Vapor Talks #24: Paradise Of Yesterday

The Swedish vaporwave producer digs deep into obscure 70s and 80s electronic music

May 06, 2026

Two weeks ago, I shared this interview with Bathroom Plants, a vaporwave musician from Philadelphia who’s just released a collab album with another producer called Paradise Of Yesterday, Blossoming Tranquility, on the Geometric Lullaby label. The tape features Bathroom Plants’ hardware synth overdubs on tranquil new age and ambient loops sourced and manipulated by Paradise Of Yesterday. It’s already one of my favorite new releases of the year.

Paradise Of Yesterday hails from Stockholm, Sweden, and has been releasing his music through respected scene labels like Underwater Computing, Cityman Productions, Gorgeous Lights, No Problema Tapes and Crash Symbols. His sound is deeply inspired by the electronic music and synth pop of the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s; some of his albums feel like lost Jan Hammer or Harold Faltermeyer soundtracks, others remind me of forgotten Berlin school or late-period Innovative Communication albums.

After having the Swedish producer’s feel-good discography on rotation throughout these recent warm spring days, I reached out to him for a Vapor Talk, and he immediately agreed. It was only after our conversation that I learned it was actually the first interview he gave as an artist.

Did you grow up in Stockholm?

Yes. I come from a Lebanese background – my parents are Lebanese and part Croatian, but I was born and raised in Sweden.

What kind of music did you listen to in your childhood?

When I was growing up, my father was listening to a lot of 70s electronic music and 80s synth pop music. I didn’t quite explore it back then, because I was just a little child, but later on, these sounds would really inspire me. He was listening to Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre, as well as Yazoo or Depeche Mode. A lot of German new wave and italo disco too. Disco music in general was very popular in my house.

Was there any Arabic music playing at home as well?

That came more from my mom’s side. She was playing a lot of Arabic contemporary folk music in the house, like Fairuz and similar artists.

Did you get any musical training, learn any instruments?

No. I mean, I had a couple of guitar lessons, but it stopped there. I’ve had some singing lessons as well. I’ve always been singing, but never professionally. Music was an important part of my family’s culture – just the enjoyment of music and always having it around.

How did your musical taste develop as a teenager?

Well, the biggest shift came in sixth grade, when I got into the Beatles. They changed everything for me, and I learned so much from them. They still remain my favorite band ever. From there, I started listening to more experimental music from the 1960s and 70s, particularly progressive rock like Pink Floyd, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson. I’d also discover German bands like Cluster, Harmonia and Tangerine Dream. Then I started digging into obscure Krautrock records, the ones you really have to search for.

Aside from that, I was also listening to a lot of trip-hop: Massive Attack, DJ Shadow, UNKLE… particularly DJ Shadow was a huge inspiration, because he was taking these obscure samples from the kind of music that I was already regularly listening to – 1970s prog, Berlin School, that type of thing. Once I heard his album Endtroducing…, I started picking out a bunch of sounds from my own record collection and just started experimenting, trying to make some kind of instrumental plunderphonic music in FL Studio. That was around 2017, I’d say.

When did you first come across vaporwave?

Around 2015, I discovered synthwave. It reminded me of the stuff that my father had been playing around the house, so my brother and me started listening to it more. We were diving into all those subgenres – there was synthwave, chillwave, vaporwave… but to tell you the truth, I had a very bad start with vaporwave. The first album I came across was Floral Shoppe, and I’ll be honest: I did not like it. I thought it was very lazily done. It felt too repetitive. It wasn’t dynamic enough, there’s wasn’t much happening. So I kind of skipped over vaporwave and just focused on synthwave for a while.

But one day, I found this artist by the name of Phoenix #2772 on YouTube, and hearing how he was making vaporwave by slowing down and manipulating the samples and filtering them very creatively, something clicked with me. Because he wasn’t just looping four bars from a song, his versions sounded completely different from the originals.

Then I started getting into Diskette Park. When I first heard his music, I thought it was original, I didn’t even know it was sampled. But when I found his sources and realized he sampled a lot of experimental library albums and stuff like that, a whole new world opened up for me. This was around 2018, and I’d already started experimenting with my own music by slowing down obscure samples, chopping them up like DJ Shadow.

