Vaporwave
Whalley, J. Harry (2017) Vaporwave. In: Continental drift: a century of jazz on record, 15-16 July 2017, Rose Theatre, Edinburgh. (Unpublished)
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Vaporwave is an electronic sub genre first emerging in 2011 born out the re-appropriation of sounds from the 1980’s and 1990’s. Vaporwave uses amongst its sources lounge jazz, windows 95 theme sounds, low-fi VHS recordings and glitch with an unashamedly nostalgic aesthetic.
Lacking many of the commonly cited hallmarks of Jazz – Improvisation, high level musicianship, advanced Harmony etc. Vaporwave seems an unlikely companion in a conversation on the evolution of Jazz. Nevertheless, this presentation will outline the history of Vaporwave and give examples from the sub genre that mirror certain aspects of the evolution recorded of Jazz. For example, the reappropriation of material (from popular culture) the use of shared knowledge within subcultures to include and exclude others; the in-joke. Simultaneously embracing capitalist symbolism and riling against it, Vaporwave is a critique of Muzak and the way in which we currently “consume” it. In this regard Vaporwave both a micro-genre and a meta-genre.
As an electronically created art form, Vaporwave highlights the ‘cracks’ in music production and celebrates them – for example by repeating a badly cut loop. In this way as an act of subversion, it acknowledges and highlights process instead of disguising it.
This presentation will also address a number of examples in which devices commonly used Vaporwave (pitch shift, time stretch and sampling) are (un)-ironically used in contemporary jazz contexts.
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