Article by Parker Foreman

When I was young and bored, I would go through the Program Files folder on the C:/ drive on my computer and look in game folders for soundtrack music .wav files to obscure shareware games I would download and play. These songs were usually low bitrate and were only the size of kilobytes. There are moments in “Nightlove” by Digital Voyager that bring me back to those moments in my childhood, which makes it a very effective vaporwave album, because vaporwave to me is a call back to the nostalgic moments.

One pleasant aspect of this album is that the titles are in English. I believe that in vaporwave, an important part of painting the aural picture is that we understand what an artist is trying to convey with that piece, and when an album has songs that are all Japanese characters, it doesn’t convey that message. Unfortunately, it’s far too often that vaporwavers use these characters for “aesthetic value” when really it just screams “Macintosh Plus did it and so should I!” to me. Because of Digital Voyager’s decision to use English titles, when I hear the song “Distant Horizon”, I actually feel like Matthew McConaughey in “Interstellar” or when I hear “VHS Daydreams” I hear songs that come from warped VHS tapes in the dumpster behind the local thrift shop.

To truly get the full experience from this album, as Digital Voyager told me himself you must “envision the album as being a two-day voyage through Toyko with Tracks 1-6 being the first day and track 7-12 being the second,” and when one keeps this in mind, the album’s sounds present a more vivid image rather than just being a collection of seemingly random songs.

The music presented isn’t too upbeat, but at the same time, isn’t too slow that the listener gets bored with the music. In fact, it’s perfect for chilling out with friends on a Saturday night.

My personal favorite track is “Distant Horizon” because it feels mostly original. It may not be, but if it’s sampled, I sure don’t recognize it. In fact, it falls into a very ambient style that gives me a feeling of floating around on an EVA in space. I definitely wouldn’t be objected if Digital Voyager’s next album was completely full of tracks similar to “Distant Horizon” and was instead released under an ambient space like genre.

You can check out Nightlove here, and more of Digital Voyager’s work here.