Best of Vaporwave: A K A N E I N T O K I O // ALL TOGETHER VOL. 1 ゴールドエディション

A 2016 release from DMT Tapes FL  this is a fucking banger--one of the best future-funk albums of all. 

猫 シ Corp. & t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 // Ｂｌｕｅ Ｄｒｅａｍ (The Lost Album)

Holy shit! I have been looking for this for years. Dream Catalog had to delete this 2014 release after the usual copyright fuckshit, and it has since become  a classic and a rarity. Cat Systems Corp. has their half of the release on their bandcamp, where it can be had under the "buy discography" option, but as far as I know,      t e l e p a t h ' s half has been scrubbed from the internet, except for this Vapormemory upload.
I found thisw download while digging through the vaporwave archive. Enjoy! .  
This is for example only, not my link.
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Vaporwave Classix VI: 18 CARAT AFFAIR // SOLID GOLD (2012)

Another outstanding 2012 release that I has been one of my top albums of 2017. This is a compilation album, which may be why it is so damn good. Looks like this guy was based in Kansas City Missouri, and active from 2009 to 2013. Who knows where he is now or what he's doing. Like so many artists of his generation, he appears to have...moved on.  This is classic vaporwave-future funk of the first generation. This album is listenable all the way through, and is an excellent adjunct to lovemaking with your favorite person and libations. There is a free download of this on the vaporwave archive.

CREATIVE SAMPLING or How Vaporwave Is Made; Saint Pepsi's "Better" and "Issac Washihgton"

[A 2015 article I never published]

Vaporwave, like its' older brother chillwave, and it's parents, hip-hop and house before it, is a sample-based music that, even more than any of the above, is reliant on incorporating huge chunks of songs, or even entire songs as its' foundation. It's a remix genre, if you will, that is sometimes criticized by the uncomprehending for being lazy, or emblematic of artistic decadence, in the same sense that the modern film industry really is bankrupt of ideas and therefor cannibalizing the past for new material. 

But far from being creatively bankrupt, vaporwave has become the little-genre-that-could,  surpassing it's precedent microgenres (or memegenres), chillwave and witch house, in terms of both popularity and influence.  The music continues unabated, diffusing ever further into the cultural mainstream, and as recently as 2015 produced a major masterpiece in the form of I'll Try Living Like This by death's dynamic shroud.wmv.  

One of the major bases of vaporwave is pitch manipulation, slowing down pre-existing tracks. Vaporwave artists are hardly the first, or even second,  to do this. The Houston artist known as DJ Screw pioneered the style, known as "chopped and screwed", and all slowed-down tracks owe something to this originator.  In 2009 the concept hit the internet in a big way, in the form of "drag", which was basically a subgenre of witch house, and made useful effect of the ghostly, disembodied sound inherent in slowed-down vocals.  

The vaporwave artists exploit the possibilities of the slowed-down beats, to rhythmic effect.  The slowed-down track is further manipulated with edits and effects, and the results are often (but not always or necessarily) very different from their source. Tracks are re-titled and presented as the vaporwave artist's own work, which causes the consternation of those who don't respect creative sampling.  But the naysayers fail to comprehend just how difficult it is to find fresh beats, even having the whole corpus of recorded music at your disposal as source material. Not just any track will work downpitched--it takes some intuition and practice to pick those tracks that have the potential. When it works, the effect can be hypnotic and strange, almost otherworldly, and can seem to stretch or suspend  time.

No one proved more adept at mining the past for fresh beats than Saint Pepsi, whose releases dominated 2013, and established a new subgenre within vaporwave; future funk. Here, we  compare two Saint Pepsi classics, posted below, with their original source, to shed some light on how this music is made. In the the first example, the possibilities of editing are explored, and in the second, the potential of downpitching or slowing the tempo is demonstrated.

THE BEST OF LATER VAPORWAVE // テレパシーの by t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 and 猫 シ Corp.

This is the album that entranced me and took my obsession with vaporwave to another level, and led me to focus on T e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 as the premiere vaporwave artist. But don't make the mistake I did initially and ignore the other half of these split releases---猫 シ Corp. is a great artist in their own right. The only thing I know about t e l e p a t h is that they were a partner in the Dream Catalog label, and one half of the groundbreaking 2814 project. This release is from May of 2014, and is no longer available from Bandcamp, possibly due to copyright claims. I have provided a download link that I found after a lengthy search. This represents vaporwave at its moodiest, most introspective extreme--a product of the memory farm.

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THE BEST OF LATER VAPORWAVE // t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 and Vincent Remember : ｉｎｔｅｒｓｔｅｌｌａｒ ｌｏｖｅ

This may possibly be the definitive vaporwave album--- the album most representative of the style and genre as it developed into its full maturity. Released in early 2014, originally a Dream Catalog release, this album is composed of down-pitched eighties pop songs, digitally processed and manipulated in a manner that utterly transforms the underlying material. This pirated music is entirely illegal and illigetimate, according to all accepted legal definitions, and yet it is the full flower of the mad phase of creativity that followed the wide distribution of pirated music production software and the ready availability of the entire corpus of recorded music for raw material, and the best, purest example of endemic internet culture. When the cultural history of this era is seen in retrospect, it is certain that this --- vaporwave at its purest --- will eclipse the "legitimate" music being offered up by the  MSM, by far.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Not my download, but as it is no longer available from Dream Catalog, I share this link for those who need it
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THE BEST OF LATER VAPORWAVE (2015-2015) death's dynamic shroud .wmv // I'll Try Living Like This

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This is an album I listened to relentlessly in 2015. A product of Philapelphia producer James Webster, it is built around R&B samples, and deserves to be listened to in its entirety. Not derivative of other vaporwave, it has a mood and atmosphere unlike any other. A true masterpiece of the genre.
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New Emo // Night Language by Molly Shannon, Molly Shannon

 

Shared by Balam Acab on facebook, this album by Portland Oregon band Molly Shannon, Molly Shannon turned out to be interesting and a breath of fresh air.  The vocals seem right, and the instrumentation is apparently organic, like real instruments; reminds me of early Modest Mouse. "Everything made, produced, broken, replaced, repaired, recorded by msms over 8 strange years of pain & damage." 

