V@PYD / Golden Ground

I was very pleased to sit down with V@PYD, across many miles and time zones, to talk about his long vaporwave career and his parallel project Golden Ground. In a very conversational interview we discussed almost 10 years and more than 50 albums in the vaporwave scene, his musical upbringing in Germany, and how he balances the pull between vaporwave and his original love of electronic dance.

Pool Plants: Ok V@PYD, welcome to the Pool House!

V@PYD: Yeah thanks! By the way, it’s pronounced “VAH-pid,” not “VAY-pid!” That’s something that follows me since I picked that name. Because of the symbol and the y, it’s difficult. Maybe my fault, I don’t know.

P: Yeah, you know in English people would pronounce that word both ways! For some reason I tend to go more for the "ay” sounds, so that’s my bad.

V: It’s no problem, it happens a lot.

P: You don’t have the actual word vapid in German right?

V: No we don’t have it, it’s just an English word that I associate with vapor through word association. I thought vapid is kind of the same meaning, it’s related some way.

P: So that is your fault then, because if you want to be like vapor… *laughs*

V: Yeah, Vaperror was already taken!

P: Did you know that word in English before you chose it?

V: Yes I did. I watch all my cartoons and entertainment in English when I can because the German dubs are mostly terrible. Especially for the old MTV stuff, Beavis and Butthead or Daria. I think it’s from Daria that I know the word.

P: That makes so much sense! I was a big Daria fan growing up. And now we have Dariacore!

V: They never made that reboot, there were talks about her college years being animated.

P: Maybe that’s ok.

V: You don’t need to reboot everything now.

P: Let’s get back to the music. You hit your 50th release milestone last year, and I was trying to look into if this was actually your 10-year anniversary of making music. I saw some albums released in 2017 on Bandcamp, so when did you make your first album? What was your introduction to vaporwave?

cont...

V: So, in the summer of 2016 the vaporwave song I knew was Lisa Frank 420/Modern Computing from all the meme compilations. A friend of mine who’s very into experimental music and ambient music recommended vaporwave to me, said it’s a whole subculture and really interesting, with a low point of entry and stuff. He sold me on it when he said it’s just 80s music. We all know that’s not all it is but that was the hook. I listened to Floral Shoppe, Eccojams. For about two weeks I was listening to it “ironically” but then after that I was a full on vaporwave-head and making my own stuff.

P: You were already making music when you started listening to vaporwave, right?

V: Yes and no. I have been making music with my computer since 1994, when I was about 14 years old. When I heard vaporwave I was in a creative pause, a hiatus since 2011. Vaporwave ignited the spark, that experimental spark. It brought me back into making music. I wouldn’t be making music today if it wasn’t for vaporwave.

P: What about vaporwave specifically inspired you to start making music again?

V: For me it was really that the low point of entry, low effort of it was kind of intriguing. It was more like design than really making music. Before I was just making my own electronic music. That’s totally different from working with just samples. That was really interesting to me and what got me back into making music. After a while I started adding my own beat to the eccojams I made and that started my own style.

P: Is there a specific album where you started adding in your own beats?

V: Yes, that was around the time of Anacreontic Rhapsody. The final track on that was the first track where I put my own beats on the vaporwave loops. And then on Late Nite WiFi I got deeper into that. That’s about 50% eccojams without my beats and 50% with my own beats added on top.

P: What year is your actual first release?

V: If you look on my Bandcamp the first album is 2017. フードコート ファンク [ｆｏｏｄｃｏｕｒｔｆｕｎｋ] is the first full album, after that was the [ｍｉｄｎｉｇｈｔ　ｌｏｖｅｒｓ] EP which was the first EP. But that’s not my first release. The first thing I released was on YouTube, it was a four track EP. So, my official 10-year anniversary is 2027.

P: At this point I would say you have a very characteristic sound. Your main vaporwave sound is vaporfunk, crunchy…

V: Very bass heavy, very drum heavy.

P: What do you think are the elements that make your characteristic sound? At what point did you start to hone those elements, and are there any particular effects or techniques that you consider your signature?

V: That’s a hard question. The thing where my sound comes from is more like trying to imitate. Or who inspires me. I’m a very big fan of EPSON and channel select. Those two guys always have these very punchy and crispy drums and that was something that I tried to emulate. My signature move is over-compressed drums. Crank up the velocity on the snare, let it punch, high-chaining. I also have my signature drum patterns. I have 4 of 5 drum patterns I use that I alternate between, depending on what the original drums sound like. That’s where a lot of my consistency comes from because I tend to use a lot of the same elements over and over.

