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