When you dig deep enough into mainstream media, you realize you’re looked upon as a consumer, not a human being. When I hear certain songs on the radio, I just can’t shake the feeling that their main intention is just to get you to fucking spend money. 

Content Awareness was my first foray into the genre and deals with the madness and complacency of the modern digital age. It’s about asking yourself, “How aware am I with ways the media interacts with me? How much am I capable of ignoring in order to stay sane?” The first half of the album is pretty light and fun, reflecting the innocence of entering the world and trusting the face-value of things. But the backend of the album takes a darker turn, eventually lifting the veil to reveal how cynical and manipulative society can be. The album features songs titled, “Name Your Price,” “Premium Member,” “Teamwork Makes the Streamwork,” “Content Awareness,” “Shop Til You Drop,” and “Buy Til You Die.” That last song is literally an advertisement for the album. It intentionally includes a cold, robotic female text-to-speech voice who reminds you that,

“We have been watching you, Satisfied Premium Customer 07416C, monitoring your preferences and commensurating your existence into a simpler algorithm. If you do not buy, we all will die.”

Remix culture and its origins definitely signal the decline of capitalism. Sub-genres like mallsoft are meant to evoke the image of an abandoned shopping mall and the death of consumerism in the digital age. Blank Banshee’s “Anxiety Online” uses a barrage of iPhone notification pops, camera clicks, and error sounds within a trap beat. I just think that is a really neat way of conveying the growing consternation looming above the ever-expanding digital lifespace. 

The concept for my next album is very incipient for now, but I really want something entirely based on a fictional place — like a virtual reality of some sort. A world emblematic of the meta-lives we’ve created for ourselves on the internet and a deep-dive into the isolation we all experience online, despite the fact that we’re all more virtually connected than ever before. The quarantine is going to produce amazing science fiction from people who never before considered themselves artists. The anarchistic nature of the Internet is a huge net positive for independent artists, and we’ll see an increase in new talent and artistic endeavors. As people’s tastes become increasingly more niche, we’ll find ourselves exploring more forms of art than ever before.

My grandpa bought me an old Yamaha PSS-190 at a yard sale when I was around the age of seven. I remember toddling around with it for hours and figuring out simple stuff, like the motif melody from E.T. That childhood memory was the first distinct time I realized I could create things. Moments like those are really powerful when you’re developing. I’m lucky that I picked up music so young, allowing it to transform into something I love so deeply. When I started writing my own stuff, I sought to explore ways in which I could express different ideas, whether it be a feeling, an idea, a story, etc. I realized the language of music — the abstractness of it — allows for a method of communication sometimes impossible to convey with words. 

I’ve released music under different aliases, each representing wholly different styles and concepts. The exploration of new techniques and sounds under different personas is liberating as an artist because I don’t have to come off as fickle nor maintain one specific image. Stream☾atcher is a persona that I can inhabit when I want to explore a particular set of ideas in music. I chose to incorporate the crescent moon because it’s such a strong occult symbol. My music is self-aware, accessible, nostalgic. The way I make music varies from song to song. If I’m sampling, I’ll spend hours hunting, constructing, adding, cutting, and warping until I find something that sounds right. 

A core theme of my work is our society’s contradictory nature to critique current media yet romanticize the old. I think one of vaporwave’s most intriguing qualities is its dichotomy — how it pokes fun at the source material while expressing tenderness towards it. One of the most powerful emotions is nostalgia. A decent amount of vaporwave expresses the purity of an emotion through repurposed media. While I only started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few years ago, the score allowed me to relive the music that defined my childhood. The feelings I felt were similar to the ones I experienced when I first heard vaporwave. Those intense sensations led me to produce my most recent album, Buffywave. I wanted to re-interpret the text of the television show to suit my own feelings and interpretations. It’s a nostalgic love letter that explores themes that are still relevant and powerful. Plus, I love occult shit and horror synths. And Cordelia (she’s an absolute queen). 

My first release, Content Awareness, had a similar approach, although a completely different sound. I really wanted to make an album that felt like it was mocking the sort-of syrupy pop music of the 80s. At the same time, I was making stuff that was catchy and fun. I discovered that at its most basic form, vaporwave takes the manufactured, soulless music of the past and turns it into something meaningful and interesting. It’s pretty punk. 

I adore remix culture for its self-awareness and how fun it can be, and you can’t go wrong with a good synth. I always smile when I hear the Yoshi noise lined up with the snare in “Fun Tonight” by MACROSS 82-99. Different remix genres have different reasons for appropriating music. A future funk artist is going to use a Mariya Takeguchi sample in a completely different way than a signalwave artist. The elements I’m really drawn to in an artist are something I can’t quite explain with words. Some albums I just listen to and feel an immediate emotional connection. Saint Pepsi has a very special place in my heart. Not only was he my introduction to the genre, but I return to him the most (see: crescent moon). My desire is to give others that same sort of experience.

The vaporwave community is incredibly inclusive and humble and I’m very grateful to feel part of the collective spirit. Everyone wants to promote each other’s work and no one acts overly selfish in their musical pursuits. Even the most popular figures in the scene are super down-to-earth. I opened for Equip at my very first gig. He’s pretty big and was willing to travel down to Austin and perform with some local artists, and that’s pretty important for an independent scene like ours. I recently performed a live set while my friend next to me speed-ran Gex on an old CRTV. To make it tongue-in-cheek, another friend of mine wandered around the crowd in a business suit, passing out quality assurance surveys for people to give feedback. We want to make waffles onstage and pass them out to the audience next time.