27 profiles · 11 catalogued

The architects

No charts, no arenas, and for most of its history barely any real names. These are the people underneath the aliases.

In short

27 written profiles — 23 in music, 4 visual — each claim sourced to the page it came from. Below them, a roster of 11 more names catalogued by priority and awaiting the same treatment.

Vektroid made Floral Shoppe (2011), the genre's breakthrough record. Daniel Lopatin and James Ferraro wrote the templates a year earlier — no single record is cleanly "first".
The branches have authors: 猫シ Corp. originated mallsoft, Luxury Elite late-night lo-fi, Telepath slushwave, Macross 82-99 future funk.
Blank Banshee stumbled into vaportrap; Saint Pepsi made future funk danceable; 2814 proved the aesthetic could be made without samples; Death's Dynamic Shroud industrialised it.
George Clanton gave an online genre a physical room — the label 100% Electronica and the ElectroniCON festival.
The look predates the music: Hiroshi Nagai was painting the pools and dusk skylines in 1981, for city pop sleeves.

Music · 23

The producers who turned smooth jazz into something uncanny.

Visual · 04

The artists who gave the sound its look — and the painter who did it first.

The roster · 11 catalogued

Names held, profiles pending

Catalogued by priority, with the subgenre and — where one is known — the key release. These entries carry no dates, real names or quotes: those wait for sourced research, which is how the profiles above were written.

Essential · 01

Canon. The archive is incomplete without these.

18 Carat Affair An important proto- and early artist with a distinctive VHS-commercial aesthetic. Reported to be Denys Parker, working on a 4-track tape machine with synthesisers, samplers and drum machines — sourced to a single interview, so held here until confirmed. Proto-vaporwaveVHS

Strong · 07

Substantial figures — scene-defining within their corner.

Expansion · 03

The wider field, including where vaporwave stops being vaporwave.

Open the glossary → Read the primer