One label tells you most of what happened in 2013. Fortune 500 released 33 of the year's 429 listed records, and it has only 38 in the Frekvenci archive overall, so almost its whole catalogue is this single year. The archive total is up 85% on 2012's 232. Synthwave is still the biggest family with 191 releases, but vaporwave is close behind on 135, and 2013 is the first year the two look like equals.
A tape label at the top of the table
The label ranking is unusual because the leader is not a synthwave label. After Fortune 500 comes Werkstatt Recordings with 28, up from 16 in 2012. Then Aphasia Records and Future City Records have 7 each, business casual 6, Ailanthus Recordings 5 and Rosso Corsa Records 3.
Business Casual makes a useful contrast. It has 167 listed releases overall and just 6 in 2013, the profile of a label at the start of its run. Fortune 500 shows the opposite shape: a burst, then little. A count by year cannot tell the two apart, which is why label pages are worth opening.
Vaporwave ballooned
Adam Harper wrote in December 2013 that the genre had ballooned over the year, with a surge of anonymous accounts on Bandcamp and SoundCloud.[3] The archive agrees. The vaporwave family had 32 releases in 2012 and has 135 in 2013, more than four times as many. The sub-genre tags are still small but they exist: mallsoft on 6 releases, eccojams on 4, future funk on 11. For the full family tree, see the What is vaporwave? A guide to the internet's slowed-down mall music.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Family | Releases |
|---|---|
| Synthwave | 191 |
| Vaporwave | 135 |
| Popwave | 63 |
| Darksynth | 22 |
| Dreamwave | 18 |
In family terms the year breaks down as synthwave 191, vaporwave 135, popwave 63, darksynth 22 and dreamwave 18; one release can count in several. By single tag, plain synthwave is on 165 releases and vaporwave on 96, with synth-pop (31), italo disco (21), chillwave (17) and retrowave (16) below them.
Two events outside the database
In February, Kavinsky released his debut album OutRun, on 22 February, with guest vocals by Lovefoxxx on "Nightcall".[1] The archive carries it as Kavinsky – OutRun with a 2013 date. Many listeners took the record as proof that "outrun" was a genre of its own, a claim the Outrun music: the racing-game sound of synthwave looks at. For other artists in that lane, see If you like Kavinsky: artists to try next.
In April, Ubisoft's Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon arrived with a score of 25 original tracks by the Australian act Power Glove.[2] An entire game score in this style is a different kind of exposure from a film licensing a song or two, and it is the reason to read If you like Power Glove: artists to try next if you want to follow the thread.
The year's counting
The archive lists 286 artists on 112 labels, and 127 releases are self-released. By format: 186 LPs, 121 EPs and 66 singles.
Country is known for about 60% of releases. The United States leads with 82, then Greece (28), the United Kingdom (27), France (26) and Italy (13). France, where the sound was first noticed, is no longer first or even second.
Fast producers
Of 286 artists, 225 are listed for the first time. The most prolific are Beatbox Machinery from Greece (13 releases), then three acts with eight each: Evanton from Greece, Sunglasses Kid from the United Kingdom and TOYOTAセリカ, an artist of unknown country. After them come "회사AUTO" (7), then GosT, Protector 101, ｂｏｄｙｌｉｎｅ and SunCoast Web Series with five each. So the year's split is Greek producers working at speed, British and American ones filling in the rest, and a vaporwave crowd with no listed country.
The archive also holds older records under new dates. College's *Secret Diary* appears with a 2013 date on the label Invada, although the album first came out in November 2008.[4] That is a reissue date, and a reminder that a year page covers the year on file.
Ten records from 2013
The picks run from the famous to the obscure: first the big record, then labels and names that only this kind of page will surface.
- Kavinsky · 2013 · Record Makers · LPThe year's best-known album, and the one that put the word "outrun" in many people's heads.
- Listed here under its reissue date; the album that, in College's own account, began in 2008.
- Droid Bishop · 2013 · Celladora Music · EPA short EP from Droid Bishop, tagged spacesynth in the archive.
- Judge Bitch · 2013 · Aphasia Records · LPA full album on Aphasia Records, one of the year's steadier synthwave labels.
- Highway Superstar · 2013 · Rosso Corsa Records · LPA first appearance in the archive, on Rosso Corsa Records.
- Beatbox Machinery · 2013 · Werkstatt Recordings · EPFrom the year's most prolific artist, on Werkstatt Recordings; the title says what to expect.
- Starforce · 2013 · Aphasia Records · LPA new name in the archive, on Aphasia Records.
- Absolute Valentine · 2013 · Lazerdiscs Records · LPA new name's debut album, from the Lazerdiscs Records label.
- [PHYSICS] · 2013 · Fortune 500 · EPA short vaporwave EP from the same label, for comparison.
Browse the vaporwave releases sorted by year to see Fortune 500's burst in context, or put on the Night Drive station (92.0 FM) for the other half of 2013.
Sources
- OutRun (album) (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia
- The Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Soundtrack Fits Like A Glove · Game Informer, 24 Apr 2013
- Pattern Recognition Vol. 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave · Adam Harper, Electronic Beats, 5 Dec 2013
- Valerie Stories: 10 Years of College's Essential LP 'Secret Diary' · Vehlinggo, 26 Nov 2018