The recent proliferation of VHS/8-16 Bit Video Game/90s Internet Aesthetics: Classic or Dud.

While there's definitely been a lot of debate on this topic in ILM, (which I believe has tended toward the dud opinion) I don't think there's been any proper discussion, which I'd like to see because I've been thinking about this for awhile and have arrived at no answers.

Personally, I'm extremely ambivalent about this sort of thing (as exemplified by the aesthetics of, say, Oneohpointrix Never - or on a far less flattering note, most Ch**lw**e dudes - or the work of artists like Corey Arcangel - who's been doing this since at least 2005) because my gut instinct is to just love the shit out it and make neo-Structural Films on VHS camcorders to set to lo-fi piano house produced on crappy Yamaha Keyboards.* On the other hand stuff like this:

Like every time I go to the Whitney biennial, every single artist my age and younger can't seem to make art that doesn't have Nes controllers or Captain Planet in it. It's fucking embarrassing to think this is how my generation is squandering their talents

― unban dance squad (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, September 28, 2009 3:36 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is kind of OTM, and this aesthetic is really being run into the ground - and seemingly rarely, if ever, in ways that transcend coy self-consciousness. I mean part of the problem is that so much of it is a product of a growing 90s nostalgia that is entrenched in a kind of... not irony, or pastiche, but, I don't know. I feel like this is a lot more sincere than the godawful 80s nostalgia of the early-mid 00s that was bathed in irony, but I'm still unsure about whether any of this constitutes an genuinely interesting or relevant use of old media, or whether this is (as one would be hard-pressed to refute) merely a hip fad to come and go. At the same time as all of these problems, how do I deal with my undeniable instinctual pleasure of it?

*I've actually made lo-fi piano house on crappy Yamaha keyboards, but no VHS films as of yet.

I guess another way of saying this is: If so much of this is so lame, why do I like it so much? What is its elusive allure?

irony/nostalgia/pastiche seem like the obvious culprits

I have no interest in this stuff myself

hasnt this animal collective chillwave shit been everywhere for like the past five years?

i've liked the sound of crappy Casios & 8bit NES tunes since i was a kid, don't really care if its been fleetingly co-opted by some hipster dorks

My friends' wedding invitations were NES cartridges they'd taken apart (with a 'title' sticker on the front with their names, Zelda graphics on the inside and so on). But they're just huge nerds, so I don't think it counts.

hasnt this animal collective chillwave shit been everywhere for like the past five years?

Yes.

But AC back-to-nature-and-innocence aesthetics is something completely different, isn't it?

AC doesn't really fit this much. Ariel Pink is who youse are thinking of.

There's quite a large amount of SReynold's Retromania going over this topic. I think it might be Oneohtrix who theorises the chillwave aesthetic comes from artists who used to hear their parents' TV sets through the walls while trying to sleep. I kind of like that. But yes, I think this style like all things will run its course, and soon. A few years ago people romanticised the early eighties - synth-pop, electro, new wave. Now it's all MTV Fonda Workout Masters Of The Universe Arnie VHS Shark Attack stuff of the late '80s/early '90s.

Not fully on-topic, but it bugs me the way fictional movies and TV will show bits of video from what are obviously meant to be digital sources (webcams, digital video recorders, etc), but add in bits of static or rolling to show it's from a video, because that's what VHS tapes did, even though digital video doesn't do either of those things.

Kairosoft games rule the 16bit pixel aesthetic

Classic

+1

i feel like a have a fair bit to say about this although i also feel like ive posted a lot of deep_thoughts already on various threads abt this stuff: i dont particularly care abt the aesthetic but im interested in the uses its being put to

2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgrnIBlxZCk

I found some random mp3s on random website by someone or something
named "John Maus." The production is home-demo quality (although
there's surprisingly little hiss) I was surprised at the quality of
the songs; they're new wave dirges, dark and claustrophobic, but with
real hooks. Can anyone tell me more about this guy (Google search
was fruitless) ?
http://demonstrationbootleg.com/

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Wednesday, May 5, 2004

when we fell in love with the sounds of misremembered memories, hoos, teen daze and campfires, beach haze and waterlogged VHS tapes, cassette hiss and long beach trips looking out of the back of the station wagon while soft rock plays, hoos. the intangible memories of innocence lost.

― froster the poophole (Whiney G. Weingarten)

<3 whiney

There is a lot of 2002-2006 stuff here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paperrad

John Maus has been around that long?

