The Virtual Ocean is the “Let’s Listen” vaporwave discovery podcast.

What is vaporwave?

Vaporwave is a music genre (and internet meme) that appropriates mood music from the past while presenting subtle takes on modern-day consumerist culture. The genre has drawn many passionate listeners with its powerful immersion, ambiguous commentaries, and the genre's unique ability to amalgamate with the memes created as its byproduct.

It's a genre with several subgenres that are extremely distinct from one another in sound and style; and yet evoke similar archetypal ideas that say, either explicitly or implicitly, a lot about the modern world.

It's also very, very, aesthetic.

In each episode, we listen to tracks that make up genre and give our thoughts, emotions, and commentary on them.

We continue on our exploration of the Golden Boy Saint Pepsi with one of his best albums, Studio 54.

As you know, Saint Pepsi laid the foundation for the future funk subgenre and with this iconic filtering, live loops, and sampling of 70s and 80s disco and funk music.

One of the most fun artists in the genre, Saint Pepsi defines what is truly possible in the realm of vaporware aside from the tormented ambient sounds that came from the proto-vapor era.

Having released 5 albums in the span of a one month period in 2012, Studio 54 is the climax of an intense exploration of Saint Pepsi’s electronic experiments in his college dorm.

We will also be joined in this listening by my beautiful partner and the love of my love, Jireh Ordaz.

Now, enough talking. Let’s get dancing and sail for the metropolis of Saint Pepsi’s Studio 54.