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Post subject: Re: Entire genres that only need one thread: Vaporwave
Posted: Wed January 06, 2016 3:15 pm
The Master
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 9:32 pm Posts: 31614 Location: Garbage Dump
tragabigzanda wrote:
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
tragabigzanda wrote:
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
zeb wrote:
Kevin Davis wrote:
I am unclear what about it constitutes an entirely new genre.
The answer is "absolutely nothing".
Of all the different types of music millennials create and consume, Vaporwave may be the most difficult for non-millennials to relate to or understand, because it is so specifically built around nostalgia for people of a certain age and upbringing.
That said, it's not merely trying to stir warm, nostalgic feelings; that would be meaningless. Instead, it is examining nostalgia itself. It's usage of samples - easy listening, soft rock, '80s pop - is integral to what makes it unique, and to what it's exploring. It's all about taking innocuous pop culture detritus from a certain era and transfiguring it into something that is, as Burt described, "emotionally devastating" (if it connects with you). It's almost the very concept of nostalgia made concrete: pieces of the past that have no inherent emotional value, but are distorted into something poignant in one's mind.
Didn't DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, UNKLE, et. al. already do this?
No. Plunderphonics was it's own thing; it's not the end-all-be-all of sample-based music. And it was never about nostalgia. Vaporwave is very different aesthetically and ideologically. It's a much more specific and cohesive movement.
The speed with which you delivered this defense, it's like you already had it queued up... Either that or you're some sort of RM savant.
Post subject: Re: Entire genres that only need one thread: Vaporwave
Posted: Wed January 06, 2016 6:09 pm
tl;dr
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 6:06 pm Posts: 8465
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
zeb wrote:
Kevin Davis wrote:
I am unclear what about it constitutes an entirely new genre.
The answer is "absolutely nothing".
Of all the different types of music millennials create and consume, Vaporwave may be the most difficult for non-millennials to relate to or understand, because it is so specifically built around nostalgia for people of a certain age and upbringing.
That said, it's not merely trying to stir warm, nostalgic feelings; that would be meaningless. Instead, it is examining nostalgia itself. It's usage of samples - easy listening, soft rock, '80s pop - is integral to what makes it unique, and to what it's exploring. It's all about taking innocuous pop culture detritus from a certain era and transfiguring it into something that is, as Burt described, "emotionally devastating" (if it connects with you). It's almost the very concept of nostalgia made concrete: pieces of the past that have no inherent emotional value, but are distorted into something poignant in one's mind.
I think you're making a big assumption that these isolated "pieces of the past" have no emotional value in and of themselves. Certainly, there is a great deal of ego and delusion in the idea that these pieces of "innocuous pop culture detritus" -- cheap '80's pop, lounge jazz, schlock ballads etc., things which are all perfectly capable of generating emotional responses on their own -- had no inherent emotional value until our genre came along and manipulated it into something meaningful. This seems to evidence an extremely poor and almost willfully ignorant understanding of why human beings process feelings of nostalgia in the first place. As someone who was born in 1983, I have significant emotional connections both to specific songs and general soundscapes of the late 1980's and early 1990's -- the principal reason "vaporwave" would be able to generate a nostalgic response from me based on its manipulation of these sounds is because my mind already knows to respond to these things a certain way.
Granted, I don't deny that sampling has the power to do this -- any time an artist manipulates a sound or series of sounds, it becomes possible for the emotional register of that series of sounds to change. So much of what compels me about rap music is how the samples from the producer and the storytelling and flow of the rapper play off each other to occupy an emotional space that neither would have been able to achieve singularly. What's going on here doesn't compel me as deeply as that -- this is more like looking at images of my past through a fun house mirror, which is a cool trick (I don't mean to undersell how enjoyable the music is -- I do find it very listenable), but ultimately a novelty effect.
I'm not sure it's an age thing, either. For all my life post-adolescence, I have struggled to identify with niche genres like this, where so much of what seems to define it as a movement -- if its internet champions are to believed -- is ideological, and which doesn't readily manifest itself in the music unless you've already bought into the prescribed wisdom concerning what the music is trying to do -- which may or not be something as boneheadedly unoriginal as "criticizing capitalism," as this author puts forth as a possibility:
Quote:
Music critic Adam Harper, writing in Dummy in 2012, described vaporwave artists’ work as a reaction to late capitalism thusly: “These musicians can be read as sarcastic anti-capitalists revealing the lies and slippages of modern techno-culture and its representations, or as its willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound.”
