Amazing deals on mannequin parts

August 21, 2014 8:21 AM

"i’m really excited about this video……this Sears store is going out of business so we walked around the decaying retail ruins and the perfect song came on and we had a true vaporwave experience" from game developer Porpentine (previously)
posted by codacorolla (32 comments total)

In case you're as in the dark about vaporwave as I was.
posted by schoolgirl report at 8:36 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

And so this is the very day when I'm officially Old. What. The. Hell.
posted by Yowser at 8:38 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Vaporwave! I like it. Did Amiga MODs ever get a resurgence? I don't really consider them chiptunes since they were all sample based.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:46 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I found it interesting to listen to some of the vaporwave links within schoolgirl report's site, while reading a little bit about the driving force behind the decline of Sears.
posted by eye of newt at 8:50 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

It is growing increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a Store Closing Sears and a Store Not Yet Closing Sears.
posted by delfin at 8:58 AM on August 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

Neat idea for a video, but IMO she walked way too fast through the store. Totally out of cadence with the music. If she'd slowed herself down to about half that speed and held it steadier, this could have been sublime.

In case anyone's interested, I'm pretty sure that song is "Elegy" by Tycho.
posted by jbickers at 9:00 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Grumpy: 99% of chip tunes use samples. I'd bet more than 95% of chip tunes are MOD files.
posted by Yowser at 9:02 AM on August 21, 2014

I still can't make heads or tails of that video. Or more to the point, why someone would post it on Youtube. It's completely artless. The fuck.
posted by Yowser at 9:08 AM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

I guess I always considered the FamiTracker / LSDJ / SID stuff to be chiptune since it the actual waveforms were generated by the chips, but it appears there is wide variance in opinion.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:16 AM on August 21, 2014

Huh. Apparently my most recent studio recording effort is vaporwave and I didn't even know it...
posted by stenseng at 9:19 AM on August 21, 2014

I will never tell the kids who can appreciate decline in this manner to get off my lawn.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 9:25 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

A few thoughts;

1. I'm old and confused, but I do have this article to thank for bringing the genre "post-elevator music" to my attention.

2. I thought all Sears stores had closed by now. The one closest to my house went under over ten years ago and the last time my wife and I went in it was probably the most melancholy ambiance I've ever experienced in a retail space. IIRC correctly I was thinking about buying some dress pants, but we literally couldn't find any staff to give our money to, and the longer we looked the creepier it got so we just left.

3. On the subject of particular pieces of music playing at particular times in a particular place...years and years ago I was on the psych floor of a hospital and a group of us were sitting in the common room with MuchMusic playing, and "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies came on. Uncomfortable silence, then laughter.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:32 AM on August 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Grumpy: My personal stance is that as long as the MOD file adheres to the limitations of the target platform, it can call itself a chiptune. Then there is the case of SNES music, which always used samples and is basically a MOD format.
posted by hellphish at 9:33 AM on August 21, 2014

if you're not logged in the (previously) link takes you to the login page. I believe /contribute/ should be removed from the URL
posted by doublesix at 9:38 AM on August 21, 2014

This is eery. Just last night I was dreaming about needing to return something to Sears and I COULDN'T FIND SEARS.

That said, I'm totally grooving on vaporwave.
posted by E3 at 9:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I first read that as "vaporware" and found the analogy tenuous, but yeah, I'll go with it... but then I reread it and despite the common origin of the term I'm a little bewildered.

But, I like it.

[checks lawn just to be sure]
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:03 AM on August 21, 2014

That was great. Thanks for posting it.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:51 AM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

It feels like when porpentine turned the camera on she did her best "I'm in a FPS and I'm going to move like I'm in a quake game" mode. Its like a let's play video of a game that doesn't exist
posted by hellojed at 11:52 AM on August 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote recently about working to vaporwave, and it clicked a few things in my brain (especially the comparison to old Maxis PC games):

Working to vaporwave

Since joining the staff of The A.V. Club full-time, I’ve been struggling to learn how to write in an office setting—a big change for someone used to the stay-at-home-dad schedule of jotting notes, cranking out a draft during naptime, and then tidying the piece up in the evening, after the kid goes to bed. (It doesn’t help that I’m a slowpoke.) Writing to music—something I rarely did at home—has helped. At first, it was the early baroque, with its predictable, reliable rhythms. Lately, I’ve revisited vaporwave, a nearly played-out subgenre of sample-based, ’90s cyberpunk Muzak, which materialized sometime around 2011. James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual—one of the first proper vaporwave albums, and still probably the best—has re-entered my life as the soundtrack to my commute, and マクロスMacross 82-99’s Sailorwave scores my mid-morning email check. Disconscious’ Hologram Plaza—a relatively late entry from last year—goes well with a strong coffee when it’s time to wrap up a review. Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up on the PC games of the ’90s (Far Side Virtual has a definite Maxis vibe), but the genre’s sonic palette—clean MIDI instrumentation, samples of smooth jazz, tinny elevator echoes—tends to bring out my focused, productive side. At least for now.
posted by naju at 12:05 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Searsiously vaporware.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 12:10 PM on August 21, 2014

