The Philosophy of Vaporwave - Music that Embraces, Rejects, & Satirises Commodity Fetishism

Reddit is undeniably the breeding ground for lepers, those who are too supercilious to deign to other forms of social media, and people with niche interests. I have niche interests. And Vapowave is quite niche. Before the Reddit bit though, what is Vaporwave exactly? Well, it is a micro-genre of electronic music, essentially a style of plunderphonics (sample-based music) that takes samples from old pieces of commercial media. The style arose over the internet in the early 2010s and 'Eccojams Vol. 1' by Chuck Person (an alias

for Daniel Lopatin, a famous composer and electronic artist, whose main project is Oneohtrix Point Never which also delves into plunderphonics). Definitions aside, I shall truly begin by venturing into the Vaporwave Subreddit, a subreddit with a grainy pink banner saying 'Please switch to old.reddit.com/r/vaporwave'. If you do so, it gives the retro reddit look, one that dates back to the first few years following its inception. This is the aesthetic that Vaporwave adores so very much. We will come to learn that aesthetics are the key to this micro-genre of

As a lover of a lover of aesthetics myself, specifically in language and literature, it is quite an interesting land to explore. The heading to this subreddit, is 'Music Optimized for Abandoned Malls'. How daring, how strange, how lovely. It certainly provides, and I regret using this word very much, vibes. It lays out the atmosphere. Listen to the music and you'll understand. The most famous Vaporwave track is probably the fourth song off Macintosh Plus' (an alias for the artist Ramona Andra Xavier) album, Floral Shoppe (the album cover is on the above). Chances are that you have heard a fleeting note of this very melancholic, lo-fi, with a downtempo beat. It most definitely could be the ghost of elevator music, some saccharine mall music that haunts some abandoned, commercial, megastructure that once lured consumers with status and brands for lucre. Mammon's hypnosis. Anyway, there is a vivid picture portrayed in the aesthetics of Vaporwave. The aesthetic is cute and nostalgic and it stretches to anything that resembles a past culture, a past time. Specifically, US culture in the 80s and in the edges of the bordering decades, a culture that would grow into a caricature of itself and think it was the same. But what is all this for? Let us look at the subreddit once more. Its rather eerie and, I must admit it, well-written community description is:

'Global capitalism is nearly there. At the end of the world there will only be liquid advertisement and gaseous desire. Sublimated from our bodies, our untethered senses will endlessly ride escalators through pristine artificial environments, more and less than human, drugged-up and drugged down, catalyzed, consuming and consumed by a relentlessly rich economy of sensory information, valued by the pixel. The Virtual Plaza welcomes you, and you will welcome it too.'

I personally find it to be a bit scary with its descriptions of a glossy, neon-coloured dystopia, belying true intentions. But, the philosophy of the genre are cleared up.

Vaporwave is a critique. It is a critique of capitalist and thus, consumerist and commercial culture and fetishism. It evokes nostalgia for the past, for advertisements and billboards, for colours and words. Yet the objects of this nostalgia are the devices of big, greedy corporations for whom this entire business does not spring from the heart, but from a desire for profits. We are pawns, and we willingly play into their game and even glorify it. Isn't it strange? Nostalgia for things that did not exist, at least in intention, in the way we thought they did. This is calculated joy, this is ersatz emotion. Vaporwave is aware of this, making this artificial aspects of cultures old and current feel nostalgic, by making it feel distance and close at the same time, positioning itself as a genre and style that shows the absurdity of the modern human. I think that this is the brilliance of Vaporwave. It is a searing and sublet critique of us today, and a terrifying, and one that may be prophetic, vision for the future.

Image Credits to:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/183192706@N05/48475685782/

Daniel Lopatin

Ramona Andra Xavier