I am not sure whether my recent discovery of vaporwave was a coincidence or not. When people check out my Last.fm profile, I always return the serve, and I happened to be listening to a lot of other music that will be featured in this series when I got a new visitor. This person’s profile was filled with really odd artist names, mostly consisting of katakana followed by a seemingly random English word in all caps. Click click.

This was vaporwave, as it turned out, and vaporwave was pretty odd. I guess the genre emerged beginning in 2011 as electronic and dance artists, partly in jest and partly as a sort of social commentary, began to resurrect trash audio from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The background sounds of shopping malls and elevator shafts twisted in conformity to dance beats and reemerged packaged with bad 90s digital imagery. The artist titles are a nod to those used in Asian markets to sell western hits without having to pay royalties. The genre title, too, was a hoax, referring to vaporware–products which are heavily marketed but never actually released or cancelled. (Remember when Duke Nukem Forever gained so much fame after 14 years “in development” that Gearbox slapped together a garbage FPS under the title?) Some of the early artists in the scene suggested that their music was not intended to be enjoyed for any intrinsically pleasing qualities. Rather, they were taking music that was trashy in spirit and making it trashy in sound, degrading it to a state where its shallow capitalist origins could shine while, as a possibly unintended consequence, infusing it with actual conceptual value.

The earlier artists I sampled were, as you might expect from the description, entertaining but not particularly pleasant to listen to. In 2014, a label called Dream Catalogue launched and helped to really redirect the genre. Taking the same technical approach of restructuring muzak, smooth jazz, funk, lounge, new age, and R&B into electronic and dance tracks, Dream Catalogue artists showed a generally keener eye towards making the music aesthetically pleasing in its own right. The result was a sound that’s simultaneously modern and nostalgic, and a collection of albums that show a lot more individual character and vision.

Hong Kong Express, the Dream Catalogue founder’s personal project, presents a consistent vision of dreamy nighttime travels in a modern city. In describing his first release, 浪漫的夢想, the label’s website concludes that “This dream, ultimately, is a mysterious and romantic trip through the neon haze of a night in Hong Kong – a journey of subway carriages and fast cars, a love both lost and found, and a connection between souls.” I can definitely hear that. The pitched, echoing pop and jazz samples generate the sense that you aren’t fully taking in your surroundings. You drift through a landscape of glowing billboards and signs, recognizing the products subliminally while reflecting on the light itself, becoming lost in a vibrant capitalist world. What could be more appropriate for the theme of this series?

Check out the rest of the Dream Catalogue catalogue on Bandcamp.