Vaporwave article
Vaporwave Subgenres, Explained
There's no single vaporwave sound. Here's each real branch of the genre, explained straight, plus what it definitely isn't.
Right, let's clear something up straight away: there's no single "vaporwave sound." What started with slowed, looped samples in the early 2010s split into a handful of genuinely different branches within a few years, and lumping them all together does a disservice to how varied this stuff actually is. Here's each one, straight and honest, with nothing dressed up.
Classic vaporwave
This is the original template: slowed and pitched-down samples of 1980s and early-90s pop, smooth jazz and corporate soundtracks, looped and drenched in reverb. Records like Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 and Macintosh Plus's Floral Shoppe sit here, dreamlike, hazy and often nearly beatless. If someone plays you "vaporwave" without further explanation, this is probably what they mean.
Mallsoft
Take the classic sound and point it specifically at shopping centres, hotel lobbies and other half-forgotten commercial spaces, and you get mallsoft: spacious, echoing, ambient, often built to evoke walking through an empty mall at closing time. It's slower and more atmospheric than most classic vaporwave, with less emphasis on recognisable song fragments and more on mood and reverb-soaked space.
Future funk
Future funk takes the opposite approach to mallsoft: upbeat, danceable, built on disco and funk samples with prominent, energetic edits rather than dreamy loops. It's the branch most likely to get you moving rather than staring into the middle distance, and it shares vaporwave's source material more than its slowed-down, hazy mood.
Vaportrap
Blank Banshee's Blank Banshee 0 (2012) is the record most commonly cited for kicking this one off — vaporwave's textures combined with trap drums, heavier sub-bass and a punchier, hip-hop-adjacent production style. It's the branch that borrows most directly from a completely different genre and bolts it onto vaporwave's sonic palette.
Signalwave
Signalwave leans into broadcast fragments: radio interference, weather reports, television audio, degraded transmission effects. Where classic vaporwave often feels like a half-remembered pop song, signalwave feels more like scanning through dead channels late at night. It's one of the stranger, more abstract corners of the wider scene.
What it isn't: synthwave and chillwave
People mix these up constantly, so let's be direct about it. Synthwave is original, newly composed music modelled on 1980s film and arcade soundtracks — it's not built from samples at all, which is a fundamentally different process from anything above. Chillwave is hazy, 1980s-influenced indie and electronic music that also generally avoids direct sample manipulation. Both share vaporwave's retro aesthetic; neither shares its actual technique.
| Subgenre | Character | Reference point |
|---|---|---|
| Classic vaporwave | Slowed, looped, hazy | Floral Shoppe |
| Mallsoft | Spacious, echoing, ambient | Evokes empty shopping centres |
| Future funk | Upbeat, danceable, funk-based | Energetic disco and funk edits |
| Vaportrap | Trap drums, heavier bass | Blank Banshee 0 |
| Signalwave | Broadcast fragments, static | Radio and TV degradation |
If you're brand new to any of this, our beginner's guide to vaporwave is the sensible place to start before you worry about which branch is which, and our guide to essential albums gives you a genuine record from most of these strands.
Why the boundaries stay blurry
None of this is drawn up by committee. Artists move between these styles freely, plenty of records sit somewhere between two categories, and listeners disagree constantly about where one branch ends and another starts. Treat these labels as useful shorthand for describing a sound, not strict rulebooks a producer has to follow.
The bottom line
Vaporwave was never one thing, and pretending otherwise flattens what's actually an interesting, varied family of sounds. Learn the rough shape of classic, mallsoft, future funk, vaportrap and signalwave, keep synthwave and chillwave in a separate mental drawer entirely, and you'll understand this wider scene a lot better than most casual listeners ever bother to.
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