Archive

Tag Archives: Plunderphonics

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

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