P: What would you say are your biggest non-vaporwave influences in your vaporwave music?

V: I would say stuff like Fatboy Slim. It’s always about fat drums for me. Stuff like that, or Chemical Brothers. Also, the early house music of the 90s. My beats are always very four to the floor and even when it’s slowed down, I try to have this bouncy groove like early house records. Maybe that’s also a big influence. Maybe also glitch hop? Like 110bpm dubstep. That’s also an influence.

P: Have you tried sampling any big beat or earlier house stuff?

V: No, I try to make my own beats. When I sample, I sample melodies or I sample choruses. Maybe drum loops from the 80s. I had a concept album called PowerVapor. It was just chopped up drum patterns on 80s jams. That album was also where a lot of the signature V@PYD sound first developed.

P: Do you think that growing up in Germany influenced your music making, in vaporwave or otherwise?

V: That’s hard to tell how it would’ve been if I grew up in another part of the world. Growing up in West Germany in the 80s was definitely something that influenced me music-wise. We had Neue Deutsche Welle, German new wave, all that synthesizer music. Growing up with it put me more on the track of a techno vibe. Before vaporwave I was into hardcore Eurodance and techno. I liked Scooter and Dune, I also liked Charlie Lownoise & Mental Theo. Mostly German and European euro dance projects. Some of the music I grew up with when I was a teenager. In the 80s there wasn’t much music because we didn’t have that much media. Records were expensive, I didn’t have a Walkman because I always broke them or took them apart. When I really got into music was when I was 14 years old and CDs came about. When CD players became affordable is when I started listening to lots of electronic music. For my vaporwave it was the 80s nostalgia that drew me there, it was a complete 180 music-wise. From tempo to mood to the general vibe, it was a complete turnaround.

P: Partly I ask because, for people who pay attention to electronic music, in the US our stereotype of Germany would be techno and techno nightclubs. Somewhere between minimalist and hardcore techno.

V: That scene is still very strong here.

P: That’s what I’ve heard, even post-pandemic. And I know that’s very different from vaporwave. But also, when I think about German music I think of David Hasselhoff.

V: *laughs*

P: See, I know you know what I mean. Americans know him mostly as the guy from Baywatch, but I know he also had this big music career in Germany. And what’s his song, Hooked on a Feeling?

V: I’ve Been Looking For Freedom!

P: I guess that’s the other idea of what Germans listen to. Or 99 Luftballoons. This bouncy poppy Euro thing.

V: Yes, it’s very diverse! I guess with American music I think of hard rock or pop. I know there’s also electronic music that’s existing. I think there’s always the stereotypes but it’s to a degree. In the 90s David Hasselhoff was very popular, that’s true. And 99 Luftballoons was a big hit!

P: It’s pretty popular in the US as well! It’s a great song.

V: Yeah, there’s a great cover version by the band Goldfinger, they had 99 Red Balloons in the 90s.

P: And since we’re talking about German music, you have to go back to the Godfathers, the originals: Kraftwerk. We wouldn’t have techno without them

V: We wouldn’t have electronic music in general and lots of stuff if it wasn’t for bands like Kraftwerk.

P: You were talking about American electronic music and the first thing I thought of was Detroit techno. That specific development probably came back over to Germany, but Detroit techno is a direct descendant of Kraftwerk.

V: Yes, Die Mensch-Maschine and albums like that are legendary.

P: Let’s talk about Golden Ground and your other musical interests. I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while. You call Golden Ground “EDM,” right?

V: Because I don’t know what else to call it! I think that’s just an umbrella term for Electronic Dance Music and that fans out to all the different subgenres.

P: In America, at least, EDM has a specific connotation of LMFAO. Early 2010s-era, Party Rock Anthem. That type of music is what Americans would specifically call EDM.

V: Ok, then Golden Ground is not EDM. Golden Ground is just electronic house.

P: Well, it could be EDM! You can call it whatever you want. I just think it’s funny because you’re definitely not making LMFAO music.

V: I’d be happy to but that’s not my style.

P: There are maybe some elements! I think with EDM you have lots of sound effects, the whooshes, building things up. You have a lot of those extra elements and that reminds me of EDM. But the base of Golden Ground is definitely house.

