Here it is, the beginning of vaporwave, the true white hip-hop. Lopatin hacks up Toto and Heart and Kate Bush, and most centrally, “The Lady In Red” by Chris de Burgh, which he has cited as the first real eccojam. Instead of chopping beats, we are decelerating synth pads and making the saxophone stutter, creating a new world from old vibes rather than new songs from old melodies. This was the real shot in the war against what Lopatin famously described in 2009 as “timbral fascism,” in The Wire, a year before dropping this bombmaking blueprint. That interview with David Keenan contains much of the rationale behind vaporwave, which Lopatin called “ecco jamming” (here rendered as “echo jamming”). “I find that the repurposed work reveals all sorts of insane secret messages. For instance, the lyrical context can totally take on new meaning, or the act of repeat listening to a particular musical loop will invoke unexpected time and space relationships. Pop music is horizontal by nature, it wants to tell you a story from start to finish. Echo jams make pop vertical and cyclical. It’s all about reveling in the sublime. And anyone can do it. Echo jamming is like DIY personalized psychedelic appropriated music. It’s also a DJ Screw/John Oswald Duo cover band.”