vaporwave_(music)

I have a very specific criteria for any music to be considered vaporwave: they must induce a certain kind of emotion in me, a longing emotion for a time period that I have no chance of being a part of. For this reason I don't consider the majority of vaportrap to be proper vaporwave - to me they're just normal trap music with a slight bit of vaporwave aesthetics.

With that being said, here's the list of songs and albums that I think everyone who's trying to learn about vaporwave must check out. Note that these are not ranked from "best" to "least best", the order is just the correct order I believe one should introduce one after another.

1. Macintosh Plus - Floral Shoppe

   Of course, no vaporwave music list would be proper without at least mentioning Floral Shoppe at least once. Many people's first introduction (including me) to the genre of vaporwave was Lisa Frank 420. To be honest, I don't like the second half of the album starting from track 5 and onwards (I don't like ambient stuff that much), but the first 4 tracks in sequence are perfect; track 3 "花の専門店" goes exceptionally hard.

2. Saint Pepsi - Hit Vibes

   An absolute genre-defining classic. Possibly the first proper Future Funk album ever existed. (Many people can feel that there's a difference between Future Funk and classic vaporwave but can't exactly pinpoint what it is. In my opinion, Future Funk is the conceptual dual of vaporwave, or "co-vaporwave", if you will; while vaporwave is to depict a fake past of the real "future" i.e. our present, Future Funk is to depict a fake future of the real "past" i.e. our past.) Cherry Pepsi is one of the best Future Funk tracks you will ever heard.

3. death's dynamic shroud.wmv - I'll Try Living Like This

   If "post-vaporwave" was ever a proper thing, this album would be it - majorly departed from the conventional vaporwave's sampling tendency of choosing more classic 1980s-to-early-1990s R&B than anything else, DDS combines samples from the weirdest place possible (watch this video to see how this is the case - the fact that they somehow sampled a commercial for a hemorrhoid treatment center is absolutely mental. Also see how intricate each sample was put together. That's truly a job well done.), and the vibe is very distinct - while a lot of vaporwave music tries to bring you to "the good old times", this album taunts you instead, telling you that you can never be a part of that "good old time" and you better suck it up and swallow that weltschmerz down your throat. If you like weirdness this is the one you should definitely check this one out.

4. 2 8 1 4 - Birth of a New Day

   I don't enjoy ambient music as much as other genre and I'm not nearly as qualified enough to comment on them in the eyes of ambient aficionados, but 2814 (and Hong Kong Express, who formed 2814 with t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者) has been making some of the best ambient track within this genre. You should definitely check it out if you like ambient music.

5. VECTOR GRAPHICS - DESTINE

   You know - back then there were a lot of people making this kind of stuff, and a lot of them have at least one or two very good tracks, but none of them were coming up with good tracks as consistent as VECTOR GRAPHICS (and .CASTING, which I believe can be safely assumed to be the same person). DESTINE is, in my personal opinion, by far the best vaporwave album within its subgenre and one of the best vaporwave albums ever existed. Luxury Elite comes close to VECTOR GRAPHICS in terms of the overall vibes, but the sound of VECTOR GRAPHICS is very focused, way more focused than everyone else. Maybe this is why the music is so good.

6. Chuck Person - Eccojams Vol. 1

   The first vaporwave album. You don't listen to this kind of music for pleasure, you listen to this kind of music to see how many things people could get away with and be inspired by it.

7. マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - A Million Miles Away

   You cannot talk about Future Funk without talking about MACROSS 82-99. Sometimes you'll come across albums that, while not being the absolute best among its peers within the same genre, does one thing and does that one thing perfectly. This is one of those album.

8. Blank Banshee - Blank Banshee 0

   This is a vaportrap album. As explained in the beginning, I really don't want it to be on this list; I'm only mentioning it because a lot of people says it's one of the best vaporwave album. That said, it is indeed a good album. Some people might argue that death's dynamic shroud has always been very experimental and not really vaporwave-like as well, but DDS is thorny and in a very interesting way; Blank Banshee is neither thorny nor interesting enough for my taste. Still, good album though.

9. Dante Mars Ajeto! - Celebrating Digital Artifacts

   This album came out way too late (in 2016, a time when even subgenres as harmless and palatable as Future Funk is starting to stagnate). Had it be released 3 years earlier, it would be celebrated as a classic.

10. PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises - Home™

    I was torn between choosing James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual and this one to end this list with. Technically Home™ is not done by Vektroid (yes, this too is a pseudonym of Vektroid) - nearly all of them are MIDI taken from somewhere else, and if you're old enough to remember the days of downloading MIDI files from the Internet, you might have downloaded some of the exact MIDI file that produced these tracks too. No, the reason why this deserves to be mentioned is the fact that it brings a certain past aesthetics back to the age where it was considered to be out-fashioned and largely forgotten. In this sense, this album is closer in spirit to Duchamp's toilet and bicycle wheel.