics), pink and teal, altered reality (pictures with unnatural hues and tones can be seen throughout this aesthetic. Heavily edited pictures of the world around you can soon become unrecognizable and foreign), glitches, and the gratuitous use of Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters. Japanese seems to be one of the most used languages in the vaporwave community's artwork.
Music
現代のコンピュー (Music Video)
Vaporwave was first characterized by its heavy use of samples from the 1980s and 1990s music, typically lounge, smooth jazz, or Muzak. Samples are often pitched down, layered, or altered in classic chopped and screwed style. However, vaporwave has started to incorporate more original compositions with a heavy focus on ambiance (as seen by acts like ２８１４). Artists have also started to get creative with the physical mediums they sell their albums on, ranging from the conventional (vinyl and cassette) to the unusual (Minidiscs and floppy disks). There are so many Vaporwave Music Artists out there that we won't be able to exactly list them off, but we can give you a list of some Vaporwave artists that can serve as an introduction to the genre.
Some of these artists include:
Macintosh Plus
Vektroid (creator of Floral Shoppe)
Skylar Spence (the artist formerly known as Saint Pepsi)
George Clanton
S U R F I N G
Windows96
t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者
Infinity Frequencies
２８１４
R23X
Nmesh
猫 シ Corp.
Angela Regina Rossi
Blank Banshee
Luxury Elite
Tupperwave
Yuni Wa
Stux.Io
Cosmic Cycler
マクロスMACROSS 82-99
Vantage
Moe Shop
Desired
BarbWalters
サクラSAKURA-LEE
bl00dwave
LensCorp™ International
Subliminal Network
Press
Vaporwave has garnered some significant attention from the music press as of late. Most recently, artists such as Vektroid, HKE, Infinity Frequencies, The 2814 Proyect and R23X have gotten covered by music sites and blogs such as The Guardian, Dummy, Fader, FACT, The Wire, Thump (Vice), Red Bull Music Academy, The Quietus, Resident Advisor, TinyMixTapes, Marcel's Music Journal, Cokemachineglow, The Needle Drop, and others. Coincidentally, several Vaporwave zines have started popping up, the most notable of them being Private Suite Magazine.
Fashion
A less-often spoken about characteristic of vaporwave is vaporfashion or clothing inspired by the vaporwave aesthetic. This can include brands that were popular in the '80s and '90s, such as Nike, ESPRIT, FILA, Adidas, etc., as well as specialized stores that sell vaporfashion (most famously among these brands being Vapor95).
Video Games
Broken Reality, Vaporwave, and Irony
Vaporwave, unsurprisingly, also has a rather strong and thriving presence in video games. Although it's primarily in the independent game space, the two best-known examples of Vaporwave video games are Broken Reality and Mall Quest. Although one can find many examples of Vaporwave gaming on GameJolt to play for free (which is fitting for the general tone Vaporwave goes for). As for games co-opted by the Vaporwave scene, a lot of Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and Playstation 1-era games get embraced by the scene, but the most popular games embraced by the community include Earthbound, Waverace 64, Jumping Flash, and the original Super Smash Brothers. While not completely Vaporwave, the independent game Secret Little Haven utilizes some of the aesthetics often found in the Vaporwave community, but it lacks a lot of the irony and sarcasm often found within Vaporwave, opting for something more earnest and deeply personal.
Movies & Series
Most Vaporwave entertainment seems to be relegated to YouTube series (although that doesn't stop a lot of major corporations to, ironically, co-opt a lot of Vaporwave aesthetics for their marketing campaigns), with series such as Dan Bell's Dead Mall Series and Retail Archeology being prime examples of cataloging what Vaporwave is all about, while SkyCorp Home Video takes the Vaporwave aesthetic and becomes a major pastiche of early '90s entertainment and commercials. The films Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse, Valerian City of a Thousand Planets, and The Wave use the vaporwave aesthetic within their respective worlds and for stylistic and creative narrative.
Vaporwave vs Synthwave
Due to a lot of similar aesthetic cues and colors, to the untrained eye, it's easy to confuse the aesthetics of both Synthwave and Vaporwave (and some people have tried to make politically motivated aesthetics that do, indeed, confuse the two aesthetics and assume they are the same). Let it be known; they are, indeed, two completely separate aesthetics with two completely different goals in mind. While Vaporwave is a bit more tongue-in-cheek and can be seen in certain lights as being critical of the capitalist system and may or may not be making some sort of political statement with their co-opting of '80s-'90s corporate symbolism and is more "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" with the cheesy elements of this, Synthwave is more of a genuinely earnest celebration of all things '80s (and now '90s, since a lot of Synthwave artists are starting to expand their scope and are playing with a more '90s-centric sound and imagery, which can lead to further muddying of the waters between what is Synthwave and what is Vaporwave) in all of its cheesy, over-the-top glory. This confusion is also not helped due to the fact there have been several instances of Synthwave AND Vaporwave artists collaborating on projects (most notably, Synthwave artist Bart Graft has collaborated with Future Funk artist Bubble Keiki to make the album Emerald.)
In short, the main difference between Synthwave and Vaporwave is Vaporwave tends to be more ironic while Synthwave tends to be more earnest with their embracing of '80s and '90s aesthetics.
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