Trademarks & Copyrights
Trademarks & Copyrights, or Gabriel, is a vaporwave musician who created "a beautiful music project" from 2015 to 2021.
Pool Plants: What is your personal history with Argentinian music? Who are your favorite Argentinian musicians or bands? What kind of non-Argentinian music did you listen to growing up?
Trademarks & Copyrights: My personal history with Argentinian music goes back to a very early age, practically to before I was even born. There was always music in my house. My father has always been a very passionate music listener, so I grew up surrounded by it. My mother was the one who listened to more Argentinian music, but at home we were always hearing a wide variety of styles: jazz, folk music, tango, and especially Argentinian rock from the 1980s and 1990s.
If I had to choose one Argentinian band that represents me the most, it would be Los Abuelos de la Nada. I was fascinated by them when I first discovered them, and more than twenty years later I still love them just as much as I did then. Other Argentinian artists who have had a strong influence on me are Charly García and, especially, Virus. Virus was a new wave band from the 1980s, and their use of synthesizers and keyboards always had a deep impact on me.
At the same time, growing up in a house full of music meant being exposed to a lot of international music as well. My father bought many CDs when I was a child, so I grew up listening to a lot of music from the 1980s and 1990s, both Argentinian and international, with a particularly strong presence of jazz. If I had to name one record that truly made me realize I wanted to devote my life to music, it would be Computer World by Kraftwerk. Hearing that album for the first time when I was eight years old completely changed me. That was the moment when I thought: I want to be a musician.
P: How were you first introduced to vaporwave music and how did you get your start in the vaporwave scene? How did you come up with your artist name? What do you like in the current vaporwave scene?
T: My first contact with vaporwave was in early 2015, when I was 19 years old and had already been producing music for about five years. I had started composing when I was around 15, so by then I already had a solid background in music production.
The way I discovered vaporwave is actually a funny story. I came across it through a YouTube video by Dustin Luke, an American YouTuber who is a big fan of Argentina and is known for speaking Spanish with an Argentinian accent. I used to watch his videos a lot at that time, partly because I found the way he imitated our way of speaking very entertaining. In one of those videos, if I remember correctly, there was a scene where the song “Virtual” by bbrainz was playing in the background. bbrainz, coincidentally, is also an Argentinian vaporwave producer. I was immediately fascinated by the track, but it also sounded strangely familiar. Later, once I had learned more about vaporwave, I discovered that it was a stretched version of “Too Shy” by Kajagoogoo, which explained why it felt so recognizable.
From there, I started diving deeper into the genre. I found the vaporwave subreddit, and that became my real entry point into the scene. What drew me in was that it felt both global and deeply internet-based at the same time. It was a genre that seemed to belong to the whole world, but one that mainly existed online. One of the things that connected with me most naturally was its nostalgia for the 1980s, because I had grown up surrounded by music from that decade, both Argentinian and international. So my relationship with vaporwave developed in a very organic way. After listening closely for a while, I realized that I had both the tools and the sensibility to produce it myself. About five or six months after first discovering the genre, I released my first vaporwave project, sometime around June or July of 2015, although I honestly cannot remember whether it was an album or an EP.
The name Trademarks and Copyrights came from the idea of creating a kind of corporate identity or corporate nickname. At that time I was very interested in the aesthetics of corporate music, elevator music, and background music, and I was also a big fan of smooth jazz, so I could already sense a strong connection between those sonic worlds and vaporwave. The name captured that atmosphere perfectly, so it stayed.
As for the current vaporwave scene, I have to be honest and say that I am fairly out of date. The project ended around mid-2021, and after that I moved on to many other things, so I gradually lost touch with what has been happening in the genre more recently. I still listen to vaporwave, but I would not say I am closely connected to the current state of the scene.
P: When making vaporwave, how much do you draw on Argentinian music and influences? Have you made albums that are about Argentina in any particular way? Do you think there is anything unique about Vaporwave from Argentina?
T: To be honest, Argentina was never a direct influence on the way I approached vaporwave in this project. Some of my earliest experiments with vaporwave involved working with old Argentinian commercials from the 1980s, stretching the audio and adding reverb, echo, and delay to give them that vaporwave atmosphere. But overall, I always thought of vaporwave as something aimed at an international audience, especially from my position as an Argentinian artist.
I know there were other producers here, but I never really found a local scene in Argentina where the genre had much visibility, or spaces where this kind of music was actually being played, or events where vaporwave was present, even in a secondary role. Because of that, the music I made under this project was always intended primarily for English-speaking audiences. That was part of the project’s identity from the beginning, because in 2015 vaporwave in Argentina was practically nonexistent. There were very few of us making this kind of music at that time. In fact, everything connected to the project, including the marketing and promotion, was done in English, even though Spanish is my native language. That decision was not based on theory so much as on reality: the audience on Bandcamp was clearly international. Most listeners came from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Argentina was almost never a significant part of the audience during the years the project was active, from 2015 to 2021.
