Vapor Talks #4: 818181
New Jersey's slushwave priestess on the momentum of the scene, anonymity and mental health
Slushwave has been celebrating a serious renaissance for a while now. Pushing that movement forward is currently a second generation of artist-producers like ‘slushwave priestess’ 818181.
Behind this enigmatic moniker and online persona is a New Jersey-based producer who’s known in the scene as Astrid. Since starting to release music in 2022, Astrid’s works as 818181 and some other project names – including the more experimental alias Find Your Blessing – have been lauded for their unique approach to slushwave, whether sample-based or composed from scratch.
The ambient-leaning vaporwave subgenre was pioneered in the mid-2010s by artists like Telepath and MindSpring Memories. They slowed down obscure songs, often of East Asian origin (think 1980s J-pop, K-pop, Cantopop and Mandopop), heavily treating them with phaser and flanger effects for a dreamy, psychedelic feel.
Eventually some of these first wave producers would move on to create original, sample-free slushwave, inspiring a second wave that gained popularity since the pandemic, including Astrid alias 818181. Last year, Astrid has performed at the annual Slushwave/Naturewave festival in Belgium alongside some of the biggest names of the scene like Desert Sand Feels Warm At Night and Days Of Blue Skies.
I zoom’ed with Astrid to chat about the genesis of the 818181 project and the current momentum of the scene, as well as topics like anonymity and mental health.
Hi Astrid! What kind of music were you into as a teenager?
I was all about metal, hardcore, emo and stuff like that. I was a total scene kid, if you’re familiar with the terminology.
I am. So you were in bands, I assume?
Yeah, I’ve played in about 10 bands. I’ve been in some emo and post-hardcore bands, been in a psychedelic band…
Did you receive any musical training?
I play bass. I’m not very good at it, but I learned how to play on my own. Other than that, I took some music theory classes in high school, but never had any formal training.
What's your thing with Avril Lavigne?
Oh man, she’s the pop punk queen. [laughs]
You remixed some of her tracks for an EP in December 2025. Was she was a big influence on you growing up?
I got into her more when I was in my 20s. Obviously I’d heard her songs on the radio and in media. She represents that nostalgia of that 2000s era to me, so she became the icon for my childhood, even though I didn’t really listen to her when I was a kid, but I just strongly associate her with that time.
When did you actually start producing music?
When I was a freshman in high school, which is a long time ago now. I was really into music, and I knew I wanted to get involved somehow. The thing that seemed the most accessible for me to learn was the computer. I became obsessed with it, and I’ve been producing on my laptop pretty much daily ever since.
That was pre-vaporwave though, right?
Yeah, I didn’t discover vaporwave until later on in high school, around 2014. And I didn’t get active in producing my own stuff until much later. But I actually don’t even remember how I became introduced to vaporwave as a concept. I think just from being online at that time – Floral Shoppe was blowing up, and then there was the 2814 album [Birth Of A New Day, 2015]. That one really broke through. I remember being around earlier though. It is a little hazy.
Do you remember what you liked about it initially, what drew you in?
For one, I’m very big on nostalgia as a person, so that was very appealing. But also I liked the newness of it. It felt like something fresh and unique that I had never experienced before through music. It was subversive with its sampling, everything about it captured my imagination. People were creating these albums, but they were just pockets of miniature worlds you could dive into. They’re so hyper-curated, the vibe is so specific to each album. And I’ve been told my whole life, ever since I started making music, “Oh, your music sounds like a soundtrack.” So it made sense that this music was creating these little scenes in my mind that I could just get lost in, and it became a rabbithole.
Did you get into slushwave through Telepath’s first wave of releases on Dream Catalogue in 2014/15?
So I was definitely more into mallsoft at first. I actually got introduced to Telepath through the Nmesh split, and for a while I would only listen to the Nmesh half. Then I listened to Beyond Reality, and the second track came on, and it just blew my mind wide open. So then Telepath was obviously huge for a while, but I didn’t decide that I wanted to make slushwave until I became a die-hard fan of MindSpring Memories. She’s my biggest inspiration.
So you produced music before 2022, which is when your Bandcamp discography starts.
I was making music on my own forever, and I just never could come up with a project that satisfied me. Nothing really stuck with me. I would make a bunch of stuff, but it never felt like this is what I want to put out to the world. I honestly have so much music scattered across several computers that I would just never release. I’ve dabbled in all sorts of styles. The first thing I started making was dubstep.
Many vaporwave producers started out with either dubstep or drum’n’bass.
I have old drum’n’bass remixes on my laptop too. But none of it ever felt right. I’m also notorious for not finishing projects and songs in general. Apart from the bands that I was in, I didn’t really start releasing music until 818181.
Was it the pandemic that made you finally start the project?
