My latest essay for Dummy takes a second look at vaporwave, a year after my original article on the emerging genre (click here to read). A lot of what I wrote was positive, some of it not so positive. This one got a bit of flack, and, again, I'm genuinely sorry for any upset it caused in the vaporwave community. If there was anything amiss about my aesthetic approach, especially my approach to some of the more recently emerged artists, other than a basic sense of annoyance it has generated, I would urge people to put their thinking in publicly available online writing and send me a link. It is very important that music writers associated with established publications (such as myself) should not be the only people who get to describe and debate about new music such as vaporwave. The internet is your mouthpiece, and I will listen.
I'd like it to be noted that I do not 'endorse' the 'broporwave' tract, I simply agreed with its general point. More particularly, I don't agree with its complete damning of such institutions as Fortune 500 and SPF 420. As I say in the article, I think a lot of the work associated with them is great. And in my general criticisms of what was described as 'broporwave,' it was naturally not my implication that the music-making and listening was illegitimate or unlovable (and maybe even 'inferior' was too unkind a word), just that in my opinion it generally had less to contribute than earlier vaporwave did. My stance was relatively mild.
As for the usual accusations that my approach to new music is too considered / too deep: as ever, I make absolutely no apologies for that :-)
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Finally, I've found a fresh perspective on this issue. I can't agree with absolutely everything you write, but some of your remarks have become food for thought to me.
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