AOTW | 25 December – 1 January: 骨架的 – Holograms

Here’s a total vaporwave throwback to cap off 2017! Holograms is the second album from 骨架的, one of those artists who could stake a claim on the “founder of vaporwave” epithet. Unless there’s something earlier floating around in the void of 2000s Internet forums, Holograms is the first album to utilize the sampling curation aesthetic of vaporwave that has since influenced early vaporwave sound pioneers Vektroid, Datavision Ltd., and the Fortune 500 label. Whereas debut release Skeleton was a, ahem, skeletal dark ambient release that took its source material to some screwed-up extremes of sound editing, Holograms is an exceptionally clean take on plunderphonics. It’s almost certainly the first vaporwave album to sample/loop smooth jazz and adult contemporary music, whereas Chuck Person’s ECCOJAMS Vol. 1 utilized pop songs. Plus, opening track “Computer” is one of the purest digital ditties out there.

Our original article written almost two years ago (before Sunbleach was even a thing) refers to Holograms as “not a definitive vaporwave experience, but it is an exceptional part of the scene’s history and one of the most ‘listenable’ releases in the genre”. Well, we’d like to correct that record. Not only is Holograms a definitive vaporwave experience, but it’s probably one of the best albums for a new listener who’s just come from FLORAL SHOPPE to hear next. Holograms features much of the similar samplism techniques, but it presents them in an extremely unironic way without so much as the context of their source material to elicit the mystical, somewhat hypnagogic feeling associated with 骨架的’s work. Holograms still accurately represents the genre over seven years after its release.

Read the Sunbleach article here, and check out the music below:

 

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