A Future Somebody Forgot to Build
Most of my days start on Bandcamp, scrolling through releases that will never surface on any streaming recommendation engine—not because they’re obscure exactly, but because they exist in a cultural territory those algorithms aren’t designed to recognize.
Right now I’m deep into Future Funk, a genre that grew from Vaporwave’s ruins by grafting Japanese pop from the Eighties—warm melodies, drum machines, the kind of chord progressions that feel like afternoon sun through office blinds—onto hip-hop beats and filtered samples. The result is an alternate future: one where the Eighties never ended, where Japan won the culture war, where everything sounds like a city you almost remember visiting.
The central figure in my current listening is マクロスMACROSS 82-99, a Japan-based producer who makes this kind of music with a warmth and nerdish specificity that earns the genre its best moments. Sailorwave II is his latest, featuring collaborators Punipunidenki, Night Tempo, and Desired—fixtures in this particular corner of the internet—all doing what they do best within a record that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t apologize for any of it.
Close your eyes and press play. You’ll end up somewhere that doesn’t exist, which is precisely the point.