Vapor Talks #15: known artiste

A chat with the reclusive barber beats innovator

known artiste doesn’t like to be pigeonholed. He might be utilizing the slowed + reverb template of the barber beats genre, but he’s always trying to go the extra mile – whether by sampling strange stuff like dub reggae from Japanese video games or by adding layers of original production to his tracks.

The New York-based producer’s trajectory has constantly grown in the post-pandemic vaporwave scene, mostly due to his wildly experimental but still highly accessible style. From barber beats, he’s forayed more into signalwave with some recent projects, while also having produced classic vapor and original electronic music for many years.

In one of his first extensive interviews published online, we’re diving into known artiste’s personal background, his long journey into hauntology, vaporwave and barber beats, and finding community despite being a heavy introvert by nature.

all images courtesy of the artist

On your Bandcamp page, the location says Lily Dale, which seems to be a tiny village in Upstate New York.

I’m actually in Buffalo. Lily Dale is a small hamlet town south of Buffalo, and they say it’s home to one of the biggest spiritualist communities in the world. I put it there so people would do just like you did and read more about it. Some weird stuff goes on down there. It’s actually quite interesting.

Did you grow up in Buffalo?

I grew up in the area around Binghamton, central New York. I moved here more than 15 years ago for art school. After finishing up my degree, we’ve stayed here ever since. You know, I have a family up here and that kind of thing.

You’re an art school kid!

I’m an art school kid. (laughs) I don’t work in the field, but I guess this whole journey has been my opportunity to make some sort of impact in the art and music world.

What kind of music did you grow up on?

My dad was pretty formative in terms of influence. I remember vividly him listening to a lot of blues and dub reggae. We would get into his records. There was Zappa, there was Led Zeppelin, there was Pink Floyd. He was actually in a band for a long time with his cousin, Gary Wilson, if you happen to know him.

Growing up, I was into grunge, rock, indie and metal. I came later to electronic music, but I remember listening to Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys. I actually call it the metal-to-electronic pipeline, that’s very similar to a lot of people I talk to – being into so-called alternative or underground sounds, just not your typical mainstream pop listener.

Did you receive any musical training?

I took piano for a couple years as a kid, but hated the pressure to perform. I regret it to this day that I was like that, but I was just a kid. Anyway, I picked up drums and I did marching band. I still practice to this day. I do have a rhythmic ear and I’d say I’m a decent drummer, but it’s mostly self-taught and just being really absorbed, you know, deep listening type stuff.

Did you play in bands as well?

Aside from the marching band, not really. Me and my friends would goof around, but I always felt this disconnect when working creatively with others. I had an older brother who played in bands, and I followed him around in that regard and experienced it vicariously. It’s another thing I wish I had done more of, but just sometimes our mental circumstances prevent us from doing things we want to do, and as a kid, you don’t see it as an opportunity to try something new or put yourself out there.

Did you come up in an artistic family?

Yeah, I come from a pretty artistic background. Both my grandfathers were artistic. My father has a little knack for it. My mother has a little knack for it. They always encouraged it. Especially my my paternal grandfather was very encouraging with art. It wasn’t the traditional fine art stuff that I was interested in though, it was more about design aesthetic. I remember messing around in Photoshop 2 or 3, working with sound and video. I got more into drawing too as I went through school, but mixed media was always my focus. It’s just something I’ve always dabbled in.

I was in film school in Brooklyn, but when that didn’t work out, I went to art school at SUNY Buffalo, where I learned a lot of cool stuff and had some really good professors. Even though it’s not a degree I use professionally, it helped refine my approach.

Was it a conscious decision not to pursue a career in fine arts?

Again, it goes back to this nature that I embody. I didn’t feel like I could be the person I wanted to be with all that competitiveness in that field. Practically I was starting to think about having a family and just leading a normal life at that point, and it just didn’t really make sense opportunity-wise. So I don’t regret doing that. I’m actually happy about it now because it’s a hobby for me. I know people that have turned it into a job, and it loses its luster. That’s a cliché at this point, but I can see it for myself, where it becomes something I dread doing, because I’m in a different headspace for it.

That probably means that you’re doing most of the artwork for your music projects yourself though.

Yeah, I do pretty much all the artwork, or the design at least. In traditional vaporwave or barber beats fashion, a lot of the art is plundered, so it’s manipulated collage type stuff. But I do all the design and concept work.