 Stay sad, my friends.

2011 Chillwave // Race of Robots

"Race of Robots is a multi-genre musical project created by Zach Holmes and Coby Nida, from Washington, D.C. The two blend and create a new take on 80’s and 90’s music. The styles spawn from R&b based vocal melodies, Indie rock and Reggae influenced guitars. Along with a new hint of Chillwave and an added dose of Hip Hop based sampling methods"
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Class of 2011 chillwave, very nice, generally overlooked and underappreciated. As new music is stagnating, or in a repetitive cycle, I will focus on mining the past for buried gold, especially from the 2009-2012 era. There is another album also free and great, on their Bandcamp page. 
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Download // anothercountyheard's Summer 2011 Chillwave Mixtape

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Classic chillwave mixtape from your's truly. Download it as a zip file of separate sequenced MP3s.


01 Purity Ring- Ungirthed
02 Slow Magic - Sorry Safari
03 Rimar - Ways
04 Seabright -Sea Samba
05 NazcarNation - Beeswax (StewRat Remix)
06 Regal Safari - Lake
07 Active Child - Hangin On
08 Flourish Fill - Gentle Beast
09  Team Rockit - första hjälpen (chop n screw u)
10 Blood Diamonds - Grins
11 Phoenix - 1901 (Essáy's Heat Edit)
12 Active Child - Playing House feat How to Dress Well
13 Balam Acab - Motion
14 CFCF - Cometrue (Physical Therapy Deep Forest Mix)
15 Seabright - Faye
16 Hard Mix - Memories (Purity Ring Remix)
17 Alicia Keys - Unthinkable (PHYSICAL THERAPY REAL HEAVY VIBE)

2011 CLASSIC // Hot Girls (Single + Remixes) by NazcarNation

A 2011 classic from NazcarNation (now Gangplans).
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DOWNLOAD: Kat Seckz by Imprintafter, 2012 Chillwave Classic

A classic, available for free download, via imprintafter.
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Found on Darla: Light and Waves by i am robot and proud

Something I found through Darla Records facebook page. Listen to "Weird Gravity." I think they're from Toronto. Reminds me of Sweet Trip.
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Download: 愛 by コンシャスTHOUGHTS, Tasty Free Future Funk

Download: My Vegan Dog by Hearts Bonfire

via Memory No.36 Recordings. Check out their other fine releases. 
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DOWNLOAD: SAMHAIN Mixtape

Just a little something scary I cooked up for Halloween or Samhain,  its' pagan name, focusing on   artists who had been in Throbbing Gristle, and their associates. Throbbing Gristle split in half, yielding Chris & Cosey (Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti), and Psychic TV (Genesis P-Orridge and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson). In 1984 Christopherson split off from PTV taking with him Geoff Rushton, aka John Balance, who became Coil. Current 93 is the group of David Tibet who had been in Psychic TV, and split off at the same time as Sleazy and Geoff. Many Current 93 records feature the members of Coil,  Steven Stapleton of Nurse with Wound,  Boyd Rice and Douglas P. of Death in June. "Terminus" and "The Full Pack", both presented in their full length,  dominate the set. They are Psychic TV at the full peak of their power, and are among the scariest pieces of music ever recorded. Listen to it in the dark.

DOWNLOAD SAMHAIN MIXTAPE

Track list
0:00 Psychic TV "Terminus" (1982)
11:30 X-TG ‎ แฝดนรก (Faet Narok) "Faet Narok Two" (2012)
15:00 Coil "Blood From the Air" (1986)
19:40 Chris & Cosey "Haunted Heroes" (1986)
22:45 Coil "Cardinal Points" (1986)
26:30 Death in June "The Wall of Sacrifice" (1990)
33:10 Current 93 "To Feed the Moon" (1986)
38:04 Psychic TV "The Full Pack" (1983)
51:00 Current 93 "Earth Covers Earth" (1988)
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Download: Oh hi by It Is Rain In Ny Face

Download: YESOD by RUMTUM

More than a year old but fuck, I missed it and this is RUMTUM.
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Download: CHAM! by マクロスMACROSS 82-99

This is the real-deal vaporwave, a whole album of delicious, fully developed tracks spanning the spectrum of rhythms and  styles encompassed under 'vaporwave', from the glowing jazz of "Lost Without You" to the kawaii-house of "Miss Macross", the trap-hop of "Ash" to the future funk of "Sailor Team", my personal  favorite. So there is a lot of variety to the tracks, yet they are unmistakably vaporwave.  Several guest vocalists add immensely to the collection, most notably Diane Shroomy, and the unidentified vocalist on "Sailor Team".

This is music that will leave a big smile on your face, and it's a free download, so wtf are you waiting for?
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DOWNLOAD: Am I being overdramatic? by YlangYlang

via Ailanthus 
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