Vapormeme and the Aesthetics of Junk

by Kiyohiro Sen

Disclaimer: This is a raw translation of Kiyohiro Sen‘s article “Vapormemeとジャンクの美学：もう一つの（悪趣味な）Vaporwave史“. I found it after reading his article on “vaporwave” in the anthology 現代思想 from 2019. He also writes about analytical philosophy of despiction and photography. All credits go to him and, naturally, all responsibility for the translation lies with me. Please check out Sen’s blog for the original version of the article (I didn’t translate the footnotes) and further references.

About the history of vaporwave

Vaporwave is alchemy. From a methodological point of view it is a sound-collage of junk music. Old-fashioned pop songs, commercial BGM, unpleasant commercial sounds, etc. Before realizing it they create an imaginary nostalgia.

Shortly after , vaporwave died. Specifically, it seems that the two major creators, Vektroid and INTERNET CLUB, have left the scene and have spread inferior imitations, losing independence as a genre. Then, Luxury Elite, Saint Pepsi, and other artists that I call “second generation,” spawned Future Funk and Mallsoft, and ushered in the Post-vaporwave era with 2814, The Birth of a New Day. This is a rough history of vaporwave. At the very least, I wrote in every place a “history” full of such a view of progress. However, there are some things that come to my mind without remorse.

“Isn’t vaporwave ever evolving or developing in the first place?”

Post modernism

Some time ago, when I was featured in DOMMUNE‘s vaporwave Special Edition, I reflected briefly on the idea that vaporwave is an extremely postmodern practice based on plunder phonics and aesthetic appropriation. We should ask how it became what it is. In any case, the steam does not come from nothing but from boiling water

If vaporwave rides on the aesthetics of postmodernism “end of history”, “deception of creativity / authority”, and “simulation”, then no linear evolutionary genealogy could be traced. vaporwave is, in the ultimate sense, fragmentary, anonymous and ‘dejavú-esque’.

Anyway, today I would like to introduce you to a sub-genre of vaporwave called vapormeme. No, vapormeme is not a sub-genre. There are no methodologies here like in Eccojams and Future Funk, neither a distinctive concept like Mallsoft or Post-Internet.Vapormeme has nothing. Perhaps nobody in the whole Internet history has been obsessed with the term… Except me.

So what I want to do on the ghost web today is nothing less than giving the vapormeme phenomenon a category. However, as we will see shortly, it cannot be an autonomous and solid category.

Genre Dream of Purity

What do I want to emphasize on by focusing on vapormeme? To be clear, it’s the intrinsic impossibility of concepts such as “vaporwaveness” or “vaporwave purity”.

There is a controversy that often arises around vaporwave, that is a categorization issue: “Does this work belong to vaporwave?”, “Is this image vaporwave?” Some people think that “Classic-vaporwave” is the only “true vaporwave”, and some people even say “vaporwave!” just as they see some strange Japanese signs on a street corner. Each has its own “vaporwave standard” and is often inconsistent. I wrote two contributions in order to clarify this question:

It must be admitted that both the “Vaporwave History Encyclopedia” and the “Vaporwave Virtual World Map” are normative recommendations rather than descriptive information. Rather than saying “Objectively speaking, this is what vaporwave is like”, it is more like “I think this about vaporwave, why don’t you do it too?” I was a modernist pursuing vaporwave’s autonomy, purity and a genre-specificity. However, the following focuses rather on the impossibility of such normative recommendations. In other words, vapormeme is the proof of this. It is positioned as something that erodes and frustrates dreams such as “vaporwave-likeness” and “vaporwave purity”.

vapormeme, as some kind of contamination, always threatens the autonomy of vaporwave. As a result, vaporwave has to undergo a postmodern revision. To dream about the idea of vaporwave as an autonomous genre is only possible by ignoring the whole vapormeme series. And ignoring vapormeme is not so easy.

What is vapormeme

Well, what is vapormeme? As I said, there is no such fixed category, but it does not mean that there is no discourse about vapormeme at all. Needless to say, vapormeme is not a term I came up with. By the way, if you search “vapormemme” in Google, the number of hits is 38,200. The total number for “vaporwave” is 11,500,000, so it can be said that by simple calculation its importance in the whole scene is about 0.33% . Don’t overlook the fact that with this stupid remark, the aesthetic of vapormeme has already begun.

In reddit someone posted this guide to the sub-genres of vaporwave. Here, I summarize the main characteristics of vapormeme mentioned there:

• “A mixture of multiple aesthetic styles, presented without any logic”.
• “Vapormeme is the result of the misconception that vaporvawe is easy to make”.
• “I’ve included vapormeme in this list to help keep vaporwave’s reputation and to inform listeners that these are just cheap imitations”.