Does anyone know happen to know where this video was shot? I'm in the market for some mannequin parts.
posted by rabbitroom at 2:03 PM on August 21, 2014

In spite of the title, the mannequin parts actually seemed sort of expensive.
posted by codacorolla at 2:04 PM on August 21, 2014

eye of newt's link above about the decline of Sears retravels territory we've covered before. In summary, Sears' CEO Eddie Lampert is a Randroid, who set up different departments of Sears in competition with each other in an attempt to drive them to heights of capitalist glory, but instead left them feeling like they were in an arbitrary competition orchestrated by a clueless ref.

Horace Rumpole's link from July 2013, to BusinessWeek.

Pastabagel's terrific comment on Sears' decline: "In 1993, Sears had the most extensive and sophisticated mail-order retail operation on the planet and they closed it. Two years later, Amazon.com launched, and was soon selling everything that sears sold through it's catalog."
posted by JHarris at 2:16 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Strange coincidence... I was just listening to and reading up on vaporwave a bit this afternoon.

Love this album and it's eerie repeated use of the Mario64 sample.

Macintosh Plus / Floral Shoppe is a classic.

This is kind of an interesting read and listen.

And here is a longish article with some of the original political and cultural commentary behind the whole movement.
posted by ropeladder at 3:16 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

In case you're as in the dark about vaporwave as I was.
posted by schoolgirl report at 11:36 AM on August 21 [3 favorites +] [!]

Our financial system is being slowly disrupted by the increasing viability of Bitcoin.

I was with the author til then and now I feel like I've been had.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:26 PM on August 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

No discussion of vaporwave is complete without "Vaporwave Is All Just Diana Ross Slowed Down at Different Speeds," a commentary/remake(?) of the second track off the aforementioned Floral Shoppe.

The Sears video is amazing mostly because of how everything comes together perfectly right around the time of the PA announcement, but it really feels like it works better as an inside-baseball conceptual piece than an actual vaporwave song/music video. If you aren't already aware of the genre and its conceptual underpinnings, the video seems totally pointless. Even when you are aware, it's basically "oh fuck echoey muzak plus death of obsolete consumerist enterprise plus faceless mannequins and assorted mannequin parts this is SO VAPORWAVE." Which is awesome because it's completely coincidental, but yeah.
posted by chrominance at 3:41 PM on August 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

Chrominance: exactly. Everything comes together so well in that video, like almost on queue, and it's just like this act of cosmic coincidence.
posted by codacorolla at 3:47 PM on August 21, 2014

Also, my personal favourite takeaway from learning about the existence of vaporwave: Especia, a JPop idol band that has decided its gimmick would be to take musical and aesthetic inspiration from vaporwave, leading to videos like this and this. Which is especially strange given that vaporwave often takes on Japanese signage and titling as a way of evoking a near-future hyperconsumer society that doesn't exist, but feels closest to Japan in the late 80s, before the recession and the so-called "lost decade"—an era of Japan the members of the group couldn't possibly remember, since the oldest member is only in her early 20s.
posted by chrominance at 3:49 PM on August 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wow chrominance. That first link of yours quite suddenly put me exactly in the frame of mind of....

...early 90s. Two in the morning. Idly, I have the TV on the "Prevue Guide Network: We Are What's On!" The music is incredibly generic Muzak kind of stuff, but just the same no-name synth-leaden theme over and over and over. And the scheduling system has crashed, so instead of what's on, the channel just displays the next four 30 minute slots... over and over... in a cycle... but with no channels and no programs, just the hour headings... over and over... ALL NIGHT LONG, with occasional commercials. It was hypnotizing. And that video, although with a bit more content, reminds me of that.

And what do you know, someone on YouTube had taped one of those Prevue Guide breakdowns and posted it (15m), so you can see exactly what it was like!
posted by JHarris at 6:35 PM on August 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

(Warning in that clip: Suzanne Sommers selling Thighmaster!)
posted by JHarris at 6:36 PM on August 21, 2014

Ok I get it now. Vaporwave is all about ripping off the mid to late 90s demo scene aesthetic.
posted by Yowser at 11:27 PM on August 21, 2014

Heh, so after reading up on the vaporwave scene and noticing some of the references, specifically all the guff about "Windows 95 sounds" etc I realized that way back in like, 2005 I wrote a proto-vaporwave track! And posted it to MeFiMu over two years ago!

Granted, I was just goofing around in FL Studio having a laugh and had no intention or thoughts about creating some new thing so...yeah...it's not that cool
posted by Doleful Creature at 1:46 PM on August 28, 2014