I groaned when someone linked to this, but then I watched almost the whole thing:

Skinemax is Koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes. It's long form entertainment for short attention spans.

http://vimeo.com/29999445

This stuff speaks to a common aspect of humanity: unless you had a truly awful childhood (and sometimes even if you did), it's nice to be reminded of it, because there are certain emotions (or magnitudes of emotions) you can only feel as a child, and a feeling of infinite possibility that necessarily fades with age. When you combine that fact with a generation that grew up on the mainstream synthesizing and repurposing of media, you get this as a significant proportion of art/media, instead of just little fractional subgenre (This Is Your Life, Happy Days, That 70's Show).

We want to go back. This is one of the most basic feelings of sentient, mortal beings. The only difference is that the skills and tools that evoke a feeling of going back are available to many more people than they were in the past.

It's simple, Nintendo was awesome and probably the best thing about my childhood. I want everything to sound/look like that now.

sorry you're childhood sucked

your

wrote this but couldn't post last night (either ilx or my connection was screwy; I wouldn't normally save & post later but unlike whiney I really feel like there's something in this stuff, like its existence/"popularity" is "important": I think Whiney sort of agrees, in that he thinks that any audience for this stuff is sort of self-damning in its tastes, but...anyway, what I wrote was:)

I also enjoy a lot of this stuff, and in a very "natural"/unmediated way: I hear it (or see it), and feel "simple" pleasure in response. James Ferraro - both his actual stuff and his sleeve design - really punches the buttons for me. When you say

part of the problem is that so much of it is a product of a growing 90s nostalgia that is entrenched in a kind of... not irony, or pastiche, but, I don't know. I feel like this is a lot more sincere than the godawful 80s nostalgia of the early-mid 00s that was bathed in irony, but I'm still unsure about whether any of this constitutes an genuinely interesting or relevant use of old media, or whether this is (as one would be hard-pressed to refute) merely a hip fad to come and go. At the same time as all of these problems, how do I deal with my undeniable instinctual pleasure of it?

I think you hit a great question, and I don't have anything purporting to be a conclusive answer, but: I think much nostalgia is a little less...momentous than pre-digital-age nostalgia? like, I dislike nostalgia, a lot. but the shift between analog and digital ages, positing somewhere in between '95-'01 as a cutoff: that's a seismic shift. The shift from the 80s to the 90s isn't a huge how-people-interface-with-the-world shift; while there are huge movements, they aren't on the level of "everyone will have computers" or the rise of the internet. So there's a gravity to nostalgia for this moment in between a totally analog world and the digital present: it's like a collective childhood, maybe? except it's not childhood, because it was the world, and it's no more.

I don't know. I don't like to assert that one generation's nostalgia is "deeper"/more meaningful than another's, but I do feel that digital looking back at analog is different; it doesn't feel like "remember when we listened to all those great bands of the 60s?"

I mean in a sense it's like the Victorians writing about a time before there were trains. There's a quality of mourning that to my mind is bit more worthwhile than, you know, guys trying to make the same sounds as the Human League did twenty-five years ago.

I know that if I had a synthpop band I'd probably ape something from the 80's since a lot of the "modern" (like, the sounds of the 90s) synthesizers sound worse than the "classic" ones. Some bands like say the Junior Boys do this pretty well. The last Datarock album (Red) was apparently recorded exclusively with technology made in 1983 or before (as a tribute, or something) and you really wouldn't know if they hadn't told you. Really I think a lot of groups don't know what "modern" is so they just go to whatever sounds good, and naturally they can just make it a gimmick from there. What I do have a problem with are the artists who purposely limit themselves. Hard to say but I think Dam Funk kinda fits into this category, or say all the awful "chiptune" artists who purposely try to trigger nostalgia for the NES tunes that you heard looped into infinity when you were a child without realizing that nobody would buy a disc full of NES music no matter how much they liked it while they were playing the game.

"recent"

i can be a sucker for this stuff because i'm such a texture guy, and certain kinds of analog haze or chip synths (but mostly percussive sounds and handclaps that sound like rolling rain splatting on a tin roof) just elicit tactile pleasure. my feeling is always that this is not nostalgia-based at all, but i did grow up playing '80s pc games and nintendo, so who knows?

xp

well I'm only talking about certain groups here (maybe ones where I don't necessarily "get" the appeal), but a lot of groups who try to "bring back the spirit of the 80's" generally fail since that kind of backwards growth flies in the face of that spirit and it's a lot harder to write something like "Take On Me" or say the Super Mario theme than you think

I agree that a lot of the chiptunes sounds really are great but the only artists I like who use them are guys like Max Tundra who actually understand why certain sounds should be placed in certain places and why chiptune is not appropriate for everything

"a sucker for this stuff because i'm such a texture guy"

there's a killer pickup line in here somewhere

every get busy with a texture guy?

'it's a lot harder to write something like "Take On Me" or say the Super Mario theme than you think'

agree with supermario, but take on me is pretty by-the-numbers.