The pandemic was a strange time for me, because I worked all the way through it. I was a custodian at the time, so I was cleaning this big old abandoned building. It was empty because all the employees were home. I would just listen to music. It was during that job that I got the idea of starting a slushwave project. When I was working, I would go through YouTube and make playlists of songs to sample. I had so much free time to think, because it was such a menial job, and it was surreal being in this empty corporate building. It doesn’t get more vaporwave than that, right?
It sounds like the definition of a liminal space. How did you then come up with the project name?
It’s not as interesting as it may seem. I wanted something that wouldn’t necessarily inform the music too much, a name that wouldn’t pigeonhole the project, like, insert generic slushwave name here, you know? I decided I wanted numbers – also for better SEO – so I’d moved on to a different job at that point, and I was closing out the cash register, and the number 81 kept popping up in all of my math. I looked it up, and it’s an angel number – it means new opportunities and new success.
Were you an active part of the online vaporwave community already, or did you become one after you started releasing music?
I became one after I started releasing music. I was always kind of shy. For a lot of my younger years, I was more focused on the local scene because I was in my bands, so I didn’t really have the time to be part of an active online community. So I was just a fan from the shadows for those first six or seven years. But once I started releasing music, I wanted to get more connected and find an audience. I also wanted to see what the scene was like, what the current status of it was.
I think I really became plugged in through [producer, visual artist and Slushwave festival founder] Zer0 Rei. I’d found his work organically, from being a fan of albums like New Era Disciples by Desert Sand [Feels Warm At Night]. I wanted him to do some art for me, that’s how we became connected. He then let me know that there’s a Discord server [Slushwave Social Club], and that the people there like my music. And I’m like, “What?” And it’s just been a blast ever since. I love the community so much. I love participating, I love helping people through my label. It’s just the best community indie artists could ask for.
My impression is that of a quite welcoming community too, which I can’t really say about many other underground music scenes I’ve witnessed.
It’s funny, when you think of the tenants that this musical movement was founded on, you wouldn’t think it would be such a warm, personable community, because it’s all about this mystery and mystique for a lot of people. But it’s totally awesome. And I agree, it’s nothing like the local music scene over here. When I was getting into it, I actually had a very hard time getting connected. This is very different. Everyone is so supportive of newcomers. I’m really thankful for that, because they gave me a chance as well.
On an early release, Postcards From The Island, you paid homage to tracks by Diskette Romances, Disconscious and Vektroid. Was that about showing respect to the vaporwave pioneers that came before you?
Oh yeah, I knew I wanted to do that since I started the project. I wanted to take some of those classics that were so meaningful to me, and flip them into a slushwave context. It was just important to pay tribute to that era of discovery for me, because even though what I do is very divorced from those early vaporwave influences – I’ve definitely started to do my own thing and 818181 is very much like a self-referential thing at this point – at the time I just really wanted to show love to those early releases that were so special to me.
What’s your technical setup and musical process?
I’m a laptop musician. I’m trying to get more into hardware, because I want to do more shows and in-person stuff. But as of now, everything I do is in my computer. My process is pretty simple. Usually it starts with an idea for an album, or a concept, or just a feeling that I want to create. And then I decide, do I have the samples for this in my playlists, or do I want to compose this on my own?
For my sample stuff, it’s pretty much your standard vaporwave fare. I find my samples, I chop them up, I slap on my effects, and I call it a day. That makes it sound so artless, but I promise I do take time and care in the sampled stuff. I’ve set up a very complicated chain of effects. Every slushwave artist has their ‘slush chain’, you know? When it comes to sample-free stuff, I’ll just start clinking around on some keys, drawing in notes on the piano, and I’ll wait till something feels inspiring or it sounds like something I would sample, and I just go from there.
What was the idea behind starting your label egoscapes?
I started it mainly as a place for my own music. The first three releases are just me under different aliases. Then we did a release by memorykeeper7 – that’s my best friend – and it kind of snowballed, we started doing digital releases of some of my friends, and then I was getting submissions from people who I’d never met. Tapes were the natural next step, because I love tapes and I have a huge collection myself.
We’re currently in a bit of a hibernation state, but we have tons of releases still planned. And since egoscapes became more of a legitimate operation, I didn’t just want to dump my music on there anymore, so that’s why I made The Faerie Circle for all my slushwave experimentation. But even with that, I invited some friends on.
818181 was conceived as an anonymous project around this imaginary priestess character. Last year, you attended and played the Slushwave/Naturewave festival in person. How important is remaining anonymous still to you?
I think having a certain level of mystique is always going to be important for vaporwave, and that’s why I’ve cultivated this character for the online persona. But that mysterious priestess character used to be way more important to the music than it is now. I still dip into that lore and mystery from time to time, but it’s become more about my personal feelings. I’ve taken this step into embracing my true identity in the music as 818181.
As for Slushwave, I just really wanted to be there, and I think showing up to that festival and performing live at Naturewave was me stepping away from all of that. At this point the anonymity has become less important and it’s more about diving into this music as much as I possibly can as a person, because I want to have those opportunities to play those shows and to meet people.
