The State of Vapor[wave]: An Interview with Gran Turismo

Brandon Hibbard of Gran Turismo and Ichi Sound weighs in on the state of the genre, its aesthetics, influences, and politics in 2016.

Vaporwave as a genre is ethereal by design. A digital collage of jazz and funk samples meld and interweave with synths and drum loops to create nostalgia for a space that is non-existent and a place that never was. As a uniquely internet-driven genre, many vaporwave producers have to contend not only with the threat of having their music taken down for unlicensed sampling, but with the longevity and staying power of the amorphous genre as it becomes appropriated for various divergent purposes.

We recently spoke with Brandon Hibbard, a Phoenix-based musician, on the subject. He performs and produces in Ichi Sound, a synthpop and glo-fi duo. He also performs and produces as Gran Turismo, which is a solo vaporwave endeavor. Gran Turismo's Super GT was particularly well-received. It was voted into Reddit's "Top 15 Essential Vaportrap Releases of 2015." He's also the creator of Vaporspace, a social networking platform for vaporwave artists and enthusiasts.

The following interview was conducted on August 17th, 2016 with Brandon Hibbard in Tempe, Arizona. It has been partially edited for clarity and length.

Have you heard about that new Blank Banshee record? There’s a new loop on his website and a countdown clock.

Number 2? Yeah. There’s a lot of hype. People in the community...everyone’s excited about it. I’m not entirely convinced it’s real yet, though. Blank Banshee is kind of why I started going into the vaportrap stuff. I heard his first album and it really clicked with me.

Just that first track, even, is really good...with the start up sample?

Yeah, it’s the Mac start up music. It’s great.

So what DAW do you typically produce in for Ichi Sound and Gran Turismo? Do you do live sequencing when you perform?

Ableton Live. 100% Ableton. Sometimes [I'll do live sequencing], but not always with everything because I don’t have a great computer. I use a lot of demanding synths so sometimes I’ll get slowdown.

Are things primarily sample-based? Do you do any MIDI or anything?

When I started producing under Gran Turismo, it was primarily sample-based. I created the drum kits and everything, but as I kind of grew, I’d say it’s about 50/50 now.

Do you ever use any analog instrumentation?

There’s no analog instrumentation. I can’t really afford any. The hardware’s really expensive.

What’s your sample selection process like?

I like to go deep into Youtube with playlists people make until I hear something I like. I listen to a lot of old jazz music, world music, and a lot of the new age meditation stuff trying to find some good samples.

Do you personally feel any political element to the vaporwave genre? A lot of writers and music critics seem to describe it as the sonic manifestation of "disillusionment with consumer capitalism," a discourse on the “degradation of commercial music,” etc.

It definitely, in my opinion, started out like that. That’s one of the things that drew me to [the genre]. Especially, now, we live in an age that’s such a remix culture. You hear Top 40 songs that are just 80s songs redone. That whole aspect drew me into it. But, as it’s become more mainstream, it’s more of a visual aesthetic. People don’t really relate it to the music when they see something [aesthetically consistent with the genre].

Gran Turismo performing at the Game On Expo. Photograph by Kevin Ufnal

**Do you still think of it in politically salient terms as you’re making it? **

I definitely think it's like that for the artist or the people who are making it. I don’t really think it’s that way for the people who are consuming it. I have a lot of producer buddies...it’s hard to explain. Some people see it as some sort of art movement. Others don’t.

I was looking through some Vektroid stuff, and I guess she’s really into that element of it. As it emerges as an art movement or a genre with solidified tropes, there are people who are probably more enamored by just the style. Have you ever interacted with anyone from the genre? Ichi Sound opened for Saint Pepsi in 2014, right?

Yeah. On top of that, I’ve done vaporwave nights here. The first one, an artist named BALENTS played who I know from the scene. ID Chief played too, who’s another bigger player. Along with Donovan Hikaru. A lot of people came out. Jack Murphy, who owns LSDistrict, a vaporwave label from Utah came out. I got to meet him. I’ve definitely made connections with people in real life which is kind of strange. It’s been happening more and more.

What’s that like? Is there something off-putting about seeing people in real life that you would only really interact with online?

It’s definitely interesting because everyone adopts an online persona. Especially, when you’re an artist, you probably take it a bit further than most people. It’s strange interacting with people in real life. They’re usually quite reserved, whereas on the internet, especially artists, are quite open and expressive.

In many ways, it’s a very uniquely internet-driven genre which oftentimes is interpreted as ironic or accelerationist. Sometimes it gets pejoratively categorized as a “meme genre.” What do you think a sincere commitment to its aesthetics really indicates? Do you have a sincere commitment to the aesthetic sensibilities of the genre yourself?

[Long pause]. As I said, there are a core group of people who have a sincere commitment to some sort of message, but I think that’s lost to the masses. Even myself, I do appreciate it, but I also understand that it’s absurd and isn’t meant to be taken 100% seriously.

Do you feel the "absurdity" of it, though, when you’re creating it?

Yeah...I mean, well, when I create it, I try and project my own distresses. It’s kind of difficult to articulate. [...] All the music I make, I’m proud of. I don’t think it’s supposed to be goofy. I make original stuff too. Some people aren’t like that. A lot of bigger vapor artists are sometimes based on a joke or a meme or a double entendre or something like that. [...] There’s a huge...most of the producers...with Facebook especially, there’s a really tight-knit community of producers. I believe everyone there understands it as an art. I think public perception, especially with MTV and Tumblr...and seeing it more and more in advertising...there are things that don’t even necessarily have to do with anything anti-capitalist or the music, just using those aesthetics.

