With our first VAPOR playlist, we wanted to figure out what this sound is called. We made up a few names of our own, but thought vapor fit best.
Turns out it’s called Kawaii, and Jersey Club. Kawaii actually means cute in Japanese, which makes most sense given its bubbly nature with anime and video game samples sprinkled in. Jersey Club seems to be more house-based, but still as bubbly.
We decided to still keep it called Vapor ’cause this is too funky to be that cutesy.
I’ve listened to way too much music this year, probably around 12,000 new tracks (I tried calculating it). Most of the music was.. unfinished, to say the least, but we found a lot more songs worth keeping than any year before it.
A lot of new music emerged or reemerged over the year. Deep house was the big thing, but many discredit it because of the hype. It had its bad with its good. Our favorite new style goes to what doesn’t seem to have an official name yet. I’ve heard many call it kawaii, but I prefer vapor – this naming shit is more important than you’d think.
We’ve got 30 songs to show off, 11 artists and 20 playlists for you, but if that’s not enough… wait ’til next year.
I’ve gone to a handful of EDM shows & festivals over the last year and I just don’t get how people can dance to most of the popular shit these days (says the hipster music blogger). At least not when you’ve got such better music to dance to (also hipster). So obviously we had to put a list together (very hipster).
Our Dance Party mix for 2014 is geared more towards the club or house party rather than the rave. I guess that’s where we differ from the higher BPM, bombastic music dominating EDM right now.
We get into various forms of house music on here, but there’s plenty of other influences as well — I’m being vague because I just spent way too much of my time putting together this list and I don’t have time to articulate it (like always).
Vapor is not really a style or genre. We got it from vaporwave, which most closely sounds like PUPANG’s Zane, but our list seems to be more electro influenced than vaporwave’s housey-synth sound.
The most common theme among all this vaporness is the cultural Japanese references, mainly inspired by anime & video games, and has an almost kiddish quality to it… which I warn you many won’t like. It’s not for everyone, as with most of our lists, but I dig the hell out of this sound.
Nothing is better to dance to right now than this style of electronic music. I thought electro funk sounded fitting as a title, but it’s more commonly known simply as electro and to some extreme electro house and bass music. Though this naming shit is getting outta hand, as necessary as it is.
The sound actually sounds like something between disco-house & bass music, but more experimental than the former and more soulful than the latter. It gets a little strange at times, but that’s exactly what dance music needs right now.
Wave Racer layers his vaporwave classic with something new every time I hear it. With rap samples to Nintendo bits, ‘Streamers’ is as intricate as it gets and I can’t get pass this new electro sound from Japan. Even though technically Wave Racer is from Sydney. I just can’t imagine this sound originating from anywhere else.
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