@cyberpunklibrarian Japanese commercials are always so endearing and bizarre. There's also an inexplicable charm about the old ones though

@cypnk I would consider setting up a monitor in my house that, without sound, plays endless loops of hours and hours of Japanese commercials.

@7even @cypnk MY GOD THE SIZE OF THOSE EARRINGS!

And that was a fantastic ad from a bygone era!

@Alonealastalovedalongthe A bit of both. When I was a kid, Japanese electronics were really flooding the market, pushing out Western-made counterparts. So there's a global familiarity with "All Things Japanese"

Also, a lot of people had hope and nostalgia for the "boom" era before the Japanese asset bubble (late 80s-early 90s) started affecting the rest of the world economy. It became hard economically, but people hung on to the glitzy consumerism

Somehow Vaporwave perfectly captures the era

@cypnk
@Alonealastalovedalongthe
I've argued that it's sort of a weird subversion of modern capitalism in response to the commoditization of more subversive genres (see also: cyberpunk) by reclaiming that promise of a better life and better living through technology

@HereticSoul @Alonealastalovedalongthe There's a very strong aspect of that too. I don't think it's mean in a way of "look at all these things that didn't continue", but more in line with "what big gadgets you have, grandma". It's parody that became its own genre and then straight entertainment

@cypnk @HereticSoul post-parody wave

@cypnk @HereticSoul from a production standpoint it is interesting how it is a genre that heavily relies upon sampling, but instead of chopping up old songs into new ones, it just submerges old songs into chains of reverb and distortion that isolate and corrode that orginal material almost beyond recognition. Or some artists do, others seem to be not sampling at all and making everything (the original "source" material and the fx chains that degrade it) which is disorienting.

@Alonealastalovedalongthe @HereticSoul That's heavily influenced by hip-hop, particularly ones that sampled classic songs. Commonly used by more "artsy" types today to create an ambiance rather than contribute to the lyrics

There's a lot of ambient music influences in these

Particularly this example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LReF14kts60

BTW, That's a Fujitsu FM-X, MSX made between late 1983 and early 84. For a lot of people in Japan, it was their first computer ;)

@cypnk until recently I thought it was just a joke genre, but I have recently gotten more into it. I conceptualize it as wandering the ruins of a future that only ever existed as a denial of the present. I really like that youtube mix. I have found a couple good bandcamp labels https://powerlunch.bandcamp.com/
http://music.businesscasual.biz/music
https://gulfaudiocompany.bandcamp.com/music