classic vaporwave

obligatory inclusion, still mostly holds up, still more experimental and weird than much of what would follow. and i still don't love it for some reason. but it must've struck a chord because i fell down the vapor hole for years after

one of my absolute favorites, so much that i sought out its cassette. a perfect journey

also one of my absolute favorites. eclectic and interesting

short but sweet and with lots of energy. i genuinely wish there were more of it

puts the "haunt" in "hauntology." it's a classic for a reason. this was the second vaporwave album i listened to all the way through after a friend introduced me to floral shoppe. shout out to greg, a bro of damn near twenty years

blank banshee is still around and still doing cool stuff. i listen to every new album they put out and they haven't missed yet, nor have they stagnated

definitely has an aquatic feeling--a lot of vaporwave does, which may be related to its roots in seapunk. this is a good one to relax to

a moodier take on the genre. i remember this one getting taken down every few months for copyright

a smooth and clean experience i had lost in the depths of my music folder until recently. happy to have found it again

this is the first vaporwave record i remember experiencing as a journey through memories of a real place. many of the other records were memories of digital pseudo-places. after enjoying this one i sought out a lot more mallsoft

drops you into the glendale galleria circa 1995

the actual acme of mallsoft. cat systems corp is on this list like three times but i just really like them lol

there are, i think, four volumes of atmospheres now? this one is my personal favorite. it meets the promise of its name

i think if i had to show somebody what "vaporwave" sounds like generally, without getting into the experimentation or painful useless nostalgia in a lot of vaporwave, i'd pull out this record

this is how 1996 sounded to me. luxury elite is prolific as hell but this one is my favorite of hers

is it called barber beats because they're all aping haircuts for men? or did haircuts for men call himself that because the genre is called barber beats?

a delightfully smooth early vaporwave record i didn't even know about until like three years after release. i'd love to own the cassette

kind of swanky "classic" vaporwave. this artist is still active and making good music

pleasantly energetic and strongly funk-tinted

distinctly funky. i have trouble differentiating macross records, but they were wildly popular in the scene (and this list would have a gigantic hole in it if i didn't include at least one of their releases)

when i think of future funk, i think of the old pepsi commercial clips set to music from this album

i don't know why, but this album's lostalgia is really acute to me, like hologram plaza

this isn't one of my favorites because slushwave is never my favorite, but i think it has to be on any list of vital vaporwave. also i'm not totally sure because vaporwave artists change pseudonyms constantly but i think this is the same guy as telepath, a prolific slushwave artist

a true audio journey, and not a happy one. i found this in a big vaporwave .zip on /mu/

personally i like some of their other early releases more, but this is the one that got popular (and i do consider it good)

tends towards the repetitive, though that's hardly new for this genre. good for zoning the fuck out

the audibly decaying state of these samples is giving disintegration loops

another album i lost track of for years--goes a lot of places. recovering half-forgotten vaporwave is a nightmare, if you've ever wondered

the trappiest vaportrap. a bop

another artist i never really got into because i'm not very funk-tolerant, but he became wayyy more influential and real-world popular than like any of these other ones. way to go, yung bae

a good album for getting a hit of slushwave without drowning

the bygone sounds of luxury resort commercials

a vektroid classic beloved by all vaporwave fans except me. maybe i'm a fake fan. a poser. a tourist

i didn't really like this stuff even at the time, but you kind of have to acknowledge seapunk to talk about early vaporwave

a compilation album and a pretty good who's who of the scene back then

another who's who, but funkier. if you clicked the previous one and were like "where the fuck is luxury elite," here she is

great compilation album from an underrated label

a gigantic compilation from 2015 with all the hitmakers from the dream catalogue label

this is not ten years old but the actual eccojams aren't linkable on this site (and this tribute is better than the originals, fight me)