Slushwave Festival is coming up this week. One of the artists performing in the main program on Saturday is memorykeeper7, a young producer from Norrköping, a small town in Central Sweden. Active since 2023, he’s been making waves in the Slushwave scene on Discord and Bandcamp with his melancholic ambient and naturewave soundscapes. He also explores other subgenres under various pseudonyms – ranging from signalwave based on samples from Swedish nature documentaries to manga-inspired medieval slushwave.
Although not a particularly chatty person and clearly more the introverted type, memorykeeper7 sat down with me to give me a glimpse into his upbringing and the influences that shaped his music. Read our conversation below, and catch him live on Saturday at Slushwave festival. You can still buy tickets for the IRL event in Kortrijk, but you can also follow all three days in the livestream for free at Vapor Memory’s YouTube channel, starting on Thursday August 27.
What kind of music did you grow up on?
My parents listened to a lot of different music from various countries. They played almost everything – not so much pop music, but anything from folk to rock and all the way to metal. My dad also played guitar, and he was in a few bands.
When I started being on the internet, I discovered a lot of music by myself. I also asked my mom for recommendations, and she turned me onto a lot of 80s Swedish synth pop, punk and post-punk. I’ve always been really curious about music, but I’ve never really been interested in what genres I listen to.
What things were you into as a kid outside of music?
Skating and drawing. At some point, I got into Rubix cubes and more obscure, creative stuff. I was outside a lot when I was really young. At school, we had a really big schoolyard, pretty much like a forest, and we could just roam the whole area.
When I got a little older, around COVID in Sweden – we didn’t have a complete lockdown, so I could still be outside – I got into fingerboarding as well, which was easier to do inside. Then I started doing Kendama as well.
What’s that?
Oh, just these. [holds up a Japanese wooden toy] I discovered them on the internet, and I really wanted to try it.
Did you ever learn any instruments or get any sort of musical training?
We did have music class in school. I learned to play guitar a little bit, but it didn’t really stick. I’m left-handed and I didn’t want to change, and I also didn’t really have a guitar to play with. So no instruments or training really, mostly just listening to music.
Were you part of any subculture or scene during your youth?
I didn’t really hang out with friends a lot. I was mostly by myself, which I was also fine with. I didn’t try to make my own music until much later, not until 2023 actually. At that time, I listened to quite a lot of ambient music. Not the big names, more underground and dark ambient. I had no idea how to do anything, so I just took a random track and slowed it down a lot, because I really liked long tracks. That’s kind of how I started, but I just made three or four tracks that year.
How did you discover vaporwave then?
I guess just like many others, I found desert sand feels warm at night. Spotify just recommended his album Alone [一人で] to me because I listened to so much ambient music. So I mostly listened to him for a while, and then I discovered MindSpring Memories and you still feel them out there, don’t you. I went straight into slushwave and naturewave, without even getting into vaporwave before that.
I started discovering more and more music, and then at the begining of 2024, I thought that maybe I should try and make something similar. I started looking for tutorials on YouTube, but there weren’t that many – I just found two. The tutorials definitely helped with effects and stuff like that, but the rest I had to figure out myself by trial and error. Also, I only had GarageBand, I didn’t have FL Studio or Ableton.
Did you start studying the genre as well, maybe go back to the classic vaporwave albums of the 2010s?
For the longest time, it was only slushwave. I found the Slushwave Social Club on Discord, and then I found out about Bandcamp, and I started uploading music on there, so that I could promote it in the Discord server and start asking for feedback and tips. In 2024, I started attending different URL events and then discovering the big names in vaporwave.
Like I said, I’ve always been really curious, so I just started trying to find really obscure stuff. I would try to find out, for example, what was the first vaporwave album, and I just kept going from there. I would discover more subgenres all the time, and I just loved it, because it was all interesting to me in its own way. I tried to give everything a shot, just to see what sticks, and most of it actually did.
How did you feel about the slushwave community?
It felt really inviting. Everyone was super nice and friendly, and just hyping everyone up when a new album was released. It didn’t matter how small or big of an artist you were. Everyone was always so supportive.
I wasn’t super active on the Discord server at first, but Astrid [818181] and I joined it around the same time, and I sent her a friend request to ask for tips on my music. Somehow we just kept talking and over time, we became really good friends. Then I started to be more active on the server in general. Soon I was talking to everyone, and a lot of the members and artists are good friends now.
Is there a local scene in Sweden as well?
No. I know one other slushwave artist who’s from Sweden: Illusionary ドリーミング. It’s not big at all here.
How did you come up with the memorykeeper7 name?
That’s actually my old Instagram username. I had it for a while, and then I changed it, but when I I had to think of a name for the first project, I thought that could really work, and then it just stuck.
You have several aliases now for very different styles of vaporwave. How many do you have in total?
(laughs) Too many. I have this other Bandcamp, I just call it s00000. It’s actually mostly my own stuff on there, but there are a few friends’ projects as well. I’d say it’s more of a collective.
