DREAMS WEST SELF TITLED

Mix tape from producer James West’s Dreams West project, a now classic and slightly forgotten cut of plunderphonic early vaporwave breeze. Ludicrously warped pastel delirium, vaporous and effervescent tape deck 90’s Pop loops embellished with intoxicating and absorbing sequencer melody, saturated and filtered to haze heaven. Microwaves of nostalgia…luminescent Pop Muzak, lo-fi Chillwave, vaporous recontextualization of Funk grooves, filter house claps for days of the dying sun. How absurd to think that this is already older than a decade, a shimmering simulation of pre internet music and muzak, a simulacrum now conjured and consumed ad infinitum to both greater and lesser result… interesting to note, Dreams West was using original melodies in their compositions right off the bat,  something that many of the first wave Vaporwave artists eschewed in their wake. Shitfaced hammered on screwdrivers, making meaning of a completely dead two dimensional capitalist consumer reality, Dreams West and their ilk render me to tears. So awash in narcotic emotion are these utterly ‘meaningless’ works, so flat and circular are these saccharine experiences as to become cartoons, revelations of truths so brazen as to require constant inebriation and euphemism to manage them. Keep on dreamin’, meat puppets. This has all got to mean something.

Bandcamp

VARIOUS ARTISTS – ‘THE MUSIC OF THE NOW AGE IV’

The fourth Fortune 500 compilation, a titanic statement of currency with Vaporwave’s dilapidated, miasmic halls of legend and relevancy. Echo chambers of recycled sound ephemera, prized dusty muzak loops crowned in hazy filter atrophy and repurposed to variably anti-capital agenda and/or smoking reality escape (not to mention the chin-stroking self import). An ephemeral mix of fantasist Vaporwave of various sub category, Smooth Jazz, Future Funk, Vapor House, Casinowave, Late Nite Lo-Fi and traditional smooth plunderphonics sounds and more within. Being untethered to physical media these compilations work best, each artist barely distinguishable from the next except to the most absurdly discerning and fanatical, Random Artist Memory banks… conversely, some of my favourite contributions come courtesy of VHS LOGOS, Soft Replica, bl00dwave, Tupperwave, b o d y l i n e, blair and luxury elite (of course), all heavy hitters from the vaporous late nite lo fi anonymity. To quote one intrepid youtube commenter, ‘Its like tripping down the stairs at your grandmas house’. Tune in, pop codeine and effervesce from reality.

Fortune 500

FAT MAN MIAMI – ‘INNER CITY PARADISE’

A particularly smoooooth blend of atmospheric Funk House and sumptuous Vaporwave from the Fat Man dealer, effervescent shimmer beats and rolling electronic Basslines induce the nostalgia and bittersweet depression. This EP leans a little further away from Yacht Rock and into filtered, hazy House, sumptuously funky beats beneath a gated filter shimmer and sizzling Bass sounds, with the middle track acting as a downbeat interlude between velvety Future Funk-y numbers, each replete with lush nostalgia mania sampling of impossibly sacharine sizzlin’ Pop, Funk and Rock – pink and purple neon lights obscuring the contours on unknown faces in the tropical rain. Calming and introspective, very listenable and groovin’. Altogether too short.

CompactWave

HARVEY SUTHERLAND – ‘BOY’

Recent LP from Australia’s Harvey Sutherland, which made it’s way into listening rotation from the bandcamp recommendation page. The Werwolf Fuzz Whore and I threw this on for a hungover burn amidst the fallout of a night’s previous endeavors at Desertfest, and we were both quickly ensnared and enraptured (and dare I say ensmokened) by the smooth, saccharine grooves. Jazzy futuristic Funk quickened by the gods – a hyperbolic slide into an obscure, resplendent amalgam of Donald Fagen neato jazzer Soft Rock and extraloud electro-disco-Efunk, florid and florescent with bright melodies and offbeat introvert lyrical focus, misty kraut rocking motorik drive and punch with keys in exploratory mode and vaporizing butter bass ghee grooves. Richly dynamic photonic fusion Funk. Syrupy, meticulous, with a joie-de-vivre that floats on a vaporous breeze. ‘Boy’ is a nerd delight of AOR/Funk/Fusion preening and perfectionism. Extra cool.