V: I would say that it’s electronic house music with maybe a little trance influence. So, Golden Ground was my project way before I started the V@PYD thing. That was the thing I was on hiatus from when V@PYD got it’s start. Golden Ground isn’t the first iteration, I have had like 20 different aliases before I landed on Golden Ground.

P: Like you made music under those aliases? Or just thought about the names?

V: I just thought about the names. I made music under maybe 5 of the names? But there’s nothing online. The earliest thing that could be on the Wayback Machine would be Golden Ground stuff from the Humble Voice days. I don’t know if anyone remembers that social network. It was really small. It was an artist social network. It was like the building blocks for a MySpace site. You had your poems and your music and your videos, all uploaded and people could comment on it. It was really nice but it never took off and then they took down the servers and everything is gone. I also put a lot on download.com when that was current. But that’s all gone.

P: Very early internet!

V: Golden Ground had a MySpace!

P: I’m looking at your Bandcamp, the first album there is from 2008. Which obviously you uploaded after the fact.

V: Yeah, that’s the late pre-hiatus stuff. That’s all I had left. I had more than that. I had 20 Golden Ground albums but they all were lost to a big crash and that’s all that’s left.

P: Do you remember what year you first put out a Golden Ground album?

V: I never really did. I never really put out albums, it wasn’t the time for albums. The Golden Ground stuff was single tracks wherever I could upload.

P: So what year was the first single track? 2004, earlier than that?

V: It should be around 2003-2004. Groovebox was the first track I uploaded to Humble Voice around 2004.

P: You talked about being into 90s house. We’re pretty close in age and I remember the early 2000s and all that music. Do you remember what your specific influences were in 2002 or 2003? Because things like Daft Punk’s Discovery were still very fresh then. It was a very fertile time for electronic music.

V: You have to know that in Germany the electronic music started way earlier, in the early 90s. I was very inspired by Scooter, I don’t know if they’re known in America. They’re a pretty big German dance music band and they have existed for a long time. They’ve already swapped all the original band members out for new ones. But since the early 90s they’ve been pumping out hit after hit and that was a big influence for me. Around the time of 2000-2003 there was a lot of minimal techno happening. That was something I was very into before the whole dubstep scene.

P: That’s post big-beat. We’d been listening to Fatboy Slim and Chemical Brothers and everything and people were starting to get burnt out by all that.

V: I remember, but the thing is I was more into making my own music back then instead of listening to a lot of electronic music. Because I always thought (something that vaporwave has taught me isn’t true) that there was a sort of creative genius that has to come up with something new and exciting but not related to anything else. Just from nothing, you have to create something. What was in my head was kind of bad. So I was listening but I wasn’t taking stuff from it I guess, that’s something that I learned later.

P: That makes sense. You still see people have that conversation about sample-based music.

V: There’s this one documentary, Remix Manifesto. That’s something that changed my view, it’s a lot about the artist Girl Talk and what he does with his music. It’s a really good documentary.

P: You’ve said that in the last six months to a year you’ve moved your focus more to Golden Grounds. What is your relationship right now with vaporwave and other genres and where you want to go next?

V: The thing is that I went back to the Golden Ground project because of creative fatigue. After the HYPERMEDIOCRITY album I had kind of burned out from vaporwave. I have taken, at least for the time being, my vaporwave journey to a point where I can’t… you listened to the vaporSTANK EP right? My 51st release?

P: I was going to say I very much love that one.

V: Yeah, but it’s the same stuff over and over again. For me it was time to do something else again musically. That’s why I put the V@PYD project on hiatus and focused on my Golden Ground stuff for the last half year. But that’s just so I don’t get rusty. It was fun for me to experiment and see what I could do. It’s not like riding a bicycle when you haven’t done something for ten years. I haven’t used my own music since I started the V@PYD project. So, I wanted to get back to composing a little bit. Also, it’s a little bit of my surroundings. I have many friends in a creative music space and they were like “I know your vaporwave is fire but you can do something different and you don’ have to do the same thing over and over!” And I was like, “but I like vaporwave!” But when I got to Hypermediocrity I came to the place where I needed to do something different. That’s why I shifted my focus a little more to the electronic stuff.

There will be V@PYD stuff in 2026, I already made that part of my new year’s resolution. I have to find the right sample and that will reignite it. I have my sample hunting playlists that I keep updated so I’m sure there’s going to be something in the future. I still check the vaporwave feed on Bluesky daily to see what’s going on. I still watch Fiji Daze’s thursday night funkin'! every week it comes out. I’m still in the vaporwave space, I’m just not creatively outputting. In years past I think I put out an EP or album every three months. That’s something you can only keep up for so long without feeling burnt out.

