What are you listening to at the present? (genres helpful)

[Key-Glyph]

Hey guys, I know we've got some country music aficionados here, so I wanted to plug an app a good friend of mine co-created that you might have fun with. It's a bingo game using words commonly found in country music lyrics:

http://www.freetoastermedia.com/countrymusicbingo

Here's a YouTube video explanation of the different play styles, difficulties, and so on, as well as the story behind the app's inspiration.

If you try it out, I hope you enjoy it!

[J T]

I’m trying to get myself up to speed on vaporwave music. I first heard about this new genre a few years ago, but didn’t pay too much attention. I just heard Hong Kong Express for the first time though, and I love that sound! I wanted to dig deeper.

For those who don’t know, vaporwave is a surreal, hypnotic form of sample music. It’s not all that different from something like DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, or music from Burial, except that vaporwave tends to pull samples from a lot of music from the 80s and 90s, particularly music from malls, elevators, advertisements, computer demos, and smooth jazz radio. My understanding of it is that this music is meant to be something of a critique of capitalism, but in a way that embraces consumerist fantasies of the past few decades, while recognizing that the hole that marketers carved in our souls and teased with dreams of luxury and popularity was never really filled as advertised. It is equal parts nostalgic lament and hopeful wistfulness, looking back on a future you once hoped for, and still wishing it was possible, though you now know it is not. The music attempts to achieve a certain aesthetic that is like watching a recurring dream on a TV screen smeared with Vaseline. It’s often slow, moody, psychedelic, yet enticing, sexy, and charming. This is achieved by stretching samples, running them through grainy filters, adding phasers, etc. But the strategies for the sound are not what define the genre so much as whether or not the strategies achieve that certain feel. This music is pretentious, and it knows it, but it’s also vapid and disposable, and it just doesn’t really seem to care either way as it is lost in some blissed-out hypnotic fantasy world.

For further description, you might want to watch this video:
Vaporwave: A Brief History

Here are some essential listening albums:


Macintosh Plus- Floral Shoppe


This album is not particularly impressive for its musical skill. The sampling techniques are pretty basic, and it didn’t introduce a lot of new creative music ideas, but it is a hugely influential touchstone album because it so squarely nailed the feel of this music on the head and led others to expand on the ideas.


Hong Kong Express- Self Titled


This is what I like. It’s got mood, and cool. It feels like what I imagine riding a Yamaha motorcycle on rain slicked streets in Hong Kong feels like.


Blank Banshee- Self Titled


This one has a more danceable moodiness. It’s what house music would sound like if house music managed to be interesting… and was listened to underwater.


Golden Living Room- Welcome Home


This one has a more analogue feel to the recording, which is because there are more natural recordings and analogue instruments used here. All the luxury of a Trump hotel lobby with none of the awful.


Saint Pepsi- Gin City


Saint Pepsi is a bit funkier than the other selections, but the vibe of life viewed through dream gauze is still there. I also like his love affairs with advertising visions, as can be seen in this video:

[darsparx]

I've been on a ninties kick with music so yea a lot of artists(and heck google play has a station for this). Cranberries, 4 non blondes, The Verve, No Doubt, Nirvana and for good measure toss in some Beck too. You name it I might have watched it lately on youtube.

Beyond that it's also been some usual and unusual suspects: Utada hikaru(hikki), Baby Metal, Jacob Collier, Snarky Puppy, Weird Al, and Kacey musgraves.

I don't even understand my music tastes myself and it's quite confusing with the variety it's been lately.

[RudySilvergun]

[J T]

Another to add to my list of essential vaporwave albums.


2814: 新しい日の誕生


This is a masterpiece of ambient music. It is a collaboration between Hong Kong Express (HKE) and Telepath テレパシー能力者. If you just want to disappear into a rainy cyberpunk soundscape and let yourself dissolve within slow waves of audio bliss, this is the album for you.

[Sano]

E-Type - Life

[Xeogred]

Vaporwave seems pretty cool from what I've heard over the last few months. But it's still a bit too dance floor for me. I much prefer the more blatant, in your face, 80's action styled retrowave... if that's the official label now.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I like a lot of electronic music, and I suppose vaporwave is pretty cool. I have a tough time telling all these genres apart though - it's even more chaotic than all the metal subgenres, which I didn't think was possible.

Cool links, J T.

[Xeogred]

Then you have Dynatron, whom almost slips into metal territory with their retrowave:



Image is from Conquest (1983) that I keep telling people they need to see.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Vaporwave seems pretty cool from what I've heard over the last few months. But it's still a bit too dance floor for me. I much prefer the more blatant, in your face, 80's action styled retrowave... if that's the official label now.

What all does that cover? I'm thinking something along the lines of Lazerhawk or Power Glove. I might be wrong though.

Speaking of electronic, I just heard the DOOM 2016 OST... and holy shit, this is good stuff. Would something like this be considered Industrial, or would it fall under something else? Stuff like this excites me, because I finally hope I've found a genre of dark music that doesn't have lyrics I disagree with or is mostly made by non-Neo Nazis...though if it is Industrial those points might be moot.