WWW by Christtt

Though vaporwave expended most of its creative energy in the early to mid 2010s, the genre that helped invent the now-ubiquitous concept of liminal space still has some nuanced territory to cover. The new album WWW by Christtt brings an emotional touch to the genre that we don’t often see, evoking a qualified nostalgia that yearns for time itself rather than any specific moment in the past. Distorted soul samples place us in a heavy headspace, forcing us to examine time poorly spent and imagine a world where we used every moment to the fullest. A dancing pulse struggles violently against melodic elements that appear and disappear somewhat randomly, giving the album an not-quite-danceable feel that keeps us from comfortably retreating into a glamorous view of the past. Suddenly, we realize that we have failed ourselves in addition to all of the ways that we’ve been failed by the system, violating our promises to ourselves just as the future we were promised crumbles all around us.