Simpsonwave, because Why the Hell Not?

So for the second blog post, I had a tough time finding the right sort of album, artist, genre, or cultural movement to write about. I bounced between outsider music, Beat Happening, Japanese pop punk, and many other ideas. Finally, I felt a little overwhelmed. And when I feel overwhelmed, I often turn to a series of my favorite youtube videos to unwind. What is this series of videos, you might ask? Well it's Simpsonwave, a sort of sub-trend within the larger movement of Vaporwave, which revolves around altering synthpop music and combining it with sound collages (K Mart musak, dial-up tones, etc) that evoke 1990's nostalgia.

I don't endorse Moonman's blatant white supremacy but man is he a dapper maf.

Insert meme here

So I'll try to contextualize Vaporwave as succinctly as I can. I'd say it's an art movement within the long trajectory of sound collage, pop art, and cultural piracy that includes Warhol, musique concrete, electronic music, sampling, DIY music, chopped & screwed, Plunderphonics, Fluxus, and many more. You might say music based on sampling other artists has achieved sonic hegemony today, as hip/hop, electronica, pop, and various sound collage genres all revolve around this concept. The late 1970s and early 1980s was the most important period for sampling going mainstream with post-punk, rap, and new wave artists all experimenting with the technique. Gradually, computer mixing software and synthesizers became more common than traditional rock instrumentation. The artist became a computer technician rather than an acoustic craftsmen. Insert historical analysis about automation and post-industrialization.

Art of Noise proved crucial in sound engineers and mixers becoming artists in their own right.

Bambaataa, pioneer in early Hip-Hop genre Electro, sampled an insanely diverse amount of music ranging from funk to 70s electronica. In "Planet Rock" he samples from Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express

Early hip-hop and Electro artists like Afrika Bambaataa, computer based music experimenters like Art of Noise; and of course Plunderphonics all set the stage for sampling becoming the art form of our current musical age. While back in the 1980s, sampling ran many into copyright issues with original artists, the onset of the internet has made policing this all but impossible. Thus the 1990s (Chopped & Screwed) and new millennia forms of sampling and sound collage, have survived as musical genres despite attempts at more rigid copyright enforcement. Now copyright and fair use laws are relatively loose, protecting many artists (and youtubers) despite the wishes of original artists. Creating a Vaporwave or Simpson wave tune, much like its predecessor, Chopped & Screwed, can mean as little as slowing a song down to 50 or 75% its original beats per minute (BPM) and adding a few esoteric sounds to induce nostalgia and a dreamlike state. Still, this definitely constitutes a whole new set of emotions/phenomenology and thus constitutes more than simple plagiarism. So suck it Bourgeois copyright pigs.

Chopped & Screwed: a sound mixing subculture that started in Houston in the early 1990s, as turntable artists learned that slowing down song when combined with Purple Drank created trippy, dreamlike sensations. It has proven remarkably persistent.

Hopefully I haven't lost you in the mire of my excessive historicization. I merely wanted to discuss how vaporwave/Simpsonwave can be understood as the latest iteration of a half century cultural dialectic which has revolved around sound collage, synthesizer and computer-based sound manipulation, and sampling.

All great music is based on catharsis. With Simpsonwave, the emotional flood is increased exponentially through the use of mixed media art. Youtube Simpsonwave creators often take video from Simpsons episodes, cut it together, add vhs and static lines, along with slowed down and manipulated synthwave music in an attempt to induce feelings of melancholy and longing. The combination of the visual and auditory media results in a sort of dream like state where I feel more than I see/hear. You sort of experience a wave (hence the name) of emotions and memories. Now with the use of 90s cultural driftwood common in all forms of Vaporwave, one could argue the hypnagogic qualities of the genre reflect the echoing effect of a hyper-dense popular culture in our contemporary neo-liberal order.

Ariel Pink's music, described as hypnagogic pop, also inspires a dreamlike and nostalgic aesthetic.

