Since seeing the label recklessly applied to an ambient album I liked a lot last year, I've tried hard to find at least ten ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ albums I actually liked.
I thought I'd managed it a couple of times, when immersing myself for days on end, but then I'd accidentally listen to some different music that was actually good and wonder what I was doing.
Beyond this very short list, it would just be diminishing returns of repetitive Dream Catalogue hypnagogia and other relaxing/eerie original compositions rather than wonky samples, which isn't in the spirit anyway. I surrender.
The audible equivalent of opening the heavy curtains to let the morning sun penetrate your dark hovel, this is a go to when my soul could do with going through a quick rinse cycle every now and then. I don't know if it's the most powerful detergent in the Sangam range, since I haven't needed to check out any others, but they're suspiciously prolific to the point that they could just be letting sine waves play themselves and enjoying the lucrative Bandcamp bucks. It's all about results.
If, like me, you tend to find New Age artists a bit bland and lifeless, this is what happens when they sneak back to the forest after dark to catch nature unawares. I was disappointed at first to see it was a cop-out split rather than a true collaboration, especially since I've never made it through their solo albums, but they're both on the same page and the project brought out the best in them. By the time you get to t e l e p a t h's somnambulant side, you'll be ready for sleep and the inevitable fucked-up dreams.
The Dream Catalogue founder is full of ideas, most of which get their own dedicated pseudonym discographies, but only one of them really spoke to me, and he graciously did it twice. The more grounded sibling to Birth of a New Day shows who was carrying that project and takes place slightly earlier that rainy night, when you're walking home through the peaceful East Asian metropolis to take in the view from your Cylon-looking building. I wish this had existed back when I was doing that.
Included on my top 10 synthwave list when a vaporwave list was looking unlikely (I'm still not optimistic), this is vaporwave for people who prefer music to memes, which fortunately seems to be a growing trend since the limited appeal of distorted ＳＩＭＰＳＯＮＳ muzak videos wore thin. It sounds as skewed as it looks, an impossible artefact from an alternate 1996 that only it remembers, but is increasingly unsure about.
This was the main thing I listened to in the second half of last year, finding peace and comfort in its hazy, ultraviolet undulations from the borderland when I was crossing the threshold of parenthood. Either that, or it was just relaxing sounds.
I find it uncomfortable when vented through headphones, it needs room to breathe.
It's hard to tell how much of vaporwave is novelty, but this Korean trilogy of concept albums about going to the shops (groceries; homewares; introducing the online shopping portal) is about the only one that's actually funny. I won't listen to it again (it's rubbish), but it made me laugh uncontrollably when I found it, especially since there's a slim possibility it was made in earnest.