Even the music itself may not be innately anti-capitalist so much as a select few artists. But, when MTV rebrands to a vaporwave or seapunk aesthetic, I can see how that would feel weird.

Yeah. I believe most are committed [to ideological or aesthetic goals], but there are meme producers that pop up every once in a while. Like ＳＩＭＰＳＯＮＷＡＶＥ is kind of meme-y. Vaporwave’s definitely grown. A lot of the music coming out isn’t just a parody of capitalism or what it’s done to us as a society. It’s starting to broaden to other topics. Memes are a huge one. Everyone uses the word meme now, but people don’t really know what it means. It’s just ideas being spread around, what we pass that isn’t genetic from generation to generation.

Yeah, the Dawkins thing.

That’s where I first heard of it anyway.

With the consumer culture element, there is this sort of...winkingness at the extrapolations of cyberpunk and 90s software culture. Maybe that’s not an innate or integral part of the genre, but the seminal works seem rooted in those aesthetics. Maybe the ethos isn't realized by fully embracing any of the individual elements on their own. More succinctly, people characterize it as a sort of disillusionment with the empty dreams of capital, or a nod to vaporware, which is...

Software that’s disappeared.*

Exactly. There’s someone else who writes about it and describes it as “commodification of ghosts.” Some of that likely alludes to the ethereal aura about it, generally speaking.

Yeah, I’ve always just considered it as music from a different universe. Like, at some point in the 80s, our world was separated and now there’s this world with no people, just products and malls and ghosts.

I don't think the actual music-production process would be as readily characterized as ironic or absurd, but I believe it's true of a lot of art forms that you put something out there with the possibility that the audience won’t understand it. Do you feel that’s especially pertinent to the vapor genre in particular?

I don’t think so much these days. I think everyone has a certain expectation. It doesn’t seem like a lot of people have tried to push or evolve. I don’t even know how much it can evolve before it’s just something else entirely. Personally, when I first started, I had no idea how the first album I was going to make would be received. I didn’t even tell anybody I was making vaporwave music before maybe 4-5 months in.

It also gets called a micro-/nano- genre or a micro-/nano- culture. There’s a William Gibson [a prominent cyberpunk author] quote where he talks about trends rising and falling every night in the Sprawl. With other internet-driven genres or styles such as seapunk or witchhouse, that feeling is probably more palpable now than it was in the early 80s. Do you ever think about the longevity or lack thereof implicit in the genre?

Some part of me feels like it’s going to be around for a while because something about it appeals to some part of us. I mean if you just see how it’s evolved past the internet...it might not be the same palm trees and dolphins and Roman busts, but I definitely think the design elements or core components are going to stick around. It’s hard to explain. In our current culture now, I feel like we’re kind of going back into the 80s or early 90s with music and fashion and various trends. I think nostalgia is really powerful. [...] I still think people will be making vaporwave 20 years from now. I don’t think it’ll be how it is now, but the message and meaning and aesthetics will all be there. We’ll be yearning for a different time then.

Have you ever had any qualms about the utilization of East Asian characters commonly used to title tracks when they’re aimed at a primarily Western audience?

Oh… that’s a good question. That’s a tough question to answer in a sensitive environment. For me personally, I’m a big fan of Blade Runner and Japanese video games like Final Fantasy VII, you have these huge neocities...or like Akira. They kind of have that capitalist doom vibe to it. I think that’s where the inspiration comes from.

In the cyberpunk genre, people have asked this question too. At that time, there was a lot of extrapolation of technological innovation and manufacturing from Japan and there were these impending anxieties that could be construed as exoticism or racism depending on how they're contextually presented.

I’ve used less of them in my song titles. Sometimes it’s to make it more difficult to search. Witch house did that too with upside down triangles. From my understanding, that’s how it started. [...] And yeah, in the genre, especially, future funk, it’s one of these things I have a gripe about. A lot of vaporwave artists use images of anime girls that I’m kind of tired of. Like sequences of Sailor Moon nude and transforming...she’s a 14-year-old girl. It’s kind of weird when you look into it, like, I don’t like this.

What’s the idea behind Vaporspace?

I wanted to create a place that was basically a Facebook alternative that fostered creativity. You don’t have to use your real name. I’m working on a number of updates behind the scenes. It’s still in beta. I made it on a whim and posted it without thinking “maybe I should post this and develop it out.” I just kind of put it out there. I’m working on a Soundcloud clone too. It’s going to be cloud.vaporspace.xyz and will basically be a place where your stuff won’t get taken down.

Going back a little, how do you grapple with the so-called "absurdity" of what you’re creating and how the audience that you’re presenting it to will interpret it?

I just really don’t care. It kind of just started off as fun. I don’t create with the intention of meaning.

Maybe that’s why it resonates as a "memetic" genre, because we can intellectualize or speculate on what all of these aesthetic elements mean, but it’s also shooting from a very instinctive cultural place.

When I started off with Gran Turismo, I started with these different ideas of how to make things work in Ableton. It’s like Saint Pepsi, it was all Ableton experiments that he was publishing. A lot of vaporwave producers have different projects and when you’re making vaporwave, there’s a bit more artistic freedom. I have some stuff where it can be fun to test yourself or test who’s listening to it. I’ve mangled or distorted a sample or a song where I’d make things uncomfortable or mess with things.

Like the anxiety-inducing element of destroying a sample?

Yeah, I’ll do stuff where throughout, there’s a point where I’ll test the listener. Things will start to crash or I’ll do things to cause anxiety before going back into a smoother sound.

And, it's still unclear what path the genre will take as it expands even more--whether or not it will crash, smooth out, or disappear "like tears in the rain."

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Archived from "https://arena.com/article/the-state-of-vapor"

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@granturismo89