I've had the pleasure of watching WTF.FM rise to the top of vapor culture over the last few years. The mastermind behind WTF.FM and [PATRYK FILMS] has even been a collaborator with my Crystal Surge project, both musically and visually. Now Patryk has taken the time discuss with SODA ソーダ SOCIETY about the nature of Vaporwave and his involvement with the genre. Patryk has previously hinted at a possible hiatus to the WTF.FM project due to everyday responsibilities of life. We were lucky enough to have Patryk reach into the WTF vault and provide a new track to tide us over until the WTF.FM comeback! Listen to the track and read the transcript from our interview below.
Vaporwave means something different for everyone. How do you define vaporwave?
Indeed. All people around the world are way different than we could imagine. Everybody has their own opinions about the things they’d like to name. Somebody gives their own names to the stuff they usually have contact with. Anybody else is just using the approved names for things to call em properly to make things clear not just for yourself but for anyone you’d like to easily discuss with.
In case of Vaporwave - it’s complicated to combine everything it should describe but easy to use this word with your friends since it is well known.
In my definition – vaporwave is just a sub direction of electronic, that also combines many ideas, moods and structures which sounds like something distorted, hissed, raw, spoiled but simultaneously and recognizable odd, nostalgic, pleasant, dancing, calm or adventuring – depends where the artist aimed his soul to and is wishing to reach beyond the limit his current level of imagination, outlook and skills. The so called digital pizza with Lego bricks of unlimited imagination in Minecraft-sized eternal universe ha ha!
It also can be called something like ambient, lo-fi, hypnagogic-pop or smooth jazz in consumerism, Japanese aesthetics, PC and web culture, historical events in real world, ancient Greek or Egypt architectures with periodical and ironical candy cover but people decided to call such musical pizza as vaporwave, cos the slowdown pieces of music imitates evaporations that slightly goes in audio waves. Everything that’s aimed at nostalgic jam style – is a true classic method of making this microgenre.
Really happy that vaporwave has been hyped well in early 2K10s for all the people around the world to show everyone the other side of the existence!
You have released music under several aliases over the years. What are you trying to accomplish with WTF.FM that is different than your other projects?
My previous aliases where just a starting point to test the ideas of making em for ear pleasure. The others were created for showing some angles of my outlook. The WTF project is here for a concept and for pleasure, associations, images – to let the listener feel he’s right now in a current location with it’s atmosphere, time, nature and some laws for sure – sort of micro-world. The EPs of course are also locations but smaller just like a cutscene from a video game – sort of. Saying shortly – WTF radio invites you to take a part in our air locations.
What considerations, if any, have you put into the idea of playing WTF.FM tracks live?
I completely understand I will have no any big plans with such project as playing it live – it’s a current moment of my age and I’ll pass it as long as I’m willing to continue evaluate my ideas into concepts. I had an idea to play my first Slander Fall alias live in 2012 cos it were way more efficient for performance but.. it stayed digital as a discography – no physical releases, just small promotion at Russian MNMN label and that’s it. This stage of me has gone but I’m not sad – that was just a part of the life I’m practiced. I have new ideas to go further. I will use them as far as I’ll achieve the new skills and possibilities for making more tracks. WTF is has, for now, 3 tape releases and probably will have more – depends on all the plans and directives I put into it. All those plans could be spontaneous – What The F… you will ask? And you’ll be right!
You also have a huge catalog of music video releases. How did you get started making videos?
Actually I had no idea of making music videos in early ages – I just loved to watch video game cuts that were mixed together by fans under cool rock music – that gave me idea of practicing in such movement. For a first time I started making flash animations and game trailer cuts with music – it brought to me the sort of fun. And when the age of Vaporwave began I started looking for videos under various vaporwave tracks.
Most were inspired by artists like 18 Carat Affair, Internet Club, Hwae Sa Auto, Vektroid and others. Also can’t say about another cool music video makers at Youtube like AVD, ElFamosoDemon, Breakbeat Tiki, Synesthesia Films, Broken Machine Films, OPN channel Sunset Corp., Vektroid channel, Dream Catalogue Channel, LSTHETIC, DMT Tapes channel and many many others, sorry, can’t remember all of you guys – all of them are very unique, awesome and special to me! They are my life, my inspiration, my friends! Thanks of course for all their commentaries and support – it motivates me to make more videos. Mostly making videos at my taste but can’t decline if someone new and good electronic artist asks me to make an official cut for them )
What is the creative process for one of your videos?
Nothing actually special – just trying to playing overall my playlist the tracks and choose some of which deserves the visuals for much pleasure. Looking then on youtube the materials I’d like to use. Then cutting and mixing all together the things and rewatching it for any errors to fix. Mostly one music video takes 2 days or one week, depends how it’s hard to choose the proper visuals and how busy for a day I am.
You are well known throughout the community for having an insanely large vaporwave tape collection. Do you have a number on how many you have collected so far?
Well yeah – many people already know me as a vaporwaviest collector at the bandcamp ha ha! My current number of tapes reached over 350 of rare electronic and lo-fi magnetic copies! Even in my location the collecting hobby is kinda expensive, but I think made the impossible – donated people I couldn’t – just to make em happy that I do respect their efforts and support what I liked to motivate them not to stop )
What is your most prized release?
I think it’s two main well-known releases in vaporwave spheres: Mediafired – The Pathway Through Whatever and Macintosh Plus – Floral Shoppe. I have only Mediafired original one and so freaking happy I finally own it now thankfully to the 2nd Exo Tapes repress! About the second and the other early albums from essential list – some of them are too rare and expensive from hands – so I would probably own a bootleg rather than originals.
Any words on the future of vaporwave?
Long Live Internet! Long Live Vaporwave! Don’t let the progress evaluate your stuff into banger. Be original, be unique, be fair with yourself, try your best, let your dreams go but don’t loose all of em! Keep the heart of a real musician!
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