Macintosh Plus
Floral Shoppe

The original lyrics actually say "it's all in your hands." But once again, we are talking about vaporwave, the non-music where everyone understands what they want. An example: this fabulous recycling of aesthetics and mix of senseless things that is vapor has been seen by some as a critique of capitalism, which recycles and empties every cultural phenomenon of meaning to repackage it in a more palatable form. However, there are those who, on the contrary, have seen in all this an exaltation, albeit only aesthetic, of the phenomenon. Both readings can be true, but personally, I doubt that anyone has really pondered the issue: the mental gymnastics do not belong to this genre; this genre belongs only to the void.

Chuck Person, the future Oneothrix Point Never, had set the formal characteristics of vaporwave as early as 2010. Macintosh Plus, one of the many names taken by the anonymous Vektroid, just a year later gave a recognizable form to the genre's aesthetic. Floral Shoppe is the quintessential vaporwave album, the Reign in Blood of those who spend too much time on the internet: the Hellenistic statue of Helios on the cover has become as much a symbol of the genre as a low-tier meme. If you want to try the genre or listen to just one record out of curiosity and then forget all about this stuff, choose this album. Indeed, talking about the music contained in Floral Shoppe can be rather sterile. Besides nonsensical names and titles in Japanese that mean nothing, here we find slowed-down '80s disco songs, layered in poor and monotonous audio quality that brings to mind that unpleasant feeling of hypnosis and confusion you get in a state of half-sleep. Sade is slowed down to the point where her voice becomes a drawn-out, incomprehensible murmur, Diana Ross turns into a headless and tailless funk of seven minutes, subject to countless parodies. Between more relaxing moments and more restless ones, Floral Shoppe is rightly the most representative album of this mix of '80s stuff, old advertisements, '90s video games, and elevator music that is vaporwave. A musical genre that is not a genre, an attitude that does not exist outside the internet, a thing that is mocked by its own consumers. Some, like me, appreciate this music and find it pleasant to listen to. Others, and I can't criticize them, say it's impossible to listen to this crap seriously and are convinced that those who say they appreciate it are just being ironic.

There it is, the magic word. Irony. If you were only interested in learning something about the album, stop reading now. Irony is perhaps the specific trait of these last five years. In the '60s there was the discovery of transgression, in the '70s politics, in the '80s disengagement, in the '90s jean jackets and gel, in the 2000s the betas vs. metallari, in the '10s there's irony. And there are still people who deny that the West is in decline. More than anyone else, vaporwave is a child of its time, when the line between seriousness and joke is so thin it doesn't exist. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Take today's indie-alternative-oid, for example: call it hipster, yuccie, health goth, cutester, normcore, fapasaurus rex or whatever you like: it's always the same stuff. They dress like illiterate laborers or like retarded children, but they do it with irony. They play crap music, but with irony. They listen to crap, but with irony. They talk about politics and play at the primomaggio, but with irony. This irony hides having nothing to say, nothing to do, and knowing nothing about anything: they are Jovanottis who don't have the courage to admit it.

Those who mess around with vapor have nothing to say either. And the detractors are right: vaporwave is hot air, in the real world it has the influence of an internet meme and is generally a nonsensical thing. However, in all this bottled vapor, there is ultimately a meaning: when you realize you have nothing to say, you might as well provide a stylish and amusing package for this nothing. A thing ends itself, but not afraid to admit it, asks for nothing in return. A thing that comes from the bottom and doesn't generate people who boast, doesn't bother you on the radio, and doesn't try to sell you something. A lot of people seem to uncritically swallow political narratives based on purely emotional grounds and are convinced they will "experience something" by purchasing a certain product from a certain brand. Here are people who prefer to consciously take refuge in an idealized and crystallized past, never lived nor existed, but who always know when they are dreaming and when they are not. There are those who are nostalgic for the never-lived thinking of black and white cinema, femmes fatales, and Sam Spades eternally with a cigarette in their mouth and a hat on their head. Now there are also those who are nostalgic for commercials from thirty years ago and the low audio quality of old VHS tapes. It is not an escape from reality, it has no particular cultural value, it is not a distinctive mark, it is not a symptom of displacement or sadness: it is vapor, it isn't and that's it. And it doesn't try to be something it's not.

I really don't know how a fifty-year-old feels about vaporwave. This music provokes very particular sensations in me, absolutely not the most intense or the best I've ever had from music, but vibrations unique in their own way. If, on the other hand, you don't like it or find it senseless, you can comfortably ignore it because you will never hear it on the radio or in supermarkets. Whether you like it or not, wish long life to vapor.