Essential
Vaporwave

Vaporwave is a music genre and art movement that emerged in the early 2010’s on various Internet communities. Characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist fascination with cultural aesthetics of the late 80’s and early 90’s, entertainment technology, consumer culture and advertising, and styles of corporate and popular music such as lounge, smooth jazz and elevator music.

Vaporwave

147 Albums

Characterized predominantly by samples of 80’s and 90’s pop, funk, and disco releases, slowed down, rearranged, fliped, and reversed to create an new orignal work. Vaporwave tracks often are a comment on the kitschy and/or banal source material, or mass production as a whole.

Browse Albums →

Future Funk

52 Albums

An offshoot of Vaporwave that utilizes 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s disco/funk/R&B sounds with an affinity for nostalgic sounds, lo-fi distortion, and slowed-down samples.

Browse Albums →

Hypnagogic

114 Albums

One of the earliest forms of Vaporwave, Hypnagogic is more dream-like than other sub-genres, creating weird hypnagogic atmospheres from strange samples forming music that sometimes borders on being ambient. Arguably the sub-genre most commonly known for using strange and evocative imagery to emphasize the surrealism of the music.

Browse Albums →

Vaportrap

40 Albums

Hi-tech Trap and Hip Hop music that makes use of Vaporwave imagery and musical textures. But being Vaporwave, it tends to be much more inventive and experimental than typical trap or hip hop and certainly feels immediatly Vaporwave upon listening.

Browse Albums →

Compilations

15 Albums

Albums put out either by record labels or a group of artists. Listening to these is the best way to get intorduced into the variety of artists and sounds Vaporwave has to offer.

Browse Albums →

Ambient

20 Albums

Like traditional Ambient, these albums put an emphasis on tone, with the Vaporwave tradition of trying to conjure up nostalgic imagery.

Browse Albums →

Experimental

5 Albums

Albums that try to push the limits of what can be considered Vaporwave.

Browse Albums →

Mallsoft

5 Albums

Mallsoft, or “elevator music”, is a vague type of background music, often containing elements of smooth jazz, pop, bossa nova or soft rock. Its distinction is that it’s typically meant to be left on repeat while the listener does other things. The repetition of the music eventually forces its way into the listener’s mind subconsciously, to be recalled at later date as a memory of something that may or may not have happened.

Browse Albums →

Further Reading