Bandcamp

SILVER RICHARDS – ‘VOLUME 128’

Shimmering grooves and anonymous styles from Silver Richards, originally released digitally by luxury elite’s legendary Fortune 500. ‘Volume 128′ covers a lot of ground across the various smaller sub-categories of Vaporwave, combining styles and vibez from track to track to create a kind of mix tape feel. Lots of sensuous/cheezy late-nite lo fi loops, vapid and wide-eyed vaporfunk refrains and super-screwed piano slow jams sway behind a thousand filters. Track 3 is a 2013 Cloud Rap type banger with leanin’ sample feed, spacious clap-drenched beats, and purple spittin’ on the right side of marble mouf from Gold Midas, an interesting addition to the track list which well exemplifies Silver Richards varied/scattered VHS mixtape approach. In here it’s always a simulated summer’s day, getting supremely baked and sunbaked at the edge of the pool, or is that just an ephemeral screensaver in the mind’s eye? An advertisement for the nostalgist’s impossible product.

Palm ’84

MAITRO – ‘DRAGONBALL WAVE’

Blissfully chilled set of vaporwave tunes inspired by the world of Dragonball. It’s become a firm favourite of mine in the past year, having discovered it just in time to match the slowed pace of my hometown during lockdown. Boasts a great selection of smooth jazz-inflected licks, meditative funk and crystalline synth “on-hold” muzak tied together with crisp, relaxing beats, occasionally punctuated with ki sound effects from the anime to keep you wrapped up in the theme. Rich filtering, thick layers of reverb and lo-fi tape flutter add to the nostalgic comfort, like a teenage summer night spent watching hometaped Toonami DBZ marathons on VHS. There’s a couple of more upbeat tracks here, but for the most part it’s head-noddin’, pool-floatin’, lotus-sittin’ tempo – great for when you’re smoking up a fat one at Kame House with the turtle hermit himself, firing off energy beams into the oceanic horizon.

Tiger Blood Tapes

FAT MAN MIAMI – ‘CODENAME: FATWAVE THERAPY’

Vaporwave House cassette/minidisk. Sizzling, shimmering, narcosis and neuralgia, palm beach mental desertion, super 90’s cyber  cool/lame, a smorgasbord of sampling, the Miami coke dealer blizzard of ethereal vaporhaze and e-vacuation, nostalgia endusing PSOne aesthetics with the cream lined dinner jacket Yacht Rock vibe too, succulent silken Bass and crisp clean Guitars, sampled and filtered synths and keys and pert beats, upbeat and cocaine stoned around the edges, effervescent and vaporous, combining French House and Chopped and Screwed Lean dynamics right on the palette. Myself and the abominable FuzzWhore recently enjoyed a shared Gonzo listen of ‘Codename: Fatwave Therapy’ with a tampon bomber spliff under a tree during a hailstorm. It was simply marvelous. I’m new to the Fat Man and I’m digging this shit big time.

Palm ’84

VARIOUS ARTISTS – ‘ピンクネオン東京 第一弾’

6 track compilation of cityscape Future Funk from Pink Neon Tokyo. Dramatically sugary, breezy and funky. Anachronistic beta beat sounds, slightly overdriven audio quality, silken Bass grooves, catchy and infinitely sunny. A lot of Future funk seems to me to be almost like Vaporwave in purpose and intent but without so many seemingly post modern, anti-capitalist pretences or concepts – repurposed 80’s & 90’s radio friendly jazzy Funk and Smooth Jazz tracks, deep cuts harvested from forgotten singles re-wrapped in pastel anime visuals and consumed by stoned ‘net surfers. The visual language is even a bit less hazy and perhaps less melancholy? Meaninglessly upbeat Funk jams for the Groove seeking nostalgist. お 楽しみ ください

Bandcamp

VARIOUS ARTISTS – ‘DIGITAL OFFICE ONE’