That said, there were a few pieces that had a more personal connection to where I come from. My hometown is called Necochea, and I made a track called “Necochea Beach,” which was meant as a kind of reminiscence of being on the beach there at night. I imagined it as the kind of music that would fit sitting by the shore, looking out at the sea in silence.
That is also why I do not really think there is such a thing as “Argentinian vaporwave” in a strong or clearly defined sense. There may be isolated projects, of course, but I do not personally see a distinct national identity within the genre. To me, vaporwave has always felt like a global phenomenon built around certain core ideas—nostalgia for the 1980s, criticism of capitalism, corporate aesthetics—and artists tend to connect with one or more of those ideas regardless of where they are from.
P: Have you worked with other Argentinian musicians or artists, either locally or nationally? How about people in other countries in South or Central America?
T: As I mentioned before, vaporwave was still a very small genre in Argentina during the early years of the project, especially between 2015 and 2017. There were not many Argentinian producers working in vaporwave at the time. I did collaborate with one Argentinian producer named Ezhak, with whom I always had a very good relationship, and we made several tracks together. But in general, the project was a fairly solitary one.
As the project grew, I was fortunate enough to collaborate with some well-known artists in the scene, including Dan Mason, 3D Blast, waterfront dining, Human Nightmare, and 蜃気楼Mirage, among others. I also appeared on compilations released by Latin American labels, including one called Latinwave, which at the time was run by a Mexican producer.
Still, Trademarks and Copyrights remained, for the most part, a solitary project. I did not collaborate very often because I liked having full creative control over it. When I did choose to work with someone else, I usually tried to do so with artists whose work I genuinely admired, like the ones I mentioned earlier. That does not mean I did not have a good relationship with other producers—it was simply that there were not many Argentinian artists making this kind of music at the time. I did reach out once or twice to bbrainz and cyberlust, who were two well-known Argentinian vaporwave producers back then, but unfortunately I never received a response.
P: Do you think you are able to connect easily with the American or European vaporwave scenes despite the geographical distance?
T: Fortunately, I have always felt that vaporwave is a truly global and online genre. In that sense, geographical distance mattered much less than it might in other musical scenes. If the music was good, people would listen to it regardless of where it came from. The vaporwave subreddit was especially important for me during the first two years of the project, because I would always post there whenever I released a new song or album.
Knowing English was also extremely important. It allowed me to connect not only with producers from all over the world, but also with label owners, some of whom I worked with to release cassette editions of several of my albums. Even in recent years, after the project officially ended, some of that interest has continued, which makes me very happy. It means that people are still discovering and enjoying the music even though the project ended five years ago.
Bandcamp was another essential platform for me, because it gave me the freedom to upload whatever I wanted and make the music easily available. One thing I always valued was that the music could be heard for free, while also giving listeners the option to purchase it if they wanted to support the project. That openness helped a lot.
At one point—although I cannot remember exactly whether it was in 2018 or 2019—I also had a radio show on a website called The Vaporwave Radio Show, where I spoke in English and played a selection of vaporwave music that I liked. It was a weekly two-hour show. Later, I also worked on it in collaboration with a Swedish producer named Stevia Sphere (aka glaciære). I remember those years very fondly, because I truly enjoyed that experience.
So despite the geographical distance, I always felt very close to the international vaporwave scene while the project was active.
P: What is one thing you would like to see happen with vaporwave in Argentina or vaporwave in general? How do you think the vaporwave scene in Argentina could grow?
T: I think those two questions are closely connected. For vaporwave to grow in Argentina, the most important thing would be for there to be more events and more spaces where the genre can actually be heard. I mean public spaces in the broadest sense: cultural centers, bars, gatherings, or any place where people come together around music and where vaporwave could have a more visible presence.
In my own way, I think I am already contributing a small part through my GaGoBe project. Even though it is a very eclectic solo project and I allow myself to make all kinds of music within it, I also have a DJ side to what I do, and in all of my DJ sets I try to include vaporwave, whether from my own work or from other producers. I do that because I want people to at least become aware that the genre exists.
I think that kind of exposure could encourage more artists to start making vaporwave, which in turn could help create more local listeners. From there, it might become possible to develop something closer to what has already existed for years in places like the United States, where there are events and parties centered specifically around vaporwave.
Ideally, that could create a snowball effect: more listeners, more producers, more labels, and more spaces for exchange run primarily by people in Argentina. It could also lead to a more open and connected scene, where producers have a shared space—whether physical or online—in which to meet, collaborate, and grow together.
You can find Trademarks & Copyright's music on Bandcamp. You can also listen to his solo music project GaGoBe or his reggae band Van & the Steps on Spotify.
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