Conceptually, this is boring stuff. Yet when you strip all that stuff away and process it as music and music only, its singular qualities become fewer, and what you're left with are sound collages that range -- just like the source material they're derived from -- from emotionally neutral to emotionally devastating, depending on your mileage. Not exactly groundbreaking material.
Or maybe I'm just too old and lame to "get it." I certainly do not discount that possibility.
Post subject: Re: Entire genres that only need one thread: Vaporwave
Posted: Wed January 06, 2016 11:53 pm
$5 Donation Gets Custom Title
Joined: Tue January 01, 2013 10:43 am Posts: 5622
LoathedVermin72 wrote:
zeb wrote:
Kevin Davis wrote:
I am unclear what about it constitutes an entirely new genre.
The answer is "absolutely nothing".
Of all the different types of music millennials create and consume, Vaporwave may be the most difficult for non-millennials to relate to or understand, because it is so specifically built around nostalgia for people of a certain age and upbringing.
Anyone pretending that this micro genre is somehow different, interesting, important or enduring is an idiot.
Post subject: Re: Entire genres that only need one thread: Vaporwave
Posted: Thu January 07, 2016 12:32 am
The Master
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 9:32 pm Posts: 31614 Location: Garbage Dump
Kevin Davis wrote:
I think you're making a big assumption that these isolated "pieces of the past" have no emotional value in and of themselves. Certainly, there is a great deal of ego and delusion in the idea that these pieces of "innocuous pop culture detritus" -- cheap '80's pop, lounge jazz, schlock ballads etc., things which are all perfectly capable of generating emotional responses on their own -- had no inherent emotional value until our genre came along and manipulated it into something meaningful.
You're right - I spoke poorly around this point. I should not have said they don't have inherent emotional value. I wouldn't like something that smugly dismisses something else as part of its DNA. I don't think that's what Vaporwave does.
I do think Vaporwave distorts the emotional meaning of what it samples. Which is relevant to the idea of exploring nostalgia, because that's what nostalgia really does: distorts the past into something more subjectively poignant. The genre's aesthetic specificity is important, because it effectively creates subjectivity. It creates a personal viewpoint to which all of its practitioners adhere. This is why it's an art movement as much as it's a musical movement.
I'm not sure any other type of sample-based music has so explicitly and directly dealt with nostalgia and its effects. I understand what you mean about it being merely a novelty, and a lot of people share that view, but I think that undersells how its form matches its content in order to truly get at the emotional and social core of its subject matter. It's treating a specific strain of nostalgia as something generational, and, I think, ultimately linking that nostalgia to the haze of infantilization and immobility that hangs over a lot of millennial culture.
Quote:
I'm not sure it's an age thing, either. For all my life post-adolescence, I have struggled to identify with niche genres like this, where so much of what seems to define it as a movement -- if its internet champions are to believed -- is ideological, and which doesn't readily manifest itself in the music unless you've already bought into the prescribed wisdom concerning what the music is trying to do
I'm being completely honest when I say I came to these conclusions on my own based solely on listening to the music and viewing the art. I think there are plenty of concrete thematic allusions in the samples chosen, and the distortion and repetition of them (specifically on Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1).
Quote:
Music critic Adam Harper, writing in Dummy in 2012, described vaporwave artists’ work as a reaction to late capitalism thusly: “These musicians can be read as sarcastic anti-capitalists revealing the lies and slippages of modern techno-culture and its representations, or as its willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound.”
I've heard this take on the genre. I find it to be a simplistic reading, and based much more in a smug view of the sampled music than the artists themselves hold. People like to reduce a lot art to "criticizing capitalism" when it is usually more nuanced than just that.
Quote:
Conceptually, this is boring stuff.
Well, if you still think so after this discussion, then we just disagree.
Post subject: Re: Entire genres that only need one thread: Vaporwave
Posted: Thu January 07, 2016 1:11 am
I've been POOSSTTIiiEEnngeeaahh
Joined: Fri November 15, 2013 6:14 am Posts: 11136
Give me the goods about vapor wave that I might plug into spotify and get glassy eyed to. I don't even know what this is, but based on some posts I've read I am expecting video game noise and 90s commercial clips.
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