Vaporwave is a 1980’s inspired musical genre and aesthetic that thrived on Tumblr from 2012-2020. Broadly, vaporwave musicians slow down and remix samples of 1980’s songs in order to evoke nostalgic memories of the Reagan era, Yuppies, and globalization. On this week’s vaporwave episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan are joined by Peter (a trance musician known as David James Drume), who previously made vaporwave music under the name Eleven Eastern. They begin by briefly discussing the genre’s musical origins before delineating the aesthetic elements of vaporwave art: early 3D graphics, Greek New Media Sh*t, Japanese text, Japanese fine art, and cityscapes. Amongst other things they discuss Joseph’s high school 3D animation class, New Classical architecture, fears of Japanese ascendency during the 1980s, vaporwave’s appeal to suburban men, and the perennial popularity of vaporwave music on Chinese urbanist Tiktok accounts.
 
Links: 
Drume’s Soundcloud 
Resuscitation Hymn by Drume
Eleven Eastern on Tumblr
Greek New Media Sh*t
Flossing by Six Dogs
レッドYOLO
Cityviews888 
TradCath E-Girl Summit
 
Artwork:
AI
 
Recorded on 3/17/2024

Ver todos los episodios