Yeah, Brian is back on this shit again. Culturally, we have been in a sort of recycling period since the mid-1970s. American Graffiti in many ways kicked off a nostalgia industry that has turned our consumer culture in on itself. Everything is hearkening back to some forgotten age, a simpler time when things were good, or at least less complicated. As popular culture reflects this nostalgic desire for the past, it begins to enter a sort of echo effect. Sometimes, this revivalism and 'Retromania' can feel claustrophobic and repetitive. However, I would argue that the sort of bored ennui that inspires backward-searching is the inevitable reflection of our historical trajectory. There is no real vision for the future besides hopefully avoiding catastrophic destruction. As a result, we mine the past for some sort of hope in a hopeless present and future. I'd argue there is some decidedly transformative stuff occurring in the vaporwave movement, even as it embraces 90's consumer culture as a false god and nostalgic soma. Hell I'm not the only one to tell y'all that vaporwave is more than a meme for loser teenagers on the internet.

It doesn't make sense to me to be judgmental of the millennial's for devolving into the past like consumer culture obsessed zombies. It really is the only realm that we haven't been told to vacate. When young people try to transform political parties, we are rebuked harshly. We succeeded in taking over the Democratic Party once in 1972, lost horribly, and have never again been allowed to touch the reigns of power. In many ways, the neoliberal order, with its emphasis on expert-negotiated free trade deals and 'people-as-an-afterthought' globalization, has offered up consumer culture as an echo chamber (in all senses of what that term can mean) for the struggles of youth. One might argue all the pent up angst that continues to fester in the corners of youth music culture could be rallied by some sort of political force. As a demographic, youth have been proven to be decidedly leftist, a group with no allegiances to the current political-economic order. Served up a shit sandwich by an economy geared toward dead end service work, perhaps 'da young peoples' could escape (or better yet channel) cultural nostalgia into a transformative politics. Still, the youth are too sub-divided into micro-niches, segmented by various ethnic and geographical communities as well as consumer markets that want to cater to micro-demographics. A common thread of ennui and angst does exist but perhaps it is not enough to unite us all politically.

Anyways back to politically rudderless nostalgia...I mean vaporwave...I mean Simpsonwave. Let's look at one video and see if catharsis flows through us as we ride the wave. The video is trippy, the song is infectiously funky, I am acquiring 'the feels.' Yet the online community seems to disagree. Interestingly enough, because this is a youtube-bred art form, community participation breaks down the artificial divide between creator and consumer. The top comment seems to be a public debate over what constitutes proper Simpsonwave. Someone remarks, "Ｓ Ｉ Ｍ Ｐ Ｓ Ｏ Ｎ Ｗ Ａ Ｖ Ｅ ／ Ｉ Ｓ ／ Ａ Ｂ Ｏ Ｕ Ｔ ／ Ｕ Ｓ Ｉ Ｎ Ｇ ／ Ｓ Ｅ Ａ Ｓ Ｏ Ｎ Ｓ ／ Ｆ Ｒ Ｏ Ｍ ／１ ／ Ｔ Ｏ ／ ６" in the traditional wide font characteristic of the genre. A thread ensues where several youtubers comment that there aren't enough VHS effects, too little song editing, and various other conditions that make this what I will sadly describe as 'normie' Simpsonwave. The genre has proven wildly popular since its inception and given birth to imitators who are seen as diluting the creative genius of the older content creators like Lucien Hughes. Looks like we have more than just a meme here people, I think we have a full blown artistic movement with a rapid community following that has spawned a serious (well somewhat serious) dialectic.

Now Lucien Hughes original work reflects a far more edited form, including a heavier inundation of retro-izing effects (vhs tracking lines, static, reversing, slowdown, various filters, etc). Describing the way Simpsons dialogue mixes with the chopped and screwed songs as well as the heavily edited video from various Simpsons episodes is extremely difficult. In fact my bloviating seems to take away from the art form's emotional impact. So rather than rattle on any further, I thought I would throw a link to the playlist and then embed a few of my favorites. I've also included an article and interview Lucien did with Pitchfork to demonstrate the fact that teenagers diddling away their time on the internet can have profoundly transformative consequences.

For the best listening experience follow these simple steps:

1) Become unemployed or preferably underemployed in a dead-end job

2) Become addicted to adderral or oxy

3) Masturbate at least 3 times a day

4) Eat only intermittently and shitty food when you do

5) Have a profound existential crisis that only Vaporwave can satiate

6) ENJOY!