Alma is down for anti-consumerist,lorified muzak based on 80s and 90s sampled music

If you’re familiar with most modern art movements, music genres, aesthetics, and, of course, a e s t h e t i c s, you’re probably an expert on vaporwave (or, at least, you spend more than enough time on the internet). Despite considering himself knowledgeable about most musical genres, our Arts Editor knew absolutely nothing about vaporwave. Having attended a meeting of Columbia’s Vaporwave Club, he… regrets to inform you that he stills considers himself ignorant about whatever the hell vaporwave actually is.

Despite the supposed 500+ activities, clubs, and organizations here at Columbia, every once in a while, a few students will get together and decide that Columbia doesn’t offer exactly what their looking for in a club. So, they take it upon themselves to face the Activities Board’s arduous process of gaining recognition, and they begin the process of garnering interest, finding members, and most importantly, holding meetings.

Having held its very first meeting this past Monday, one of Columbia’s newest ‘unofficial’ clubs is the Columbia Vaporwave Club, self-described as the “club for enthusiasts, producers, broadcasters, and those who want to learn more about vaporwave art, music, music videos, and whatever other media may fit under the category of vaporwave.” Started this past July, the club’s main form of communication is a single Facebook page where individuals can share content related to vaporwave and organize to plan meetings.

Now, if you’re like me, all this talk of vaporwave raises a question: what the hell is vaporwave?

By definition, vaporwave is musical genre/movement that started in the early 2010s that focuses on sampling or replicating music from the late 1980s / early 1990s, slowing the beat down and layering/altering the music to create what is essentially surreal background music. Fans and advocates of vaporwave also extend this genre to encompass visuals as well, splicing “retro” images (usually of 80s/90s technology) together with seemingly unrelated cultural content to create images that are generally known as “aesthetics,” stylized as “A E S T H E T I C S.” Or, as one member of Columbia’s Vaporwave Club put it, vaporwave is simply a “hyper nostalgic movement of an Internet era that never was, made up of the Internet’s historians and archivists who preserve and reconfigure media of the 1980s to make it anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist.”

Personally, that whole concept sounds a little far-fetched. Not to put down a genre, but after listening to a few tracks, vaporwave feels like glorified muzak, purposefully altered to create some weird sense of #ambiance. But, maybe that’s the point.

That being said, the first meeting of the vaporwave club seemed to be severely under-attended due to scheduling difficulties, but the de facto leader of the group, Andrew Calimlim assured me that the group would gain traction in the future. His hope for the club is to present a free-form group where individuals interested and/or knowledgable about vaporwave can come to talk about their interests and share links to new vaporwave music. The question remains whether the group can actually gain traction, though, considering that despite having 41 members on the Facebook page, discussion about vaporwave seems fairly sparse in comment threads. Additionally, the Facebook page is closed group, requiring current members to approve outsiders. Hopefully, in the future, the group will solidify its schedule for meetings and garner real interest from the Columbia community; until then, Columbia’s only club dedicated to vaporwave will hover in ‘unofficial club’ limbo.

Image from the Columbia Vaporwave Club’s Facebook