For a genre that started out as an ironic joke among internet forum-goers, vaporwave has undergone a stylistic revolution in the five short years since the genre broke into the underground with Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe, widely considered the genre's ur-text (ur-album? Ur-listen? Whatever.). Initially consecrated and characterized as a bizarre offshoot of plunderphonics (that is to say, music synthesized from existing samples cobbled together) with a sardonic anti-capitalist subtext, various producers and projects have latched onto both the genre's existence and its aesthetic, and, in the process, vaporwave has gone from loquacious inside-joke to a post-ironic genre into itself. The popularity of "Simpsonwave" last summer, which even prompted a Pitchfork article, is the ultimate proof that the genre has gone from vaguely unnerving slowed-down Donna Summer songs to something with broad appeal. More anecdotally, Blank Banshee, one of vaporwave's patron saints and the forerunner of the needlessly niche "vaportrap" sub-subgenre, sold out most shows during a North American tour earlier this summer, indicating that what some people dubbed the first "post-internet" genre is encountering a lively childhood.
Yet even as the genre grows in popularity and moves further away from its roots in sampling obscure 80s/90s muzak, there's another half to the equation, as a handful of underground projects push the genre to its experimental limits, dissecting the genre's aesthetic and technique. Among these latter explorers is Philadelphia project death's dynamic shroud.wmv (DDS). The project first came to my attention in 2015, with their record I'll Try Living Like This, which eschewed the sugary, sterile atmosphere of a vaporwave record with a more cloying, pervasive sense of tension, assisted by glitched-out production and an almost strident, urgent feel to the record's numerous songs. Two years later, DDS have released a new record, Heavy Black Heart which, while it lacks the ghostly unease of I'll Try Living Like This, provides an intriguing, multifaceted listen.
Heavy Black Heart's most striking features aren't the glitched-out vocals that seem to writhe and stammer on top of tight, compressed beats, nor is it the almost sound-collage-y assortment of samples that blast into being from the first few seconds of the record and continue at an off-kilter, irregular pace - all of those could be seen as a natural, albeit jarring, evolution of the repurposed elevator muzak of vaporwave's genesis. Rather, it's the record's mounting sense of chaos that builds and pervades every second of Heavy Black Heart, contrasted against the spic-and-span samples and throaty, Rick Astley-like vocal clips (albeit in Japanese).
Newer vaporwave outings have had a tendency to toy with ambient, immersing the listener in the strange, idyllic, self-contained microcosm that advertisements seem to exist in. 2814's Birth of a New Day, one of my favorite releases from 2015, nailed the sentiment perfectly, transporting the listener into a hazy, rainy Japanese late-night journey. This is not the case with DDS, and certainly not with Heavy Black Heart, whose glitchy production, especially the vaguely danceable 'Life Should Be Easy', forces a more cerebral experience. What's more, the release toys with that latter's ambience, with the delicate synth lines that open 'You at Night' being interspersed by gnawing noise and goofy, out-of-place vocals before exploding into a punishing, bass-driving, drawn-out beat. Ultimately, the song collapses in on itself, before re-igniting into the almost-industrial-tinted 'Pennington Acres'.
Heavy Black Heart isn't going to be making it into compilations of chill lo fi anime beats any time soon, but ultimately it represents a far more experimental take on the sample-based origins of the genre, representing a further refinement of its aesthetic, albeit in a warped, esoteric, and oftentimes gloriously cacophonous way. DDS have never made easy-to-listen music, but Heavy Black Heart is its most daring, experimental outing yet, and ultimately begs third and fourth listens in order to ply its deceptively deep crevasses.
Heavy Black Heart's most striking features aren't the glitched-out vocals that seem to writhe and stammer on top of tight, compressed beats, nor is it the almost sound-collage-y assortment of samples that blast into being from the first few seconds of the record and continue at an off-kilter, irregular pace - all of those could be seen as a natural, albeit jarring, evolution of the repurposed elevator muzak of vaporwave's genesis. Rather, it's the record's mounting sense of chaos that builds and pervades every second of Heavy Black Heart, contrasted against the spic-and-span samples and throaty, Rick Astley-like vocal clips (albeit in Japanese).
Newer vaporwave outings have had a tendency to toy with ambient, immersing the listener in the strange, idyllic, self-contained microcosm that advertisements seem to exist in. 2814's Birth of a New Day, one of my favorite releases from 2015, nailed the sentiment perfectly, transporting the listener into a hazy, rainy Japanese late-night journey. This is not the case with DDS, and certainly not with Heavy Black Heart, whose glitchy production, especially the vaguely danceable 'Life Should Be Easy', forces a more cerebral experience. What's more, the release toys with that latter's ambience, with the delicate synth lines that open 'You at Night' being interspersed by gnawing noise and goofy, out-of-place vocals before exploding into a punishing, bass-driving, drawn-out beat. Ultimately, the song collapses in on itself, before re-igniting into the almost-industrial-tinted 'Pennington Acres'.
Heavy Black Heart isn't going to be making it into compilations of chill lo fi anime beats any time soon, but ultimately it represents a far more experimental take on the sample-based origins of the genre, representing a further refinement of its aesthetic, albeit in a warped, esoteric, and oftentimes gloriously cacophonous way. DDS have never made easy-to-listen music, but Heavy Black Heart is its most daring, experimental outing yet, and ultimately begs third and fourth listens in order to ply its deceptively deep crevasses.
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