How did we end up here? George is an entire album dedicated to Seinfeld, part of a genre called seinwave, which is also dedicated to the show.
George compiles tracks from three previously released mixtapes that were recorded between 2015 and 2017. Its producer is a somewhat mysterious figure named Costanza, who took nearly four months to respond to my pestering emails, but who then readily agreed to tell me about this perplexing artifact. It was my opportunity to try to understand this highly specific digital release, which has become so legendary that it spawned an LP edition pressed on 160-gram, clear vinyl, along with a deluxe cassette boxset edition.
A novelty to some, George comes off as more than that when chatting with Costanza. “Seinfeld has always been a part of my life; in a way, it’s the epitome of nostalgia for me, personally,” he says. “The home video footage of my first steps as a child takes place amid the glow of a rerun episode of Seinfeld.
“Growing up watching the show, I found humor in the slapstick moments with Kramer, but it wasn’t until later on that I (like many) found myself relating to the character of George Costanza. He is truly the embodiment of the insecurity, shallowness, and self-deprecation that we all feel at one time or another; at the same time, there is an air of hope surrounding him, oftentimes seen in small victories in unexpected places.”
Costanza explains that he became interested in vaporwave in 2014, when he was only fifteen years old, a freshman in high school. His interest in convention-breaking music dates back further than that, though. “As early as middle school I was constantly searching for the ‘next big thing’ in music,” he tells me. “I have always been interested in the evolution of music as a whole and found myself growing tired of the same conventions that made up 95% of music that I came across. I got excited when dubstep started to become popular, because I had never heard anything like it before. I participated in that scene for a couple years before eventually growing tired of it and continuing my search, which eventually led me to vaporwave.”
His enthusiasm for vaporwave was catalyzed by artists like 18 Carat Affair (an early vaporwave and hypnagogic pop producer) and bbrainz. Very soon after, he started producing his own music. In junior high, after his family moved to Chicago for his dad’s job, he conceived Costanza.
“Costanza was developed in an afternoon with little to no planning prior to its conception,” he says. “That afternoon in particular, I thought it would be funny to make a vaporwave song based on Seinfeld that utilized a quote from the show. I had put together the debut song in a little under a half hour and threw together a sloppily photoshopped ‘album cover’ to accompany it. After uploading the song to SoundCloud and posting a quick self-promo on Reddit, I went to sleep. I woke up to more than 50 upvotes in just a few short hours followed by an entire day of my track being in the #1 spot on the subreddit.”
That Reddit post is now long gone, along with his Reddit username at the time, which was notvandelay, a reference to George’s fictional company, Vandelay Industries. But Costanza’s music has lived on, albeit not without hiccups. “I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, which oftentimes shows itself through the music,” he explains. “There is a lot of perfectionism surrounding the metadata of the songs, in addition to the layout and timing of many of my releases. In the first couple years of Costanza, I would sporadically delete and reupload songs, much to the dismay of my listeners; this is the reason why.” Indeed, a few years ago, several Reddit users feared Costanza was gone for good when after his Bandcamp disappeared — though he subsequently reappeared.
Part of growing artistically has involved accepting imperfection. “Thankfully I have learned to cope with it effectively over the past several years and continue to work through it with regard to how it affects my creativity.”
Costanza assembles his tracks in Ableton Live. He tells me he will typically begin his process with a “sample hunt,” seeking a clip that will serve as a good base for a track. “I oftentimes opt for ‘proven’ samples that I know were used in other well-known tracks, but I challenge myself to approach them from a unique standpoint.”
He often draws from his favourite vaporwave artists. As an example, he cites his debut track, “Costanza,” in which he used a sample from a song called “Daylight” by the band Ramp. “Daylight” is an album track from the lone LP by this jazzy funk group, which was founded by the legendary vibraphonist Roy Ayers. Costanza tells me he chose this sample after hearing it used by 18 Carat Affair on the track “Sunrise,” off the 2009 EP N. Cruise Blvd. To make it his own, Costanza altered the way the sample was used. “I opted to take a unique, more upbeat approach than the 18 Carat Affair track by adding a drum track and chopping it up, which eventually became standard for most of my future tracks.”
The hyperspecific realm of Seinfeld-related vaporwave actually dates back to January 2015, when the vaporwave producer Abelard put out a single entitled “☆ＳＥＩＮＷＡＶＥ☆２０００☆,” which transformed the TV show’s slap bass theme song into a funky vaporwave epic. Costanza points out that simpsonswave, another pop-culture-specific genre of vaporwave – usually involving discoloured, slowed-down, and hazy Simpsons clips set to vaporwave music – actually came after seinwave.
I ask Costanza about these source-specific varieties of vaporwave, wondering why the genre serves as such fertile ground for these hyperspecific strains of recycled pop-culture. He explains that vaporwave is “innately nostalgic,” linking in with memories of “early experiences, typically rather insignificant ones like a certain commercial or jingle that has been pushed to one’s subconscious until it rushes back as the result of a certain trigger years later. I believe vaporwave is all about triggering that feeling.”
While nostalgia is often person-specific, he notes that phenomena like Seinfeld and The Simpsons have impacted many people. For Costanza, tapping into that “collective nostalgia” is the key to the wide appeal of these highly-specific genres.
Costanza has recorded under a variety of other monikers, including producing less-specific vaporwave/future funk music under the name Color Television. But today, his sound production impulses are evolving. He is dabbling in industrial music and dream pop, and is currently working on a noise project that he considers entirely separate from his vaporwave exploits.
“I believe that noise is the final frontier in terms of music,” he tells me. “The music that comes out of that scene is jarring, extreme, and completely independent of the conventions of music. The performance aspect is also by far the most entertaining you can find across any genre.”
Miles away from the funky and melodic tones of seinwave, noise seems to offer a rawer emotional outlet for Costanza, something less self-consciously post-modern and more purgative. “Noise appeals to me personally because it functions as the most cathartic genre possible in my opinion,” he says. “Many noise pieces are built on the rawest form of human emotions, frequently sidestepping established conventions of music in service of emotional expression.”
Thanks to Costanza for the interview. His Bandcamp page is here.
Anomaly Index 