How and when did you discover vaporwave?

I remember coming across Nmesh’s Welcome to Warp Zone [2014] at the pinnacle of the peak of vaporwave. That was sort of my first foray into plunderphonics listening, and I was just mesmerized by it. I would troll Bandcamp for stuff and stumbled onto other artists like death’s dynamic shroud, Telepath and Cat System Corp., but I wasn’t really absorbed in the scene back then.

Around 2019, I started listening to vaporwave more, just being more critically in tune with it. That was the impetus for me to start experimenting with sound collage paired with visuals. I’m also a huge Boards of Canada fan, so I was immersed in the whole hauntological perspective, this European brutalist dystopian thing. To me, vaporwave was just an American hauntological phenomenon, and it spurred my proceeding foray into music-making. I have another project called survey channel that’s more classic vapor, influenced by IDM, experimental electronic, and downtempo electronica.

I think it was around 2023 when I talked to [barber beats and vaporwave producer] undersaken [now just saken, ed. note], who I’d worked with in the past. He said I should try messing around in barber beats. For a while it was a creative practice for me, or even a spiritual practice, something I was doing to get through a creative roadblock. As I got more into it, I noticed it influencing my other work, and vice versa. I’m still not at the point where they’re merged into one entity.

When Undersaken got you on the barber beats tip, who were some of the artists that influenced your style?

Obviously he told me to check out Godspeed, Macroblank and slowerpace. Those folks do that curated sound really well, but I always wanted to do something slightly different, so some other people in the scene were more influential to me – people like Lost Colossus, Guild Merchant, Undersaken or Magnum Innominandum.

Besides those I’d say a lot of Japanese artists working in video game soundtracks. I love video games and that made me look there and see what I can find to repurpose and transform. And I’m always listening to Oneohtrix Point Never. I don’t really consider him vaporwave, but I know a lot of people tie his name into the scene. Just a little tangent because he's doing a workshop this month that I’m taking, and someone actually brought up vaporwave in the Q&A. It was funny to hear him talk about it…

Why, what did he say?

I don’t think he knows a ton about it. He said he’s very confused why people even put him in the vaporwave category. The overall vibe I got from him was that he was just doing something different, more akin to the hypnagogic pop scene. His intention was not at all where vaporwave has gone. But he’s really been an influence on me in terms of approach and from a process perspective.

Let’s talk about process. How do you find the right samples? You mentioned Japanese video game soundtracks, which is a very specific pool of music to look at.

I just work in intuition on that. What sounds good to me and what might sound good sampled and/or pitched down or sped up. My secret weapon is splitting out stems. That allows me a deeper control of remixing and sound. I don’t have a specific effects chain. I do things just by what sounds best. Obviously, rhythm is an important aspect to me. I do like to re-adjust and re-arrange parts of songs, and add my own elements. I’m always thinking that if I’m stealing this work, how can I at least go the extra mile and transform it, so that I’ve got something in there from me?

How do you go about album concepts?

In terms of marrying the visual side and the imagery with the audio, I don’t always start out with a theme or an approach. I just let the music guide it after the fact. It’s a spontaneous, intuitive process. That’s just how I’ve always worked, even with the original music. It’s hard to bridge that gap, especially with instrumental music, but visuals are an important part of doing that.

Do you think the pandemic had an effect on your journey into this type of music?

I definitely feel like it provided a foundation for escapism, which can be one thing that people seek from vaporwave, that return to nostalgia. That whole experience was hard for everyone, especially for me, but I also saw a lot of growth in terms of what I was doing. I saw the power of community at that point, because a lot of people were focused more outward and trying not to be too secluded during that time. It showed me what’s important, bridging the gap between being part of a community and being more of an introverted character, and approaching things with a different perspective, musically and just socially. I was just like, “Okay, I’m gonna try this and see what happens.”

You said earlier that when you discovered vaporwave, you weren’t part of the community around it. Do you feel like you’re part of that now?

I do feel like that. I got a little following, a nice network of people that are interested in supporting me and buying the self-released tapes that I do. There are labels that are interested in working with me. I hear from people that enjoy the music and the effort that goes into it.

I played at Flamingofest Market Party in 2025, and met a lot of great people there. With the unfortunate news of 회사AUTO’s passing breaking while I was there, I was able to witness the power of community, of people that just really enjoyed the music of this guy, who was fighting such a debilitating thing. That was cool, and it did feel like I was part of it.

