Meaning of vaporwave | Babel Free

Definitions

A genre of electronic music and visual arts style that emerged in the early 2010s. As a musical genre, it evolved from chillwave and seapunk with influences from lounge music, elevator music, smooth jazz, and 1980s dance-pop. As an aesthetic, it is influenced by 1990s web design and digital art, anime, and cyberpunk.

uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Largely ignored by the mainstream press⟳, vaporwave has instead flourished on websites such as Bandcamp and SoundCloud and on Reddit […] Because vaporwave exists almost entirely outside the sphere of PR and the music industry at large, it has tremendous “underground” appeal. […] Vaporwave is critical of Western culture's preoccupation with the past, but it is not the only art form⟳ to call⟳ our collective regression into question⟳.”

“Vaporwave arose in reaction to huge economic and social forces that are still very much a part of our lives: globalization, runaway consumerism, and manufactured nostalgia chief among them.”

“Recess’s website features the charms of vaporwave internet art and Lisa Frank-style nostalgia, while their Instagram account evokes the combined look⟳ of “Endless Summer” with “Floridian retiree” and the summer-camp psychedelia that has replaced “Lifestyle Lumberjack” as the default millennial style choice.”

“The haunting affect⟳ of Vaporwave's ghostly music is clearly seductive to a political moment which revels in dystopia, the golden years of the 90s and the sounds of the 90s: financial boom, pedestalled American Dreams and […]”

CEFR level