#vaporstack

Our hometown hero vaporstack never fails to impress us with his minimalist visuals. We’ve been really fortunate to have his support so many years, which made him an absolute must-have for superPulsewave. I mean, just look at his visuals!!

It felt so good to celebrate ZEN ALBATROSS’ release SIGINT at superPulsewave. What an amazing set! Did you snag one of those cool cassette’s he was selling? We hope you did, but in case you missed out you can still pick one up via his bandcamp page. A live performance is always our favourite way to party after a great new EP comes out and that made having ZEN ALBATROSS at superPulsewave an extra special occasion.

lWlVl: What or what inspires you to make visuals? vaporstack: I went to art school so I like to think that I have something of a visual sensibility, and I do animation, motion graphics and compositing for a living so I know a bit about that. Getting into concert viz was my break into realtime gfxland - idk if you know anything about video production but it tends to be slow and tedious, full of bad frames and long renders. Also this whole ridiculous approval and opinion chain up and down from me, the guy making it, through the director, producer, agency, client, etc. It's slow as hell and maddening. Real time shit in time to music is a thousand times more fun.


as far as inspiration, obviously music - I was going to a lotta chip shows and kinda just standing around, and thought "Hmm well I suck at music but maybe I should start programming graphics, that seems like a lot of fun." I picked a challenging medium (1991-era C) as a constraint and as an excuse to teach myself C. Now I'm a millionaire obv.



lWlVl: What music are you currently listening to?  
vaporstack:  Not too much, been kind of in a funk since my music library hdd died and the backup died within the same week (! backups backups backups people) I listen to the music of the people I'm gonna be doing visuals for, and a lot of random electro stuff. Conventional bearded white male stuff. A lot of Octopus Project.

lWlVl: If you could play a gig with anyone in the world, who would it be? vaporstack: Probably Dan Deacon.

lWlVl: Are you excited to see anyone in particular at lWlVl? vaporstack: ayfkm

lWlVl: Do you have any NYC recommendations for people traveling here for the festival? vaporstack: uhh. as far as touristy shit that is actually cool, the Empire State Building can be pretty nice. Pricey though. 

lWlVl: How did you get into chip music or low-bit electronics? vaporstack: My friend plasticflesh was irl friends with Rich (minusbaby) and we became acquainted, @ some point randomly he invited me to do viz for a show at the I/O 3 year anniversary. I literally barely pulled my shit together in time and had no idea what I was doing, but everyone seemed happy enough Hopefully I've gotten better since then.

lWlVl: Best new chip album right now? Or best chip album ever so far? vaporstack: Probably the one Zen Albatross hasn't released yet. I did viz for him at Hope X last weekend and everything I heard was amazeballs.

<a href="http://music.zenalbatross.net/album/masada-gestalt-single" data-mce-href="http://music.zenalbatross.net/album/masada-gestalt-single">Masada Gestalt (Single) by Zen Albatross</a>