As a guy who’s liked the music for a long time, this was really frustrating and uneven. Clearly some insane omissions here (they don’t even mention Windows96, and other users mentioned more artists), which is understandable given the breadth of the subject matter. However, as a supposed history documentary, this was much more focused on documenting basic community infighting and “back in my day” slop than it was the evolution of the sound and the different sub-genres that have broken out of it. In the process, it ends up nonchalantly platforming some kinda concerning aesthetic, artistic, and even political ideas as just part of the vibe that fans should have to accept, when that obviously isn’t true. Just because you put reverb on Africa by Toto and define it as broadly vaporwave doesn’t mean it’s automatically interesting and that I have to respect it. I honestly came away from this thinking that a lot of major vaporwave artists are really immature people who are more enthusiastic about the genre as a movement than their own friends’ art and can’t even respect each other’s artistic interpretations. It was competently produced, but it should’ve gone in a fundamentally different direction if it wanted to convert some new genre fans.
As a guy who’s liked the music for a long time, this was really frustrating and uneven. Clearly some insane omissions here (they don’t even mention Windows96, and other users mentioned more artists), which is understandable given the breadth of the subject matter. However, as a supposed history documentary, this was much more focused on documenting basic community infighting and “back in my day” slop than it was the evolution of the sound and the different sub-genres that have broken out of it. In the process, it ends up nonchalantly platforming some kinda concerning aesthetic, artistic, and even political ideas as just part of the vibe that fans should have to accept, when that obviously isn’t true. Just because you put reverb on Africa by Toto and define it as broadly vaporwave doesn’t mean it’s automatically interesting and that I have to respect it. I honestly came away from this thinking that a lot of major vaporwave artists are really immature people who are more enthusiastic about the genre as a movement than their own friends’ art and can’t even respect each other’s artistic interpretations. It was competently produced, but it should’ve gone in a fundamentally different direction if it wanted to convert some new genre fans.
