Vaporwave Culture and Electronic Music

Vaporwave is an internet music microgenre, aesthetic, and meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator music, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, digital technology, and advertising of previous decades.

Characteristics and Aesthetics

Vaporwave is a hyper-specific subgenre that functions as both a form of electronic music and an art style. The genre is defined largely by its surrounding subculture, with its music inextricably linked to its visual accoutrements. Academic Laura Glitsos notes that vaporwave defies traditional music conventions that typically privilege audio over the visual form.

Musically, vaporwave reconfigures dance music from the 1980s and early 1990s through chopped and screwed techniques, repetition, and heavy reverb. It is composed almost entirely from slowed-down samples. The name derives from "vaporware," a term for commercial software that is announced but never released.

The visual aesthetic incorporates 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, stylized Ancient Greek or Roman sculptures, Memphis Design geometric shapes, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes. Artists often limit the chronology of their source material between Japan's economic flourishing in the 1980s and the early 2000s.

History and Origins

Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of chillwave, developing primarily through the internet. The style evolved from 2000s post-noise and hypnagogic pop trends as well as retro-revivalist and post-internet motifs. The genre was pioneered by producers such as James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin, and Ramona Langley operating under various pseudonyms. Albums such as Lopatin's Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1, Ferraro's Far Side Virtual, and Langley's 2011 album Floral Shoppe established the blueprint for the genre.

Subgenres and Offshoots

Following wider exposure in 2012, numerous subgenres and offshoots emerged, including future funk, mallsoft, signalwave, vapornoise, utopian virtual, late night lo-fi, vaportrap, slushwave, and hardvapour. Later in the 2010s, the genre spawned viral trends such as Simpsonwave, alongside revivals of interest in Japanese ambient music and city pop.