Shimmering Vaporwave compilation from label businesscasual. Breezy blue vaporous bliss sound, future culture smooth Funk plunderphonics for accessible nostalgic cityscapes and secret depression. Languishing endless refrains in glitched samples & extra cheesy smooooth vocal cuts repeated over and over, making for a niche listening experience in an intoxicated and quixotic state. Faded, hazy, enjoyable? Yes indeed. I like the sort of absurdism of a compilation like this, with many sounds very similar from artist to artist, in a genre like this which in some ways prioritizes a certain anonymity of sound. Listening beginning to end provides a strange parallel to listening to Noise and Grindcore comps, with little means of knowing who you’re hearing from track to track unless you really know your shit (which I don’t) or you’re staring at the track list or liner notes. Anyway, a cool listen. Worth a stream or twelve for Dystopian Chic’s contribution alone, a 9 minute drive through long forgotten cast-off hazy bass funk and mournfully nostalgic electropop.

businesscasual

マクロスMACROSS 82-99 – ‘CHAM!’

Named for the J-Pop group in Satoshi Kon’s masterpiece Perfect Blue. This one has a truly frivolous sound, upbeat and fairly annoying if you’re in the wrong mindset, but with a less-than-singular vision of an animated future than マクロスMACROSS 82-99 is capable of. There’s a great deal of appropriation from 16 Bit sounding Video Game soundtracks, which I’ll admit is slightly lost on me. There’s a bit less cohesion here as there is on other マクロスMACROSS 82-99 releases, with various styles approached from track to track. The whole thing could be loosely described as Future Funk, but there are more original remixes and compositions here than we’re used to from this artist. This works to varying degrees; in losing the cohesion マクロスMACROSS 82-99 takes more risks, and to me at least the rewards are fewer as a result. For example, I find the appropriation of well-known bars and refrains from Hip Hop tracks to be rather detrimental to the work as a whole – but again, that’s just me. Overall enjoyable, just missing elements of that certain pointless high concept/low rent and recycled nature that makes マクロスMACROSS 82-99 uniquely interesting to me.

Bandcamp

マクロスMACROSS 82-99 – ‘ネオ東京’

Upbeat, Anime distant Future Funk from Mexico City via NeoTokyo, released on Keats Collective. Crisp sample tracks assembled into an utterly beautiful, vibrant smorgasbord of sophomoric freak Funk. Anime aesthetics, scintillating Bass lines cut from obscure 80’s electro Funk and Jazz, love song Pop refrains from forgotten icons, Muzak chintz, occasional Trap click, massive Big Beats; an absorbing journey through a summer time in a possible future city hive. Danceable and not depressing, there’s little of the downcast, irreverent consumerist critique that made ‘Vaporware’ and other affiliated sounds so popular within the EDM internet underground, but I feel that in embracing a more up-beat, carefree and ultimately positive vibe, マクロスMACROSS 82-99 sets their own standard and triumphs. A personal favourite among such recent ‘Wave’ affiliated releases.

KEATS//COLLECTIVE

 

DELTA金TOPCO – ‘SCUDERIA’

More ‘Wave sounds from Delta Topco, released on BusinessCasual. Pastel colored samples from long forgotten Pop/Funk artists, Anime, and advertisements are cut and reassembled into a shimmering, cheesy pastiche of Music. Whatever-Wave, big hollow Beats, warped Keyboard Bass, repetition. Chilled out, pointless, recycled consumerist nonsense. A stoned summer’s day in a City of yesterday’s tomorrow; backwards retrofit, HI-DEF abandoned in favor of Betamax. More of the same in an overpopulated internet ‘genre’, but whatever, I think this one’s good.

BIZC061

YUNG BAE – ‘ANIBAE’

5 track EP from US producer Yung Bae. Shimmering plunderphonic love song smorgasbord. Upbeat yet scintillating Brass and Bass samples, crisp Hip Hop beats, endless love song refrains shot through filters. Hypnotic, repetitive, sultry, positive, less incidental and more exuberant. Hazy, loungin’ laid-back goodness. This has that endless-summer vibe of Macross 82-99, who features here on a remix, but with less direct Science Fiction influence aesthetically; rather than building future city-scapes in the listener’s mind, I feel Yung Bae is more content in drawing the listener into past romances and rose tinted nostalgia. I’d say this stuff shares as much DNA with Hip Hop as it does with any Internet genre / Future Funk type sound, and would probably appeal to fans of either.

Stratford Ct.