On January 3 a 17-year-old Chicago producer calling himself Metallic Ghosts played a concert from his bedroom in Old Town. Also on the bill for this online show were Veracom, a producer from Dallas; Luxury Elite from Kentucky; Infinity Frequencies, who’s from somewhere in southern California; Transmuteo, aka New Orleans multimedia artist Jonathan Dean; Coolmemoryz, a Floridian who pretends to be from Japan; and a DJ set by PrismCorp of Portland, Oregon. Chaz Allen, as Metallic Ghosts is known by his parents, has never met any of the other musicians, and few of them ever perform live. They’re all friends on the Internet, and in late 2011 their virtual scene gave rise to an ephemeral form of electronic pop christened “vaporwave,” which by some accounts is already dead. In fact, as far as Allen is concerned, the January concert—the second incarnation of an online festival called SPF420, which debuted in September—doubled as a “final eulogy” for the genre. “As soon as you name something,” he says, “it’s going to take off and die.”
NEW DREAMS LTD. by LASERDISC VISIONS
Internet Club’s Dreams 3D
Metallic Ghosts’ The Pleasure Centre
