“That looks cool, you a DJ or something?” asked Wayne Ellington, noticing the Digital Audio Workstation that was open on Derrick Williams’ laptop.
“Not quite. I’m creating audio art but I wouldn’t call myself a DJ,” Derrick replied as he rearranged tracks and fiddled with digital knobs.
“Audio art? You mean music?” Wayne responded, eyebrows furrowed as he sat down in the seat on the plane next to Derrick.
“Not music. Vaporwave,” Derrick clarified, still not looking up from his work.
Wayne watched Derrick’s screen for a few seconds, his interest waning now that he had found out that his teammate wasn’t an up-and-coming rapper or something like that. “Never heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t have, it’s not very mainstream,” Derrick replied. “It’s basically both a protest of, and a tribute to, the consumerist culture that peaked in America in the late 80’s and early 90’s. By rearranging and distorting these elevator music tracks and combining them with a mall-themed visual aesthetic, I am creating hypnagogic nostalgia music for those who either want to ridicule or embrace that consumerism.”
“Wow, that sounds cool,” Wayne said sarcastically.
“It’s neat,” Derrick agreed. “Here, take a listen.” He pulled his headphones off his own ears and placed them over Wayne’s.
Wayne couldn’t quite tell what he was listening to. There were slow, washed out saxophone melodies in the background, but it sounded very muddy. The only thing he could make out clearly were some reverb-heavy drum beats. He removed the headphones and handed them back to his teammate. “Not my style, really,” he admitted, no longer interested at all in Derrick’s weird musical taste.
“You gotta see my Bandcamp,” Derrick said, oblivious to Wayne’s obvious lack of enthusiasm for the Vaporwave genre. He minimized his DAW and opened up a web browser, which he pointed to a URL featuring a lot of unfamiliar Japanese characters. “My vaporwave moniker is ウェーブモール４２０. I’ve already got six albums out and the dudes in /r/vaporwave are super supportive. This next one I’m going to try to release on cassette.”
Wayne looked with confusion at the cover art presented to him. There were a lot of palm trees, Japanese characters, sky scenes, and Roman busts.
“Aesthetic, right?” Derrick asked, visibly proud of his library of work. “It’s just like shopping in a mall in the 80’s.”
“Yeah, that’s, uh, really cool,” Wayne said, bored with the discussion and feeling sorry for his teammate’s misdirected enthusiasm. “I gotta go to the bathroom now I think.” He escaped down the aisle of the plane hoping that he would never hear the word ‘vaporwave’ again.