I recently had a co-worker explain what vaporwave was, and after I recovered from throwing up in my mouth a little bit after he was done explaining, I thought that it was only a matter of time before the oddly meme-tastic sub-genre of music, where people chop and slow down recognizable songs into something, well, hardly recognizable as the same artist, hit the other sub-genre of music fans I tend to interact with: Phish fans.
Whoever this dude DBOM is, he chose to release a version of Phish “Bouncing Around the Room” in full vaporwave style, which is slowed down, moodier, and by the end, a bit trance-y.
Don’t know what vaporwave is? Honestly, good.
But in case you’re curious, here’s the gist according to musicologist Adam Harper: “a wholly synthesized or heavily processed chunk of corporate mood music, bright and earnest or slow and sultry, often beautiful, either looped out of sync and beyond the point of functionality.”
It’s weird. Meant to be sorta funny. But if done correctly, honestly these kinda slap as moody weird background music pieces. I pressed play on the track below thinking I wouldn’t like it, but by the end was super drawn in.
Check it out.
Any thought that it isn’t tongue in cheek gets immediately thrown out with simply the final notes and cymbal crashes (very LOL way to end this one), but the dude has put out a few tracks now. Don’t miss that Arlo Guthrie vaporwave track either.
The funny part is that taking this Lawn Boy classic and making it even slower and weirder would actually be a hilarious way Phish could transform the song entirely live, sorta how they took “Llama” and do a slow-funk version of it.