Well, this definition is quite tough. In the first place, vaporwave advocated a certain aesthetic about using junk sound sources, but vapormeme is a genuine junk. It lacks even the aesthetics of kitsch.

Let’s listen to a specific sound source.

Do you think “that is surprisingly good?”. It should be, since bl00dwave and bbrainz are the best of vapormeme. In the above sub-genre guide, it is also introduced as “the best of the worst”. It sounds like a royal road Eccojams piece as it loops through a twisted pop song. Here is a discussion on Reddit based on the aforementioned guide. The person who started the thread also said, “When I heard bl00dwave and bbrainz, it was surprisingly good” bbrainz also appeared and commented.

Anyway, I’m going to consider which aspect of these works is vapormeme later, first let’s hear “the lowest of the lowest”.

The RYM rating of “1.68 /5.0” would tell everything. In addition, the author has uploaded this unprecedented trash on the Bandcamp and evaporated, and takes no responsibility.

 Well, there are plenty of worse things. Go to the bandcamp page of the lowest label, MAPL Labs, and you’ll find all these bad stuff. It is a superb view, so please visit it once. Just a hell picture. That’s why the Internet is called a graveyard.

Now that the outline of Vapormeme has been dimly seen, let’s summarize its features. At a high level, Vapormeme has three characteristics.

(1) Just a common image or effect pasted on a text

This includes bl00dwave and bbrainz. Another Vapormeme piece is the Stereo Component “Coastal Nostalgia”. 

Vapormeme is born out of easy-to-choice productions, such as “What is Vaporwave?” An easy-to-understand Vaporwave-like image, a Greek statue, Japanese signs, and cheap CG stuck together likeペタペタ, a work that will satisfy you. And especially important, Vapormeme has no intention of moving the genre forward. It’s pure self-satisfaction, not in any way for the sake of the scene. It’s worth noting that the artists who make this kind of Vapormeme do usually make decent vaporwaves, or work as non-vapormeme artists.

bl00dwave has released not only Vapormeme work “Dream” but also songs from Eccojams to Future Funk, so it can be said that it plays some kind of secondary role in the Vaporwave scene.

bbrainz is currently working under the name of slythe and has released some interesting works, such as “jungle2000” with jungle elements, from good quality Vaporwave albums like “Echo”.

The identity of Stereo Component is apparently Yung Bae. Yung Bae is, of course, one of the beatmakers driving Future Funk. In short, vapormeme is the genre that these decent people cultivated as a ‘side job’.

(2) A parody of an already existing vaporwave work

In the Vaporwave subgenre summary at RYM, the notion of ‘parody’ is also emphasized. Naturally, the parody works of “Floral Shoppe” are overwhelming, but there are many parodies other than “Floral Shoppe”.

“Blank Goofee 0” is a parody of “Blank Banshee 0”.

Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 is a night core. How much do you like night cores?

Most of them are messed up samples of the original sound source. Needless to say, there is a duality between the fact that “the parody source itself samples and mess up the original sound source”. Vaporwave parody is often forced to be a parody of parody. Even more mysterious is the case where a normal sound source is released in a parody format for some reason.

For example, here is a mysterious person who claims to be a Macintosh Pro. It’s a waste of good work, but it’s a waste to parody the name and album name “FLORAL SHOPPE INFINITE”. Bandcamp’s sound source has now been removed, and YouTube views are tearfully low.

In his Reddit thread, someone commented: “I understand the inspiration but I don’t understand why you didn’t just make your own original album name and alias?” The fact that vapormeme is a parody does not contribute to the advancement of the genre. What is being done here is just recycling, and on rare occasions a work is made that is suitable for reuse, but most of it is just making garbage from garbage. There are also works that perform a parody with clear malice, such as THE DARKEST FUTURE “FLORAL SHOPPE 2”. This is a strange name by HKE, who has released many other anti-Vaporwave works.

(3) An image / sound source that has nothing to do with vaporwave and that claims to be #vaporwave

By the way, as a genre similar to vapormeme, there is (or is not) a category called memewave. Here a more general image of the internet is used and vaporwave music is added. “Simpson wave”, which has become popular locally, can be called a kind of Memewave. These retrospective vaporwave images also seem to threaten vaporwave’s purity. That said, Simpsonwave is still pretty cute. When things get worse, you can see stick-man-like images drawn with Paint on Instagram, and you’ll also see the tag  #vaporwave.

