vaporwave
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A microgenre and internet art movement that emerged around 2010, sampling and slowing down 1980s and 1990s corporate music, smooth jazz, and elevator muzak to create a surreal, nostalgic aesthetic.
Vaporwave emerged from internet culture around 2010–2011, pioneered by anonymous artists like Macintosh Plus (Vektroid), whose album Floral Shoppe (2011) became the genre's defining work. The music is created primarily by sampling existing recordings — particularly 1980s corporate muzak, smooth jazz, R&B, and Japanese city pop — and processing them through slowing, chopping, reverb, and pitch-shifting to create a dreamlike, uncanny atmosphere.
More than just a music genre, vaporwave is an art movement encompassing visual art (Roman busts, corporate logos, pastel grids, Japanese text), fashion, and internet culture. Its relationship to capitalism is deliberately ambiguous — simultaneously nostalgic for and critical of consumer culture. Subgenres proliferated rapidly: future funk (more upbeat, dance-oriented), mallsoft (ambient mall muzak), and signalwave (deconstructed media). Though dismissed by some as a passing internet fad, vaporwave's aesthetic influence on graphic design, fashion, and mainstream music has proven remarkably durable.