I don’t think I could hide behind my computer forever, but for a lot of people, that’s the appeal, that they don’t have to do all that, because they’re more introverted. The prime example of that is Telepath. To this day, he still is very mysterious. I definitely took more inspiration from MindSpring Memories. It’s not a secret who she is. That’s how I view it – I’m not exactly trying to hide myself, but I’m not gonna have my face on an album cover.
What do you think about the current momentum of the slushwave scene?
This is definitely one of the best times to be involved. We can all feel it. This year in particular is going to be a great year for the music. Vaporwave in general is generating more interest again. I don’t know if it’ll ever be at that level of mainstream interest as when Floral Shoppe was blowing up, but I do think that we’re definitely on an upward trajectory right now.
The last couple of years in vaporwave were dominated by barber beats, but I’ve also noticed a bit of a barber beats fatigue, especially with discussions around AI music. Do you think a similar thing could happen to slushwave soon?
That’s an excellent question. To be honest, I don’t think so. There’s still a lot of new artists coming into the scene, and I don’t think we’re at the level of saturation that barber beats hit just yet. I could definitely see that happening in a few years. Maybe some innovation might be necessary, but I don’t know if I’m the artist to really stand at the forefront of that movement. There are other artists who are revolutionizing the sound a lot more. Days Of Blue Skies is really crushing it and bringing a fresh perspective to slushwave.
What about generative AI though? Is that going to be an issue in the community?
I don’t know. I don’t really mess with AI myself, so I’m not too sure how it would work. I have heard of artists generating their samples and then putting it through their slush effects chain. I don’t know how easy it would be to generate a complete slushwave track. I would imagine if an AI algorithm could do it, I think it would probably sound really mushy and weird. Surely you could tell Suno or whatever software to generate a Telepath-sounding track, but I don’t think it would come out good.
You’ve recently launched a new project and alias, Find Your Blessing, which moves away from slushwave and experiments with influences from mallsoft and signalwave. Is that going to be a future direction for you?
Yeah, for now I’m going to continue down that road. Find Your Blessing has been a good and fun outlet for me to just do whatever I want and free myself from the self-imposed rules of 818181, which I have many of. I wanted to embrace some sounds and tropes that I usually try to avoid and just really indulge. That’s what Find Your Blessing is. I just dropped the third installment.
When it comes to 818181, right now I’m at a place where I feel kind of tapped out creatively, but I always got to be making something. I’m sitting on a bunch of unreleased albums that are just tied up for various reasons. So I’m going to be dropping consistently throughout this year. It might not actually be new music, but it’ll be new to everybody else. And then hopefully, when I do get back to making 818181 music, it’ll be a pretty seamless transition, like I never left.
You had to take a break from making music in 2024. You were quite outspoken about struggling with mental health issues in that period. Are you doing better now? What effect did that have on your creative process?
It’s been a journey, but I’m doing much better now. I got a treatment plan that’s working for me. That was a very dark time, and I wanted to just be transparent with my community. I was really struggling, and I felt I owed an explanation to people. In hindsight, I probably could have dipped and came back and I don’t even think anybody would have noticed, but I felt this immense pressure at the time, especially with egoscapes as a label. I shut it down because I didn’t think I would be around to keep working on it, to be honest.
Now that I’m in a better place, my relationship with creativity has changed. It’s not quite as feverish as it used to be. There’s not this intensity. I can now engage with art at my own pace, and I’m also allowing myself to explore my who I am outside of art and music, which has just been such a core part of my identity my whole life. But I need to discover a me beyond that at the same time, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do now.
For readers who haven’t explored your music yet, is there a good starting point into your discography?
What people associate with me the most when it comes to 818181 are my albums Limbo and Life’s A Joke… And God Is Laughing. Those two albums really broke me out onto the scene. And if someone wants to experience the modern version, what I’m doing now, they should listen to Maiden Oѵ The Wilt.
Listen to 818181 on Bandcamp
Discover egoscapes on Bandcamp
818181’s Top 10 Vaporwave Albums
(unranked; excluding personal friends/acquaintances to avoid any favoritism)
Disconscious – Hologram Plaza (self-released, 2013)
Diskette Romances – Diskette Romances (Sunup, 2012)
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)
t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – 現実を超えて (Dream Catalogue, 2014)
Vaperror – Mana Pool (PLUS100, 2014)
Sacred Tapestry – Shader Complete (self-released, 2012/2016)
MindSpring Memories – The Binary Ocean (Needlejuice, 2017)
MindSpring Memories – ❄☁❄☁❄☁❄☁❄ (self-released, 2016)
MindSpring Memories – ॐ (theINFINITIpool, 2015)
식료품groceries – 슈퍼마켓Yes! We’re Open (Consumer Electronics, 2014)
I'm not sure I know what Slushwave is, exactly, but I am looking forward to getting to know it.
Great interview. Nice to read and learn more about Astrid.