Rollerwave Gallery
Hello, and welcome to my website! I hope to create a satisfying aesthetic-based experience for you here, and have tailored this website to capture the Rollerwave vibes. My journey to create and document this content would not be possible without your support. Thank you for that. You're probably wondering:
What IS Rollerwave?
I'm glad you asked! Rollerwave is an aesthetic and corresponding music genre which purports to achieve for the 1970s what vaporwave achieves for the 1980s and 1990s. It's also been one of my main obsessions here on the Internet since 2021, when I found out about it. I'm very curious about its nuance, its origins, and its subculture. Being a relatively new aesthetic- the name only having come to light recently- its exact point of creation is mysterious. Through this website, I hope to create a definitive canon of what is and is not Rollerwave. Kind of codify the aesthetic via an ongoing process of categorization and organization.
Rollerwave music employs the same methods and techniques as Vaporwave, such as slowing, reverb, chopping, and echo, however it uses exclusively 1970s music, occasionally going back as far as 1969, but no later than 1979. Its samples, unlike future funk, are not disco, but are rather adult contemporary and corporate music. Rollerwave, much like Vaporwave, calls to mind an abstract vision of an imaginary, retrofuturistic past.
The corresponding aesthetic, also named Rollerwave, pulls from media of the period, particularly the 1975 James Caan film "Rollerball," which depicts a dystopian future with a 1970s style. The film is also, of course, the source of the aesthetic's name. Other instances of the aesthetic include anything by the Film Board of Canada, most fan-created music videos for the electronic music group Boards of Canada, and a host of 1970s science fiction films which, while less fondly remembered than their counterparts in the 1980s and 1990s, attempt to imagine that the future would have been like given technological and societal progress.
How Can I Help?
You can help, first and foremost, by creating new Rollerwave stuff. I check the Rollerwave tag on YouTube pretty frequently, and if anything pops up, I'll be sure to give it a listen, and maybe feature it here on the website. I also look around for examples of the aesthetic as much as I can. You can message me via my Tumblr account (linked below) if you find anything that looks like Rollerwave. Together, I think we can do this. I believe in you, and believe me, once you get hooked on Rollerwave there's really no going back.
Where's The Gallery?
The gallery itself is a virtual collection of reviews I've compiled. They were originally posted on Tumblr, but I felt it was important to host them here, too, in a more permanent form. I put a lot of work into each one, and feel that they deserve a better home. To enter the gallery and begin your journey, simply click the link below:
Enter The Gallery
Links
Guestbook- if you know of any examples of rollerwave out in the wild, or have feedback on this website, tell me here:
All reviews here are also posted on my corresponding Tumblr blog. If you want to spread awareness of this aesthetic, please check that out, too, and consider giving it a follow:
This is the page for Rollerwave on the Aesthetics Wiki. Consult it as a basic reference (although I'm not sure how much of the information on it is accurate)
Aesthetics iceberg video with a decent analysis of Rollerwave:
Retronaut Webring:
Previous NextHotline Webring:
Previous Next