“Vaporwave as a Meme” has created a lot of misunderstandings, and has produced a lot of bad taste images and works. About a year ago, George Clanton, founder of the label 100% Electronica, made a modest move to #takebackvaporwave (regain Vaporwave). According to him, “It corrects the wrong image of Vaporwave and restores the radiance of the old scene”

That is, Vapormeme / Memewave is the hated enemy of #takebackvaporwave. Simply by uploading these vulgar sound sources and images to Bandcamp and Instagram, and attaching the #vaporwave tag there, Vaporwave’s image is increasingly distorted. That was exactly what George Clanton was concerned about. He clearly presupposes the purity of the Vaporwave genre, and fights against an image that defiles it.

A statement from the Vaporwave label Elemental 95 summarizes the desires of this type of exercise. In other words, we want to keep only those works that activate and make the genre grow. However, this statement is displaced, and seems to be paying a high price given the intuition that “many Vaporwaves were simply plagiarism”. The #takebackvaporwave movement involved several artists, and a compilation album was released. However, it is ironic that this work itself seems to be a Vapormeme-like product of poorly image selection. Their enemy was “③ Vapormeme, an image / sound source that has nothing to do with Vaporwave” but the result was “① Vapormeme”.

Sample based music isn't about ripping off art, it's about making it grow #takebackvaporwave

— Elemental 95 (@elemental_95) July 8, 2017

Tweets by chris ††† (label Business Casual) are more honest. He himself supports #takebackvaporwave, but he confesses that he is also making works based on memes. Perhaps he sees that Vaporwave and Vapormeme are two sides of the same coin. Eventually, #takeback vaporwave evaporated, scattered and disappeared. I think the (temporary) setback of the movement should be taken more seriously. This may be the moment when the dream of Vaporwave, the genre of genres, is broken.

Fashwave

Another reason for the bad reputation of vapormeme is the abuse of vaporwave images by the alternative right wing, the so-called “Fashwave problem”. Click here for more information on the Alterna Right Wings. Characterized by its support to Trump, the right-wing alternates its racist ideology with memes and scatters it around the Internet. By chance or inevitably, the vehicle of choice was Vaporwave.

Recall that Adam Harper mentioned accelerationism in his DUMMY article and the story makes sense. It would be too late if the alternative right wing was not only using Vaporwave imagery as a mere meme, but also conscious about its accelerationist aspects. The only way to grudge is to grudge Adam Harper, who first connected Vaporwave to politics

Conclusion: About the future of vaporwave

In this way, vapormeme images that “can not be called”, “should not be called”, and “do not want to be called” have been accumulated as vapormeme. It’s the dark side of the scene called vaporwave. I would like to avoid overgeneralization, but this phenomenon is not limited to vaporwave, but is widespread on the Internet. Furthermore, all arts may have gone through such a fight against impurities, but I guess, today I will stop here. (to read about how MTV killed vaporwave click here)

Well, how should vaporwave deal with vapormeme as such a contaminated element? As we’ve seen, it’s not enough to shout out the genre’s purity as in the hashtag #takebackvaporwave. For artists, label owners, listeners, and other players who participate in the art world of vaporwave, the issue is not strange.

As a mere listener (at least not a vaporwave artist), I try to remain a spectator. And “bystanders” are in this case extremely political. I mean, “If vaporwave dies, let’s die”. Perhaps vaporwave won’t die so easily, and in some ways it’s dead. Rejecting popularization preserves vaporwave’s criticism and extends the genre’s life. I can’t do that. That’s just snobish. With the inclusion of Future Funk, a subgenre with very different methodologies and visuals, the category vaporwave has been put into risk. Just as you couldn’t stop the appearance of Future Funk, you can’t stop anything from happening in the future.

Now, at the heart of vaporwave there is a postmodern rift, where the malignant virus that spread was vapormeme. The “progress” and “expansion” of vaporwave can only be described by distinguishing vapormeme from other genres. Our early calculation of “importance of about 0.33%” is the result of such rejections, exclusions, and ignorance. And, as I’ve pointed out throughout this article, vapormeme is nothing more than the other side of vaporwave, not something different. vapormeme cuts and pastes past works and bad taste images that have become relics without purpose. And isn’t that what vaporwave has done? Isn’t junk aesthetics a pure garbage foundation for vaporwave as well as vapormeme?

Rather than actively rejecting and ignoring vapormeme, my point of view is to accept it as the other side of vaporwave. Again, in this genre, it is almost impossible to make non-normative descriptions. In short, don’t worry about anything. If you get tired of asking what is vaporwave, stop asking. If you don’t like the bad taste of vapormeme, stop listening.

I’m looking forward to seeing vaporwave continue to fade away like vaporwave.