For chiptunes, there's an essentially anonymous and workmanlike quality to it that makes non-gaming appropriation seem pretty ridiculous, like charging $10 for kraft macaroni & cheese at an upscale restaurant. If you have nostalgia for mac & cheese, you can still get it for cheap at a supermarket, just like you can get still get chiptunes on mobile games.

agree with supermario, but take on me is pretty by-the-numbers.

this is really wrong - "take on me" is a very very clever song musically speaking

try making a take on me knockoff, then try to make a supermario knockoff.
take on me knockoff will be easier to do.

when you see how easy it is, that will be your "a-ha!" moment.

The point is that a bunch of bands are still trying to write songs like "Take On Me" and so far few have succeeded

no you're still wrong, philip

i'll prove it to you -- I'LL MAKE A TAKE ON ME CLONE.
also, why would bands want to write a song like take on me, unless they're trying to hone in on the lucrative soundalike market?

take on me is amazing and structure wise has always felt unusual - the way the each line of the chorus sets up the next part, and what song can claim a single, drawn out falsetto note as its most memorable and earwormy part?

why would bands want to write a song like take on me, unless they're trying to hone in on the lucrative soundalike market?

because it was a huge hit that everyone loves and made a ton of money?

thought opening riff is the most earwormy?
da-na-na-na. na na na na-na-nanananaana

no I think it's more like
na-na-nu na na na na nu-nananana

Anyway, it's not "pretty by-the-numbers." It invented the numbers. Which is why it's unique in loads of ways and, as frogbs said, was a huge worldwide hit and made them a shit-ton of kronor.

I remember going to a Polysics show in Milwaukee, they were opening for three other bands which were basically emo garbage as part of some weird MySpace tour, so I was like one of the oldest people there even though I was only like 22 at the time. Anyway it was pretty clear that Hiro (Polysics frontman) had picked out all the house music as it included Talking Heads, Devo (not "Whip It"), plus a lot of Japanese synthpop like Plastics, YMO, and P-Model (that I couldn't believe I was hearing in a crowded area). The last song was "Take On Me" and for once the crowd was able to get into it, and by the second chorus the whole floor was singing it and cheerfully butchering the falsetto. It can't be an easy song to emulate - it gets so many of the little details right

you could say the same thing about tubthumping though (which is also easier to ape than supermario).
just try it! i'm making the track right now, but you guys can do it, too. we can make it national make a take-on-me-clone writing month.
namaatakeonmewrimo?

and let's not forget the genius switch to half-time in the dead center of the chorus!

yeah Tubthumping is also quite brilliant

otm

a bunch of Michael Jackson tunes fit that description too. i don't think it can be just any pop song that was ubiquitous and very memorable. it's actually kind of alarming how little nostalgia something like "Livin La Vida Loca" or "Mmmbop" or "The Impression That I Get" conjures up even though I heard them all the damn time. "Tubthumping", "Steal My Sunshine", and "Too Close" hold up way better

I mean in a sense it's like the Victorians writing about a time before there were trains. There's a quality of mourning that to my mind is bit more worthwhile than, you know, guys trying to make the same sounds as the Human League did twenty-five years ago.

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, November 16, 2011 8:29 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

now with the internet this is what I think of when I think of trains

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-i5o0PAaj2_c/Ta71F34LLwI/AAAAAAAABgk/CbjnQJkX1B8/s400/crazy+craigslist+mutual+touching+stomp+trains+crab+meat+dr+heckle.jpg

it's harder to make a tubthumping clone than take on me, that's for sure. the tmbg cover had to recruit the entire onion staff.

Serious question: how do teen Skrillex fans feel about late 80s/early 90s nostalgia? I'd assume they're totally nonplussed about it but I don't know.

latest big batch of x that came in are like baby stewie heads so I think they don't care

no problem with this from a music standpoint but i have hit my fucking limit on it wrt visual presentation/art/commercials/

here's my takeonme clone
http://kiwi6.com/file/6og9vfggpt

it's basically equal parts take on me and bizarre love triangle, and that one face2face song, but they're all basically the same song, right?

super mario clone took much longer and was more difficult to make!
http://kiwi6.com/file/1607s4yepj

at a certain point in the 90s-00s, game soundtracks started becoming indistinguishable from any other soundtrack music, so nostalgia for that era is kind of baffling.

curious where generation to put that change, actually. wipeout an obvious example on the one hand; ff7 definitely still was using onboard sound for the most part -- i don't know if that sort of game went to orchestral soundtracks until the ps2 generation

i hadn't thought about this much but i think it might well be a reason i don't like a lot of games from the past decade as much as i think i ought to