October 2024 Round-Up

Hello Friends and Members of the Vaporwave News Network! As promised in our recent episode, here is a collection of written articles, news, and videos that I found throughout the month of October which I think might be of interest to you. They are, for the most part, tangentially related to Vaporwave, Future Funk, live electronic music, and music history. Oh, and I have a new Spotify Playlist for y'all at the end- it's Philadelphia Soul and Disco, one of the most important scenes in the creation of Disco as a whole!

This past month I was reading quite a bit about dance music culture and live music (preparing for my show review I posted last week)! I didn't get out to many shows this summer, and missed all the small vapor-adjacent festivals that happened, so this batch of articles was bittersweet. As more promoters reach out to (what I can only describe as) "normies" and "nightlife people" through Big Tech advertising platforms, the issues in the wider electronic/dance music communities will be relevant to what we're doing as well.

On a less somber note, luxury elite has reactivated her vapor-focused blog breif commercial break and is posting reviews, links to new albums and her thoughts on the history of vaporwave/vapor-adjacent topics!

Here is some stuff related to recent podcast topics:

• Interview with Geometric Lullaby (Dennis) by listencorp (Interview)
• The Nostalgic History of Chillwave by SoulSearchAndDestroy (Video)
• (Hantasi) Liminal Spaces video by Pad Chennington (Video)
• The Shopping Mall’s Socialist Pre-History by Sam Wetherell (Article)
• The Hyperconsumerism of “Mallsoft” by Pad Chennington (Video)

General Reading:

• So many music festivals have been canceled this year. What's going on? (Article)
  Seeing as we didn’t have an Electronicon or Flamingo Fest this year, this one felt poignant. Other folks in the vapor scene who threw small fests this year mentioned losing money on them as well.
• This One Weird Email Helps Explain the Horrible State of Concert Ticketing (Article)
  We’re all getting f*cked by Ticketmaster/Live Nation but it’s entrenched even deeper than you think.. The story involves a dead politician and legislation named after Taylor Swift.
• The Academisation of Rave: Is Everyone Talking About Dancing, Rather Than Doing It? (Article)
  This article started me down a rabbit hole of reading about Rave and Dance Music culture which led me to the next article…
• Dance, Dance Revolution? Shilling utopia at the rave (Article) Archived Version
  A critical look at the history of dance music’s co-optation and dancefloor revisionism. Excerpt: “The defanged, neatly packaged identity politics of dance music comes from powerlessness in the face of a rigged economy.”
• The Politics of Dancing Deconstructing toxic techno culture with investigative journalist Annabel Ross (Interview)
  An interview discussing the challenges of holding artists accountable in current dance music culture. CW: discussions of sexual assault, trauma, and misogyny. 
• Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens (Article)
  As many people in the vaporwave scene know, the Internet Archive hosts a lot of deleted vaporwave releases, images, files, etc.. Also the Wayback Machine is the only avenue for accessing certain pieces of writing or old media posts. The situation has changed since this article so I recommend you continue to follow what's going on with it. I’ll be discussing it in the next podcast episode.
• Everyone Says CDs Are Dead or Dying, But Here’s the Real Story (Article)
  We still see some CD releases in the vaporwave scene but they haven’t taken off as much as many people expected, from what I have seen. Even my own label couldn’t move more than 50 copies after the COVID-era merch-boom. (Buy some here lol)
• SOLD! THE ARTISTS WITH THE MOST VALUABLE BACK CATALOGUES (Industry Blog Post)
  Private equity has been going hard purchasing valuable back-catalogs. They are usually more willing to license music (to the customers who wanna pay $$$) but I doubt this helps small-time producers looking to clear stuff. It’s probably just gonna birth more pop music that samples/interpolates/borrows melodies from previously well-known songs to cash in on generational nostalgia. (Which makes me wonder- is that kind of stuff antithetical to vaporwave? Making music that’s more familiar/comforting out of repurposed previous cultural works vs unsettling/defamiliarized/recontextualized? Idk, but even if the article is fluff, it all makes ya think lol)

Videos to Watch:

• This 1980s Japanese Jazz Album Just BLEW Me Away (Himiko Kikuchi - Flying Beagle)
• 30 Years of the CDJ | The Tech That Revolutionised DJ Culture (DJ Mag/Pioneer Ad)
• Roni Size 'Brown Paper Bag' | The Making Of A Drum & Bass Classic 
• Brazil's Psychedelic Samba Pissed EVERYBODY Off (Bandsplaining, Tropicalia)