Vapor wave music:when disco party is also an art

I’ve been go to parties a lot in the past years ,parties in Osaka ,Tokyo ,New York ,Beijing ,Hongkong ,Paris ,Berlin ,London ,the most important part for me is music .

But my favorite music when go to party is vaporwave DJ parties .the music feels lazy,hallucinating. It is like the retro music of our childhood small disco, low-fidelity sound, nostalgic artifacts wrapped in pink bubbles.

The sunset cinema

The vaporwave first started as a music genre. It was born in 2010 and later extended to pictures, clothing, and movies. In 2015, it reached its heyday. In the 1980s and 1990s, jazz, elevator music, R&B, black music, steam wave music like Pope, cut them together and collage them together. In the music, the vocals will be down-regulated. The songs that were originally female voices will become lazy male voices, and through a lot of repetitions create a feeling of “lazy stuttering.”

Remember summer days

Listening to the vaporwave , I feel like I have returned to the 80s and 90s. Bathing in a white bathtub, the room was full of foam, and there was a broken old radio in front playing the old songs

The vaporwave images are very well to recognize.

There is a plaster sculpture with a girl’s heart powder and baby blue.

There are windows 95, there are anime girls in the 80s and 90s,

There are image distortions, overlapping codes, neon lights and Japanese kanji .

Few years ago , when I first know about vaporwave from a friend .At that time, it was still a subculture, but now the vaporwave has changed from subculture to popular culture.

Especially after I saw the photos of my friends getting drunk at the party .I have to think of what a philosopher once said. Humans have been seeking a way to relieve mental pain, but they have fallen into deeper pain.

Vaporwave is a kind of psychedelic music. In this digital age, mentioning psychedelic is equal to retro. Many people who have never heard of vaporwave feel like neon lights in the 1980s when they first heard such music. . But what exactly is psychedelic, is it just a feeling of peace?

The word “psychedelic” was originally created to specifically describe the experience of a person’s illusion under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Later, psychedelic art was defined as the art of all efforts to depict the inner world of the artist.

When you are in Disco dancing ,you can think of many artists, such as Pope Peter Marx.

Like Cerith Wyn Evans and a variety of other neon installations.

For example, the psychedelic collage artist Fred Tommersley, using pills and illusive plants and insect wings as creative materials, is collaged on the picture.

For example, Bruce Riley, who is obsessed with painting surreal creatures and psychedelic mandala patterns.

I have seen many people who say that they don’t like the noisy and exaggerated nightclubs,but they have never seen anyone who hates this psychedelic and fluttering feeling. American art critic Ken Johnson wrote that “Psychedelic movements help people transcend the appreciation of art and enter a deeper experience. Art is no longer used for appreciation, and sometimes it can be used to consume or feel.” If anyone says that you are not doing business, you can tell him that party is an art.

Photo of my vaporwave style photo :p

In fact, I can fully understand why people nowadays are so passionate about vapor wave. The original intention of the vapor wave was to miss the innocence of the 80s and 90s, in order to express the irony of popular culture after 2010.

The peak period of psychedelic art in the 1960s and 1970s

Anyone who has read “Forrest Gump” knows that if you talk about the art of that era, it is: anti-war, human rights, cold war, psychedelic, rock, hippie, pioneer, love. I must also know that Jenny, who is loved by A-Gump, is the “lost generation of the United States.”

So, just like the head-exploding artist Fred Tommerselli said, “I hope people can get lost in my work, introduce people into my paintings, let them escape from reality, and escape to my creation. In the world.”

Another reason could be also because vaporwave music is taking many samples from the city pop music that’s popular in 1980’s in japan .

After rapid economic development, by the late 1970s, Japan had become the world’s leading economic power. Unlike the young people of the 1960s, young people in this period are no longer keen on talking about the Vietnam War and the student movement. In the sense of happiness brought about by economic development, they began to actively embrace hedonism. A new style of music was quietly born in this era, city-pop, this 80-year-old musical style, has also become the proof of that era.

City-pop, as its name suggests, the music style it represents is naturally full of urbanism. City-pop was born before the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble. It is very different from the folk songs that were popular in Japan in the 1960s. Its singing content is separated from heavy life or criticism of society. Everything described in music, whether it is life, life or love. They all showed a happy atmosphere. Compared with the current music, city-pop has a sense of lightness, which makes people think of the beautiful era of enthusiasm for enjoyment: no matter what, the heavy topic of finding yourself is pushed back, enjoy the present, enjoy in love. The heyday of city-pop lasted from the late 1970s to the late 1980s and lasted for about 15 years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the American rock music represented by the Beatles had a great influence on Japan. This is also described in the “Norwegian Forest” by Haruki Murakami. In this new era of background, the new city-pop does not see too much shadow of Japanese tradition, and is seen as a product of the influence of foreign culture. But in fact, rather than saying that city-pop is a product of the influence of foreign culture, it is better to say that it is a stateless music.

Few of the city pop album covers ,usually related to sunshine ,beach ,and vacation .

Citypop was not the only popular music at the time, but it was a Japanese punk and idol pop that grew at the same speed as the same period. Citypop fits well with the psychology of young people who have just stepped into society and are standing at adult differences. For these young people with money and time, this is exactly what they need. Today, when recalling the music of the old days, citypop has become an important imitation of the retro trend.

Musicians from all over the world have begun to have great interest in this kind of music that exists in childhood impressions and is accompanied by the Japanese bubble economy. On the one hand, musicians such as Greeen linez imitated the creation of a new citypop with their understanding. On the other hand, among the chillwave and vaporwave that use a lot of sampled music, citypop has won the love of all kinds of musicians – especially for the born in the 1990s, it can be said that in the post-citypop era, the bubble economy era Prosperity is more like a surreal dream.

Therefore, vaporwave may be inevitable. I feel that every time I hear the vaporwave , I feel very relaxed and fleeing.

Of course, like any subculture, the vapor wave will only cause a small wave. When this retro trend passed, the steam wave was really outdated from retro.

It is not important whether it is outdated or not. In my case, the vaporwave is a window that looks to the past and allows me to quickly enter a nostalgic state. So whether it is psychedelic or nostalgic, its purpose has been reached, and it will temporarily make me forget this terrible world.

City pop songs