P: You’ve already gifted us 51 V@PYD releases! If I ever get to 20 releases, I’ll be happy.

V: That’s something where, when I started vaporwave, I wanted to get a little bit bigger. Not like Macintosh Plus or anything but I saw a space where I could make a name for myself. I think I did pretty well. But I listened to a bunch of podcasts about how to promote yourself. Because in the early days of vaporwave it wasn’t just the music, you had to have your own brand and backstory. We all pretended to be corporations, you know? That’s something, that consistency was more important than quality. That’s something I think my discography suffers a little bit from, but if you like my stuff then you have a lot to listen to.

P: I totally understand what you’re saying. I do think there’s a real tension sometimes between the speed with which some people make music and how prolific many artists are, versus someone who works slower or they’re trying to take more time to produce something higher quality. You can work really hard on something and still get lost in the shuffle when it’s time to release. That’s a conversation I’ve had with a lot of people in different ways. Where to strike the balance. You have to follow your personal vision.

V: What I can tell people, from the 50 releases I have, the more effort you put in the more impact it makes. I really saw that. The low-effort stuff really shows, and the albums where I put in more, like Hypermediocrity, that landed on B O R T media’s 10 albums of the year! With help from you and others.

P: I told you that it’s also on my extended list that includes albums I’m on.

V: I put a lot of work into it and I’m happy that it paid off in a way. That album really made an impact. I have this other CITY LIGHTS album that I put a lot of work into but that’s just because I wanted to make it an hour long.

P: City Lights was probably the first one I heard.

V: That’s a good starting point! It was an interesting time in my life…

P: We talked about your vaporwave music and your Golden Ground project. Has there ever been a third project, a third sound, a third way?

V: There are experimental tracks on my hard drive that will most likely never see the light of day under either moniker. They are too far away stylistically from the two. I have this one track where I wanted to see if I could make a Prodigy-like sound, early 2000s like Baby’s Got a Temper. That track is something but I wouldn’t put it under Golden Ground since that’s four to the four music. And V@PYD isn’t industrial rock techno music. There are tracks where I experiment with stuff. I have drum and bass influenced tracks that I sometimes open and mess with. There isn’t really a third project, no, and I think I will keep juggling the two and see which one grows. I want to go back to the V@PYD stuff but I still want the Golden Grounds stuff and I don’t know yet how to do both at the same time.

P: For the last question, what would you say are your interests in the coming year to connect with the vaporwave community beyond just making music?

V: I thought maybe that musically and vaporwave way I just want to concentrate on one project. I was thinking of reviving my old podcast. I started a vaporwave podcast, with waavypanda in the last iteration. Before that I did it on my own. That’s something I maybe want to start again but at this point it’s more declaration of intent and not really a plan. So maybe restart the podcast, we could have guests on that podcast. It’s always hard, the problem is the scene is it’s very America-centric. From the outside, if you’re in Europe it’s hard to get merchandise because of shipping costs. I don’t know why but there’s not a European vaporwave community. I’m sure there is but it’s not like there, accessible. There’s an English community, there’s some Canadian stuff, there’s a few German people online. But it’s not like in the US and it’s hard to get in maybe from the outside.

P: It’s funny that you say that because I feel the same way. There definitely are parts of the US where there are local scenes. In the Seattle area there’s not really a local scene so I also feel like I’m swimming in the digital ocean here, trying to find other people.

V: It is an online movement, it is online music, it is online from the start. There wasn’t really a localized starting point for vaporwave. It was online before it was in the real world. But it penetrated into the real world, which is really remarkable I think. To make the jump offline at all. To come back to the question of 2026, I don’t have a big plan. I have some benchmarks, I want to do a V@PYD album and take my time with it again. Maybe Hypermediocrity 2.0. That’s something on the horizon. Maybe start the podcast up again. Then the Golden Grounds stuff. I’m looking for remixes still, if anybody wants to do one.

P: You know I already did one!

V: You did a great job! I listen to it regularly.

P: I’m resisting, I’m not sharing with anyone else until you’re ready.

V: I just want to collect more and put them on one remix album. I’m waiting for more, when it’s a nice EP I’ll put it out. I just want to take my time. Do stuff that matters and take my time with it.