Typical instruments Guitarssynthesizers | Other names Chillwaveglo-fi Derivative forms Vaporwave | |
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Stylistic origins Lo-fi1980s poppsychedeliaelectronicradio rocknoiseNew Agenew wavedroneexperimentalmuzaksynthpopHollywood soundtracksR&B Cultural origins Mid 2000s, United States | ||
Hypnagogic pop is a style of pop music that developed in the mid 2000s in which underground artists drew on the music, recording formats, and popular entertainment of previous decades (in particular, the 1980s) to explore elements of cultural memory and nostalgia. The term was coined by journalist David Keenan in an August 2009 issue of The Wire to describe "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory." It was sometimes deployed interchangeably with "chillwave" and "glo-fi." The style has been described as both an American cousin to the British hauntology scene and as a contemporary update of psychedelia that engages with popular culture.
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Origins and characteristics
In an August 2009 piece for the The Wire, journalist David Keenan coined the term "hypnagogic pop" to refer to a developing trend of 2000s lo-fi and post-noise music in which artists from varied backgrounds began to engage with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. Among these artists were the Skaters, James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Zola Jesus, Ariel Pink, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Pocahaunted. He employed the psychological term hypnagogic as referring to the space "between waking and sleeping, liminal zones where mis-hearings and hallucinations feed into the formation of dreams." According to Keenan, these artists began to draw on cultural sources subconsciously remembered from the 1980s and early 1990s while freeing them from their historical contexts and "hom[ing] in on the futuristic signifiers" of the period. Keenan summarized hypnagogic pop as "1980's-inspired psychedelia" which engages with forgotten capitalist detritus of the past in an attempt to "dream of the future."
The style has been described by Ceasefire Mag's Dave Bell as the "American cousin" of Britain's hauntological music scene, which has also been discussed as engaging with notions of nostalgia and memory. Common reference points included radio rock, new wave pop, MTV one-hit wonders, New Age music, synth-driven Hollywood blockbuster soundtracks, lounge music and easy-listening, corporate muzak, lite rock "schmaltz," video game music, '80s synthpop and R&B. Recordings often used "deliberately degraded" or analog instruments and techniques, including tape hiss and FX. Also common was the use of outmoded audio/visual technology and DIY digital imagery, such as VHS cassettes, CD-R discs, and early Internet aesthetics. Critic Simon Reynolds wrote that the music is often "released as limited-edition cassettes and vinyl [before reaching] a larger audience through blogs and YouTube videos." Critic Adam Trainer noted its preoccupation with both decaying analog technology and the bombastic representations of synthetic elements in 1980s and '90s popular culture.
By 2010, albums by Ariel Pink and Neon Indian were regularly hailed by publications like Pitchfork and The Wire. The terms "hypnagogic pop", "chillwave", and "glo-fi" were soon adopted to describe the evolving sound of such artists, a number of which had songs of considerable success within independent music circles. Pink was looked upon as a "godfather" to chillwave, and his work was commonly referenced in early discussions of hauntology. Pitchfork's Mike Powell characterized the technical flaws in his work as its "selling point: Without them, it would sound like the sweatless work of studio hacks; with them, it sounds like a horrorshow". Another review by Marc Hogan for Neon Indian's Psychic Chasms (2009) listed "dream-beat", "chillwave", "glo-fi", "hypnagogic pop", and "hipster-gogic pop" as interchangeable terms for "psychedelic music that's generally one or all of the following: synth-based, homemade-sounding, 80s-referencing, cassette-oriented, sun-baked, laid-back, warped, hazy, emotionally distant, slightly out of focus."
Writing for Vice, Morgan Poyau noted that "hypnagogic pop" was quickly taken up by a variety of music blogs and described the emerging style as "making awkward bedfellows out of experimental music enthusiasts and weird progressive pop theorists." She described a typical manifestation of the style as featuring long tracks "saturated with echo, delay, smothered guitars and amputated synths." Trainer noted that the style was defined by a shared "musical approach" rather than a particular sound, and that it draws from "the collective unconscious of late 1980s and early 1990s popular culture" while being "indebted stylistically to various traditions of experimentalism such as noise, drone, repetition, and improvisation."
Critical interpretation
Following the publication of Keenan's article, the genre became the subject of widespread critical discussion. Reynolds described it as an engagement with hyper-reality, a 21st-century update of psychedelia in which "lost innocence has been contaminated by pop culture". He notes a particular concern with the "scrambling of pop time", suggesting that "perhaps the secret idea buried inside hypnagogic pop is that the '80s never ended. That we're still living there, subject to that decade's endless end of History." Writer Adam Trainer suggested that the style allowed artists to engage with the detritus of capitalist consumer culture in a way that focuses on affect rather than irony or cynicism. The genre has been likened to "sonic fictions or intentional forgeries, creating half-baked memories of things that never were—approximating the imprecise nature of memory itself". Luna Vega described it as "tak[ing] aspects of modern culture and nostalgia and transform[ing] them into new collective memories". The Guardian called the hypnagogic tag "pretentious".
Asked for his thoughts on the term in 2009, producer Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) said: "I don't think the hpop tag is representative of a movement or constituted by a select group of artists. I see it more as a discussion about nostalgia and its subliminal effects on culture. I don't see anything wrong with the tag—it's just a way of engaging with a phenomenon." The work of hypnagogic pop artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro would soon inspire a subsequent internet-centric genre known as vaporwave, which amplified the experimental tendencies of the style.