I’ve been listening to a lot of barber beats for some years, and while I really enjoyed that first wave of Macroblank and Godspeed, I think there’s been a second or even third wave recently of artists taking the barber beats template and pushing the boundaries of what the genre can be. Magnum Innominandum is one of them, and you’re another one.

Yeah, Magnum is definitely one that I go to mentally when I think of that as well. He really does push it, and I respect him to hell for that, because he’s really tilted it for people. That’s what I want to do. I don’t like being shoehorned like I’m just a barber beats artist. It is what it is, and people like their categories, but I do other stuff as well. I love classic vaporwave. I love signalwave. Slushwave I haven’t got my head around yet, and other people do it better, but I love it, so maybe someday I’ll go there. I don’t know if it’s detrimental to do so many different things under one alias, but I have no time to keep up with a million aliases.

Can you point me to some of your signalwave projects? I don’t think I’ve heard those just yet.

One is 響/reflect/響, and the other is Color // Code. Those are very much experimental sound collages in a signalwave style.

From your classic barber beats albums, no name is a favorite of mine, and I really enjoy Fauxtopia. Another one I found fascinating is brake work beats, where you applied barber treatments to more energetic video game soundtrack music. Which are your own favorites from your catalogue?

I think minimal MAXIMAL was the first traditional barber beats album I tried my hand at, and people really seemed to like that. I love no name as well. I was like, “I’m just gonna slam it with some slushwave effects,” and I was really pleased with how it came out. I like the News Letter ones – News Letter集 2 is just this dub reggae stuff from a video game. brake work beats and Bitcrush Beats, all that stuff was just like, “I have an idea and I’m gonna do it,” and it worked out where I’m very proud of those albums. I put into them a cyclical meaning like that, when I really was like, “Okay, I’ve done this for a year. Let’s reflect back on what I was doing”, and that resonated with people. As I said, I just try to do different stuff.

What’s your stance on the use of generative AI in music?

It’s inevitable, and it’s unfortunate. I really don’t respect the low effort stuff. But it can also probably be a tool. Stem-splitting is maybe not generative AI, but there is some sort of algorithm being implied, and that’s definitely some sort of help there. At work, we’re forced to use AI, and it has been helpful in refining processes of data validation, for example. But in terms of the arts, I think it takes away from the human spirit of it.

As long as people are using it as some sort of sample tool and they’re pushing the boundaries, I’m okay with that for the most part. I try not to judge people using it, but personally I don’t find any benefit doing it. To me it’s more work to imagine a prompt and write it out than just to go in there and iterate on the audio itself. I feel like I can get closer to what I’m looking for than if I’m just generating music. I guess I’ve yet to hear any sort of AI music that’s awesome.

What’s your reply to the standard criticism of barber beats, that it’s low effort background music, and that it’s destroying the vaporwave scene?

Honestly, I can see the arguments. It’s tough to say that, but like I said earlier, it’s a main catalyst for me wanting to do a little bit more, if I have the ideas and the capacity. I always want to push it and experiment within it. I’ll leave it to the big names to do what they do, because they really capture that sound, that curated vibe. I definitely don’t want to be someone that just shittily samples Macroblank songs. I mean, I don’t have the time to listen to everything and what everyone’s doing, but a main goal of mine is to avoid sample sources that other people might be utilizing. When you’re just regurgitating what others are doing, you’re not really pushing anything, or giving people something new to experience. And that’s what it’s about for me.

Listen to known artiste on Bandcamp

known artiste’s Top 10 Vaporwave Albums

(unranked)

• Webinar™ – w w w . d e e p d i v e . c o m (Dream.Corp, 2021)

• death’s dynamic shroud.wmv – ティーンファンタジー：MYSTIC QUEST (self-released, 2014)

• Nmesh – Dream Sequins (AMDISCS, 2014)

• Infinity Frequencies – Shrines (self-released, 2013)

• Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza – Rainforest Hill (self-released, 2018)

• Brickmason – Betamax Atlantic (Rei Records, 2024)

• Nmesh & t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – ロストエデンへのパス (Dream Catalogue, 2015)

• GUILD MERCHANT – Evening Meditation (self-released, 2024)

• Magnum Innominandum – Seven Geases (self-released, 2023)

• undersaken – Too Late for New Beginnings (self-released, 2023)