Vaporwave is an Internet-based microgenre that was built upon the experimental and ironic tendencies of genres such as chillwave and hypnagogic pop . It draws primarily on musical and cultural sources from the 1980s and early 1990s while also being associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and technoculture . Early incarnations of vaporwave relied on the sampling of sources such as Japanese city pop , smooth jazz , retro elevator music , R&B , lounge music , and dance music from the 1980s and 1990s . The music consists of " brief , cut-up sketches " , cleanly produced , and composed almost entirely from samples , along with the application of slowed-down chopped and screwed techniques , looping , and other effects . Critic Adam Trainer writes of the style 's predilection for " music made less for enjoyment than for the regulation of mood , " such as corporate stock music for infomercials and product demonstrations . Musicologist Adam Harper described the typical vaporwave track as " a wholly synthesised 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 . " The style 's visual aesthetic ( often stylized as " " , with fullwidth characters ) incorporates early Internet imagery , late 1990s web design , glitch art , and cyberpunk tropes , as well as anime , Greco-Roman statues , and 3D-rendered objects . VHS degradation is another common effect seen in vaporwave art . Generally , artists limit their source material between Japan 's economic flourishing in the 1980s and the September 11 attacks or dot-com bubble burst of 2001 ( some albums , including '' Floral Shoppe '' , depict the intact Twin Towers on their covers )
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Vaporwave