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eccojams

Eccojams

United States ¡ 2010s
SentimentalSadDreamyChill
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Description

Eccojams is a microgenre built from extremely short, looped fragments of 1980s and 1990s pop, R&B, soft rock, and smooth jazz recordings that are slowed down, pitch-shifted, and drenched in echo and reverb. The aim is to induce a hypnotic, memory-haunted mood through minimal alteration and obsessive repetition.

Rather than full remixes, eccojams isolate a few seconds that feel emotionally resonant—often a single vocal melisma, chord change, or sax flourish—and stretch it into a drifting, sentimental vignette. The texture typically includes VHS-like degradation, tape hiss, and retro consumer‑media aesthetics, emphasizing nostalgia, melancholy, and the uncanny.

The term and template come from Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010), a seminal release that served as a primary blueprint for early vaporwave and its many satellite styles.

History
Origins (late 2000s–2010)

Eccojams emerged at the turn of the 2010s out of the same blog-era culture that fostered hypnagogic pop and chillwave. Daniel Lopatin (as Chuck Person) coined the form with “Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1” (2010), presenting a series of short, loop-based edits sourced from mainstream pop and soft rock, slowed and smeared with delay and reverb. The approach channeled chopped-and-screwed’s time-warping, plunderphonics’ sampling ethos, and ambient/new age atmospherics.

Early diffusion and community (2011–2012)

The technique spread quickly across Bandcamp, Tumblr, and YouTube. Artists like Vektroid (across aliases), INTERNET CLUB, and Infinity Frequencies elaborated the loop-centric method, often pairing it with retro corporate design, retail muzak signifiers, and VHS-era visuals. Small labels and netlabels circulated tape and digital editions, establishing a recognizable palette: micro-loops, pitch-down, echo trails, and consumer-media patina.

Consolidation within vaporwave

While eccojams can be heard as its own microgenre, it also functions as vaporwave’s proto-/foundational template. As vaporwave diversified—toward mallsoft’s retail ambience, slushwave’s smeared drones, dreampunk’s cinematic nocturnes—the core eccojam loop aesthetic remained a reference point for emotional affect (melancholy, memory, unease) and production minimalism.

Legacy and influence

Eccojams’ DNA underpins a broad constellation of internet-born styles. Its emphasis on fragmentary loops and cultural recontextualization informed vaporwave and offshoots like mallsoft, slushwave, sovietwave, utopian virtual, vaportrap, and even the oppositional hardvapour. The technique still appears today as a recognizable gesture: a few haunted seconds, repeating into eternity.