I have to admit that when I first heard your stuff, I thought it was original music too.

It’s pretty much all samples. (laughs) It’s just that I dig extremely deep to find the type of sound that fits my vision. I might sample songs that you can’t even find online – you’ll have to go on Discogs to buy the CD. That’s what I do sometimes. I go very deep to find that perfect song to sample, and then I cut and paste different sections of it. I’ll use very lengthy loops, but never the entire song. My goal is always to make sure it sounds as different from the original as possible.

Did you become engaged in the online vaporwave community at the time?

No. I’m still not part of the online vaporwave community. I’ve only been in touch with other artists for collab purposes or people from labels through email exchanges. When I started making music, I reached out to some artists to collaborate, but since I didn’t get much response, I’ve basically just been doing my own thing. I don’t have any social media, I’m not on Discord, and I’m also not American, so I’m not really around where vaporwave happens in real life. Living in Sweden, I rarely get invited to events or festivals.

What’s a good start into your discography? Is there an album you’re particularly proud of?

That’s such a difficult question, because my albums all sound so different. My most popular one is my first attempt at the late night lofi subgenre, an album called Nightlife. That one kind of blew up, though I didn’t expect that to happen. But it’s also not very typical of what I do.

I’d say a good album to get started, a good compilation of my sound, would be an album I made in 2022 called Introspect. There’s another one [from 2021] called Atlantis – that’s exactly the type of vaporwave I wanted to make since I’d started. I just feel like all of the songs fit perfectly together. I think either of those would be a good beginning.

Your most recent one was called Leisure, and it has a sound and vibe that I’d describe as Balearic.

What’s that?

Oh you know, just a catch-all term for Mediterranean, laid-back but danceable electronic music. It comes from a name for what Ibizan DJs would have played in their sets back in the days: Spanish pop, italo disco, sun-drenched house…

Well, I don’t think I’ve made any house-influenced music yet. Leisure is a continuance of another EP that I did called Sunsets, which is a spin-off of another album I did called Glamour. When I made that one, I wanted to make something fun and uplifting, something that you can both relax and dance to, a very summery type of vibe. I made it in the summer too. It’s true that this one’s a bit more danceable, not as calm as some of my other work. I’d even say it almost has a future funk vibe to it.

Tell me about your recent collaboration with Bathroom Plants, Blossoming Tranquility. You two have been working on this for quite a while, right?

Yeah, the story actually started when I had my first tape release in 2019. That was for a little label called Palm ‘84, and they would usually have two or three releases on the same day. The other album that was released on the same day as mine was actually Bathroom Plants’ debut, Installing Symbiotopia. I was curious to hear it, because he had an original artwork, and I was not used to seeing that in vaporwave – it was usually frames from obscure VHS releases, so that immediately caught my attention. What was even more unusual was that it was original music, it wasn’t sample-based as most vaporwave I knew.

Over the next years, I kept seeing his name on other labels, and I was always really impressed with his sound. I’d planned to contact him for a collaboration for a while, and one day, I saw one of his social media posts about a remix competition, so I just made a remix and sent it to him hoping he’d enjoy it. I also mentioned that I think we could collaborate on something special, like an EP combining his original compositions with my way of making music with samples. To my surprise, he responded by saying he really enjoyed my work as well and that he’d prefer to make an entire full length album. I was like, “I’m in, let’s go.”

How did work on the album go in terms of process?

It would always start with me giving him the underlying layer of music, and he’d add his things on top of it. I knew it wouldn’t make much sense to send him any synth pop stuff, so I sampled mostly New Age, ambient type of songs for him to put his overdubs on. I knew that would match really well. I really hope to continue the work with him too. I’ve already given him a couple of ideas for potential new tracks. We’ll see where that goes.

What else are you currently working on?

My next full-length album as Paradise Of Yesterday is almost completed, so that will be coming out at one point. I’ll still need artwork for it, and see if some label will be interested.

I also have another alias that I’ve been focusing on recently: Conphaera. That’s my sample-based dreampunk project, very influenced by Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack. I released an album last year, New World Prophecy, and I have lots of more stuff in the works for it.