Style: Vaporwave
Primary Emotions/Themes: Chilled out to the max, nostalgia for simpler times
Thoughts: What happens when someone in the vaporwave genre creates original music without samples? Is it still vaporwave, or has it transformed into something else? These are the questions that Windows 96 has me asking with 100 Mornings.
It's been documented elsewhere that I don't have a good history with this artist. Their earlier works simply did not mesh with my musical tastes. When 100 Mornings first came out it was an easy pass for me. The pre-order was months away from release and only one song was available for streaming. If I don't know what I'm buying 9 times out of 10 I pass - especially if its an artist that I have trouble getting into.
Fast forward to November of last year and the full album released. I found it enjoyable enough to want to pick up. Only problem was that the release had sold out long before the whole album was available for streaming. Oh well, it's just one record in a sea of thousands. I moved on and forgot about it.
Fast forward to earlier this year where I found a buy two get one free sale online and this album was included in that. I didn't hesitate, it was in the cart and off to my house.
100 Mornings marks a strong shift in style for Windows 96. Whereas earlier works showed a ton of classic vapor influence, this album starts to go in its own direction. It sounds like a combination of early 90's infomercial background music, the generic muzak you had in so many restaurants, elevators and malls back then too, and mid 90's video game music.
This album feels like a tribute to the mid 90's with all the aforementioned elements. To top it all off, the music has a wavy effect to it - like you would hear on an old tape or VHS recording that was starting to go bad. Everything is meant to act as a conduit for nostalgia and for the most part it succeeds.
The music's quality is much higher than anything I've heard prior to this album. The songs are catchy, and have that lazy vapor feel to them. Normally that lazy feeling is a huge detractor for me, but here it's different. While the music may feel lethargic, the song writing is not. These are original compositions and they show a quality to them that most artists in the vaporwave genre are unable to replicate.
I don't know if sample free vaporwave is still considered vaporwave, but I think it probably is. There's this idea of multiple waves of vapor, and this is probably in a later wave of the genre than the early... less original entries. Whatever it is, I enjoy the hell out of it.
Written December 14th 2023
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