(Spoiler alert: this little essay is based on the works made by Pad Chennington's video about Deathdream, along with the article made on Vapor95 about it. This essay isn't meant to copy it in any way, it's just to express my feelings about it and the meaning I find behind this hauntingly beautiful genre. Thank you.)
Desolation. Isolation. A fever nightmare encapsulated in the way of our souls. That which reflects our darkness.
I've been an avid listener of the genre called Vaporwave for over 10 years at this point. Ever since it's spike in popularity in the mid 2010s, I always wondered what kind of ways this revolutionary, deep experimental genre could lead itself into. Some forms are well known to the general public as well, but today I wanna talk about something more. Something abstract. Something that truly encapsulates something that we may not even try to see or feel deep in our souls, because we may fear looking right at it.
Deathdream is a genre that speaks to your soul and it deconstructs it right in your very eyes, as you listen to the haunting notes of it's cascading, haunting melody it portrays. It's no wonder that people discovered it through the influence of certain youtubers that talked about it, in a way, at a certain point in time, it would've been inevitable. But it's recognition to the public wasn't as superficial as you may think it be.
When we talk about trends, we usually see something that has a specific meaning behind. It's something that the people that got close to it at first know it's real meaning behind it, and they try their best to almost "gatekeep" it. Unfortunately, as trends and memes go, the meaning of something changes, so that it fits the cultural mass.
As for Deathdream, this isn't the case. As it got "popular", as they say, people didn't move to just use it as a trend or anything else, the feelings the music gave with it's somber notes and sounds, already made sure to establish itself as one simple thing: an art form that is destined to fade away with time.
The beauty of Deathdream doesn't find itself in the complexity of the sounds, nor the popular attitude and impact it may have on the scene of Vaporwave as it is, but it's the impact on the soul and on itself, that transcends this sub-genre into something so unique. To give you a demonstration for what I mean by all of this, I present to you one of my favorite Deathdream albums.
Something like this is the stuff of dreams, something that truly encapsulate. If you wonder what the title means, it's Beyond Soul, the album was made by the author called Death Channel. There are snippets of a story put together, that paint a really depressing, bleak atmosphere that just screams for some kind of help, some kind of action to the listener... but inevitably, as you'll listen to the whole album, you'll discover a constant, losing battle, that the protagonist can't hold for much longer, for the last minutes of this album, truly encapsulate the absurd state of depression some people may evoke in their life.
This type of music, as it was said by the many artist that worked on it, is a way to encapsulate the different, obscure thoughts that occurred in them, as they went on with their lives. Some of these artists used this type of genre to develop some new form of art they didn't know it was capable, others instead focused their unused ideas to perform such levels of music, and as a way to drift away from projects that may have been working on for some time.
To me, this music truly captures the feeling that we all had during that period of time, no matter what kind of experiences we all had, that the world either was against us, or that we experienced it's cruel, cold indifference, no matter how far we screamed for help... or we wallowed in our own self guilt, as we experienced the many griefs that life gave us.
Thank you for your time being here and reading this little thing I made. I hope I didn't change your mood for the worse tho. Lots of bad stuff happened to me in this whole week, and I wanna at least get my feelings out in an "healthy" way, instead of just getting beaten down by the feelings I felt as of some days ago.
God bless you all. This is Judier, over.
I've been an avid listener of the genre called Vaporwave for over 10 years at this point. Ever since it's spike in popularity in the mid 2010s, I always wondered what kind of ways this revolutionary, deep experimental genre could lead itself into. Some forms are well known to the general public as well, but today I wanna talk about something more. Something abstract. Something that truly encapsulates something that we may not even try to see or feel deep in our souls, because we may fear looking right at it.
Deathdream is a genre that speaks to your soul and it deconstructs it right in your very eyes, as you listen to the haunting notes of it's cascading, haunting melody it portrays. It's no wonder that people discovered it through the influence of certain youtubers that talked about it, in a way, at a certain point in time, it would've been inevitable. But it's recognition to the public wasn't as superficial as you may think it be.
When we talk about trends, we usually see something that has a specific meaning behind. It's something that the people that got close to it at first know it's real meaning behind it, and they try their best to almost "gatekeep" it. Unfortunately, as trends and memes go, the meaning of something changes, so that it fits the cultural mass.
As for Deathdream, this isn't the case. As it got "popular", as they say, people didn't move to just use it as a trend or anything else, the feelings the music gave with it's somber notes and sounds, already made sure to establish itself as one simple thing: an art form that is destined to fade away with time.
The beauty of Deathdream doesn't find itself in the complexity of the sounds, nor the popular attitude and impact it may have on the scene of Vaporwave as it is, but it's the impact on the soul and on itself, that transcends this sub-genre into something so unique. To give you a demonstration for what I mean by all of this, I present to you one of my favorite Deathdream albums.
This type of music, as it was said by the many artist that worked on it, is a way to encapsulate the different, obscure thoughts that occurred in them, as they went on with their lives. Some of these artists used this type of genre to develop some new form of art they didn't know it was capable, others instead focused their unused ideas to perform such levels of music, and as a way to drift away from projects that may have been working on for some time.
To me, this music truly captures the feeling that we all had during that period of time, no matter what kind of experiences we all had, that the world either was against us, or that we experienced it's cruel, cold indifference, no matter how far we screamed for help... or we wallowed in our own self guilt, as we experienced the many griefs that life gave us.
Thank you for your time being here and reading this little thing I made. I hope I didn't change your mood for the worse tho. Lots of bad stuff happened to me in this whole week, and I wanna at least get my feelings out in an "healthy" way, instead of just getting beaten down by the feelings I felt as of some days ago.
God bless you all. This is Judier, over.
)
