Early Vaporwave
Dead-mall nostalgia, slowed and screwed: the first flush of vaporwave.
What you're really asking
You're asking about the first flush of vaporwave: screwed and looped fragments of eighties and nineties corporate music, turned into something nostalgic and uneasy. It began online in the late two-thousands, more a method and a mood than a scene with a club.
Where it sits
Vaporwave took shape around 2010 through a handful of producers working online. Daniel Lopatin's Chuck Person's Eccojams and Vektroid's Floral Shoppe set the template: slowed, looped samples of muzak, smooth jazz and ad music.
Netlabels and Bandcamp carried it, and aliases multiplied, with Vektroid alone recording under many names.
The scene
Who: Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never, Chuck Person, Sunsetcorp), Vektroid (and her aliases), and the early netlabel producers. Where: online, not a city.
What: slowed, looped corporate and muzak samples, nostalgic and strange. How a record gets in: it belongs to this early vaporwave moment and its architects.
The leading records
Oddballs
Keep digging
- Start with the two founding records
- Vektroid and her many aliases
- The Oneohtrix Point Never connection
- Where vaporwave went next