With so much output, how much time do you spend every day making music?
Not that much, probably two to three hours. Sometimes it’s a lot more though, especially when I just want to finish an album right away.
Do you release everything you make?
Yeah, almost everything.
You also have a signalwave project called 𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘷𝘪𝘬𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘵 ∞. What’s the idea behind that one?
Well, it was also around 2024 that I discovered signalwave and found it really interesting. I saw that many artists sampled stuff from their home country, but I don’t think anyone else had sampled stuff from Swedish documentaries and commercials, so I wanted to try and figure it out. I started looking mostly for old nature documentaries from Swedish television channels. I really liked the more ambient side of signalwave, so I went into that direction, that more minimalist approach.
I enjoyed the four-hour summer album you’ve made under that alias. In general, you’ve been making some extremely long albums.
Yeah. I just had a really fun release on Global Pattern, ⊹˚. ݁₊ ✧ 𝒰𝓃𝒾𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓈𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝒟𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓂𝓈 𖦹 . ݁₊ ⊹ , which was a USB stick inside of a cassette case. I think the full album is like 40 hours of music.
It’s probably longer than it took you to make it.
I think so. (laughs) But from now on, I want to stick to making albums that are quite easy to listen to – around an hour or maybe a little more.
What other aliases and projects should be mentioned here?
I have a Berserk-themed slushwave alias. [Berserk is a Japanese medieval fantasy manga, ed. note] I’ve been into manga for a long time, most of my life actually. My older sister read quite a lot of manga when she was younger, so we had the books at home. I started reading them at one point, and I’ve always been surrounded with it.
I’ve started reading Berserk more recently, and every time I finish another volume, I’ll be making an album about a specific theme from the manga that inspired me.
I actually have a few more aliases, but those are secret.
What are you actually doing in your life outside of music?
I study photography. I’m really into artistic photography, both analog and digital, and blending the two. I went to this really creative high school where even skateboarding is part of the curriculum, and we also had classes in photography, film and arts. I realized that I really enjoyed photography, and when I finished high school, I figured out that there are a quite a few schools in Sweden where I could develop my skills further, so that’s what I picked out, and it’s been a lot of fun so far.
I assume you’re creating all your album covers and artworks yourself then?
Yeah, most of them. Either it’s just a photo that I took, or something I’ve made in my phone, like taking a bunch of different photos from the internet and turning them into something new with added text and stuff. I usually make the music first, and then while I’m looking for the perfect photo, I listen back to the music, so I can figure out what the right cover is.
Do you usually have a concept in mind when making an album?
Sometimes it’s just a feeling. Sometimes I watch a really powerful movie, and then I want to make something and channel the emotions I got from the movie into music. Sometimes it’s more of a theme or a concept that I turn into an album. It really depends, it’s a mix of everything.
Just from following you online, I’ve noticed you’re quite a politically outspoken, progressive person. Do you think vaporwave is still political, or has it ever been? Should it maybe become more political again?
I still think that’s a thing, though maybe not a big thing anymore. Since vaporwave has become so diverse with so many subgenres, it’s just really spread out, like with any other genre. But it’s still somewhere in there, I believe. It’s still important for me personally at least, though it might not be a super big part of what I do as memorykeeper7. But I have some idas for the future and to somehow connect [the music to political activism].
What are you working on right now in terms of new music?
I’m working on two solarpunk albums which are pretty much complete, I just need to finish the cover art. I just released a collab with reas, an ambient slushwave album. I’ve mostly been working on just secret side projects, and of course my Slushwave festival set, because I’m playing live in person this year. I also want to start making and selling my own homemade CDs soon.
Do you see music as a career option?
No. At the moment, I’m just doing it for fun. I’m still not too sure what to do after I finish photography school. I’m gonna study for another year, and then maybe try and make that my occupation. But I don’t know yet.
Bandcamp links:
memorykeeper7 (slushwave/ambient, main artist alias)
s00000 (label/community alias)
𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘷𝘪𝘬𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘵 ∞ (signalwave alias)
memorykeeper7’s Top 10 Vaporwave Albums
(unranked)
days of blue skies – As The Days Go By… (2024)
lllusionary ドリーミング & ネザーnether – 夕暮れから夜明けまで (2025)
desert sand feels warm at night – 暗涙に咽ぶ (2023)
猫 シ Corp. & t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – Building a Better World (2019)
MindSpring Memories – Soul Visioning (2021)
Law – Law (2026)
テッセラクト – accretion disc (2024)
ささやき声 – ユートピアの理想 (2025)
818181 – Within The Vastness (2025)
shlanȶ & SPHERICAL CUBE – ꪜ 𝘦𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳 (2024)
Hola , Memorykeeper7 Es Otro Gran Proyecto Del Mundo Vaporwave , Es Joven Y Tiene Un Gran Futuro En La Escena. Un Saludo.