How to make a track in this genre
Source material
•   Start with late-1970s to 1990s pop, R&B, soft rock, smooth jazz, or adult contemporary. Jingles and corporate muzak also work. •   Listen for a 1–8 second fragment (a vocal sigh, a single hook, a chord pivot) that feels emotionally “stuck in time.”
Editing and timing
•   Time-stretch and pitch-shift down moderately (often −10% to −25% speed; −2 to −6 semitones) to thicken transients and heighten melancholy. •   Chop precisely on musical boundaries so the loop cycles seamlessly. A click-free, perfectly aligned loop is crucial.
Effects and texture
•   Use spacious delay and plate/spring reverb to create echoing tails (the genre’s namesake “echo” feel). •   Add VHS/tape patina: mild wow-and-flutter, tape hiss, vinyl crackle, or gentle band-limiting to suggest duplication loss. •   Keep dynamics soft; gentle compression or light saturation helps glue the loop without destroying transients.
Arrangement and form
•   Minimalism is key: let a single loop run for 1–3 minutes with subtle, nearly imperceptible modulation (filter sweeps, feedback changes, send levels). •   Avoid busy percussion or new harmonic content; the loop itself should carry the emotional focus. •   Titles and artwork often reference retro consumer tech, hotlines, malls, or corporate aesthetics to reinforce the mood.
Ethics and workflow
•   Because the style is sample-forward, understand your local laws and platform rules about sampling; clear samples when possible. •   Maintain high-quality editing and respectful presentation—eccojams aim for emotive recontextualization, not simple repetition.
Main artists
Influenced by
Hypnagogic Pop
Hypnagogic pop is a late‑2000s microgenre of lo‑fi pop that evokes the hazy, half‑awake feeling between sleep and consciousness. Artists fold fragments of 1970s–1990s mass‑media memory—VHS textures, TV idents, soft rock hooks, and mall‑era synths—into dreamy songs obscured by tape hiss, reverb, and analog wobble. The style blends retro synth-pop, yacht/soft rock, new age pads, and ambient drift with indie pop songcraft. Its mood is nostalgic and melancholic yet warmly intimate, as if hearing familiar pop refracted through worn cassettes and fading broadcast signals.
Chillwave
Chillwave is a late-2000s microgenre of electronic pop characterized by hazy, retro-tinged synthesizers, lo‑fi textures, understated drum machines, and heavily processed, dreamlike vocals. Its sound evokes sun-faded nostalgia, often referencing 1980s synth-pop and soft rock atmospheres filtered through cassette hiss, chorus, and reverb. Built by bedroom producers during the blog era, chillwave prizes mood over virtuosity: gentle major-seventh harmonies, loop-friendly motifs, and sidechain‑pumped pads create a warm, gauzy drift. Visual and conceptual aesthetics—VHS artifacts, pastel palettes, palm trees, and memories of an endless summer—are integral to its identity.
Chopped And Screwed
Chopped and screwed is a hip-hop remix technique and regional style that slows songs down dramatically—often to around 60–70 BPM—and lowers the pitch, creating a syrupy, heavy-lidded feel. DJs then "chop" the audio by cutting, repeating, and stuttering phrases, adding backspins, brakes, and pauses to exaggerate groove and space. Pioneered in Houston, Texas by DJ Screw in the early 1990s, the sound is closely tied to car culture (SLABs) and the codeine-lean aesthetic. While originally rooted in mixtapes of Southern rap, the approach has since been applied to R&B, pop, and even electronic music, becoming a widely imitated post-production sensibility across the internet era.
Plunderphonics
Plunderphonics is a sample-based music practice in which new compositions are made entirely or predominantly from pre‑existing recordings. Rather than using short, unrecognizable snippets as texture, plunderphonic works foreground recognizable materials—pop hits, classical excerpts, commercials, voice-overs—and transform them through juxtaposition, layering, pitch-shifting, time-stretching, and collage. Coined by Canadian composer John Oswald in the mid‑1980s, the term names both a technique and a critical stance that questions authorship, originality, and ownership in the age of reproducible media. Plunderphonics often functions as cultural commentary or satire, drawing attention to how meaning changes when familiar sounds are recontextualized. Stylistically, it ranges from dense cut‑up cacophony to groove-oriented rearrangements that remain danceable and accessible.
Ambient
Ambient is a form of electronic and electroacoustic music that prioritizes tone, atmosphere, and texture over conventional song structures and rhythmic drive. It typically features slow-moving harmonies, sustained drones, gentle timbral shifts, and extensive use of space and silence. Rather than drawing attention to itself through hooks or beats, ambient is designed to be as ignorable as it is interesting, rewarding both background listening and focused immersion. Artists often employ synthesizers, samplers, tape loops, field recordings, and subtle acoustic instruments, with reverb and delay creating a sense of place. Substyles range from luminous, consonant soundscapes to darker, more dissonant atmospheres.
New Age
New age is a largely instrumental, mood-driven genre that emphasizes calm, spacious textures and a sense of spiritual or contemplative uplift. It blends gentle electronic timbres, acoustic instruments, and global/folk influences to create immersive soundscapes intended for relaxation, meditation, and introspection. Hallmarks include slow tempos or free time, long sustaining pads, modal and consonant harmonies, nature field recordings, and unobtrusive rhythms. The music often avoids dramatic tension in favor of openness and continuity, conveying themes of inner peace, nature, and the transcendent.
Synth-Pop
Synth-pop is a pop-oriented style that foregrounds the synthesizer as its primary instrument, often paired with drum machines and sequencers. It favors clean, melodic hooks, concise song structures, and a sleek, modernist sound that ranges from cool and minimal to lush and romantic. Emerging at the turn of the 1980s from the UK new wave and post-punk scenes, synth-pop leveraged affordable analog and then digital keyboards to bring electronic textures into the mainstream. Its sonic palette includes arpeggiated basslines, shimmering pads, bright leads, gated or machine-driven drums, and polished vocals that convey both futuristic detachment and emotional immediacy.
Easy Listening
Easy listening is a lush, melodic, and unobtrusive style of popular orchestral music designed to be pleasant in the foreground and effortless in the background. It favors smooth textures, lyrical melodies, and gentle rhythms over virtuosic display or dense complexity. Typical arrangements feature string sections, woodwinds, soft brass, vibraphone, harp, piano, subtle Latin or light swing percussion, and sometimes wordless choirs. Repertoire often consists of standards, film and television themes, and instrumental covers of contemporary hits, presented with polished studio production and wide stereo imaging. The mood ranges from romantic and sentimental to breezy and exotic, prioritizing warmth, clarity, and relaxed pacing. Improvisation, if present, is restrained, with harmony that leans on jazzy extensions while staying consonant and approachable.
Soft Rock
Soft rock is a mellow, melody-forward strain of rock and pop that favors smooth vocals, polished production, and restrained dynamics over distortion and aggression. Built on acoustic and clean electric guitars, piano or electric piano (Rhodes), light rhythm sections, and lush backing vocals or strings, the style centers on memorable hooks and sentimental themes. Its lyrics often explore love, heartbreak, nostalgia, and introspection, delivered with warmth and clarity. Tempos are moderate, grooves are unobtrusive, and harmonies are diatonic with tasteful color (maj7, add9) and occasional key changes. Commercially, soft rock flourished on AM radio and adult contemporary playlists in the 1970s and early 1980s, shaping the sound of radio-friendly ballads and influencing later styles like yacht rock and modern adult contemporary.
Tape Music
Tape music is a form of early electronic and electroacoustic composition that uses recorded sounds on magnetic tape as the primary material. Composers assemble, cut, splice, loop, reverse, and vary the speed of tape to sculpt timbre, rhythm, and form, often transforming everyday noises into abstract musical structures. Emerging from post–World War II studio experimentation, it blurred the line between composition and sound design. Works are typically fixed-media pieces intended for loudspeaker playback rather than traditional performance, privileging timbral exploration, spatial projection, and montage over conventional harmony and meter.
Sampledelia
Sampledelia is a sample-centric, psychedelic approach to electronic and pop-oriented production in which pre‑existing recordings are chopped, looped, layered, and recontextualized into dreamlike collages. It favors crate‑dug fragments of library music, exotica, easy listening, film dialogue, radio idents, and forgotten pop, weaving them with breakbeats, ambient pads, and found sounds to create a kaleidoscopic, nostalgic haze. Unlike traditional hip hop beatmaking that foregrounds MCs, sampledelia often leans instrumental or uses voices as textural elements—snippets that drift in and out—emphasizing mood, memory, and playful surrealism over linear songwriting. The result is music that feels both familiar and uncanny: buoyant, whimsical, and danceable, yet distinctly wistful and cinematic.
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