Analog Adventures: One Hundred Mornings

Windows96

One Hundred Mornings

(2018)

About the Artist

Windows96 conjures up specific memories that do not quite exist; one of an computer operating system that sounds plausible and music that plays in the background of a employee training VHS. The past can be fuzzy and memories can begin to mutate to become completely different than the original event, even to the point that we collectively remember things that never happened. This is the Mandala Effect, and this is the spirit of vaporwave. Vaporwave is the microgenre offshoot of synthwave and chillwave popular in the early 2010’s. It takes slowed down, distorted, and reverberated samples of 80s Muzak and Japanese city pop to the point where it is nearly unrecognizable. One Hundred Mornings is not exactly vaporwave as it is an original composition, it just sounds like a sample.

The Record Itself

One Hundred Mornings is the best example of a musical simulacra, or a copy with no original. The composition, production values, and imagery conjure up distinct feelings of nostalgia to the point that you swear you have heard the music before. That is not to say that the album is unoriginal, far from it as it is quite enjoyable as a whole. Everything about this album is concentrated essence of vaporwave manufactured to evoke fuzzy memories of console televisions and riding a glass elevator in a mall with palm trees. From the first track Caligula onward, the listener is transported to an idealized version of the past in which hypercapitalism and consumerism deliver on the dream of utopia. The thing about vaporwave is that it cannot be adequately described as it is an experience. The ones that dream of a retrofuturistic world are the ones who are in on the joke, ironically or not.

The purple disc.

At the end of the world there will only be liquid advertisement and gaseous desire. Sublimated from our bodies, our untethered senses will endlessly ride escalators through pristine artificial environments, more and less than human, drugged-up and drugged down, catalysed, consuming and consumed by a relentlessly rich economy of sensory information, valued by the pixel. The Virtual Plaza welcomes you, and you will welcome it too. – r/vaporwave

Physically Speaking

The sharp vector graphics and secondary colors on the cover of the album serve as an invitation to the listener. The destination is the past, but not as it exists, but as it should be. Technology fixes our lives in this alternate timeline, and we are free to spend our money on whatever we desire. The record itself is pressed on a purple 180 gram disc. The weight of the record and quality of the finish are only surpassed by the beautiful poster included.

The poster included in the sleeve.

Is It Worth It?

As of right now, One Hundred Mornings is fetching prices in excess of $90. Only 700 records exist, 400 in the first batch and 300 in the repressing. This makes this record extremely rare and desired by vapor vinyl collectors. Owning a tangible example of a simulacra is in a word, neat. Holding an original of a copy with no original can make the brain hurt, but luckily enough the music is good enough to offset any headaches that may occur.

Outstanding Tracks

• Caligula
• Bliss
• Mind Mirage