As a long‑time vaporwave fan – and someone who proudly hoards My Pet Flamingo vinyl like they’re rare artefacts – I went into Nobody Here: The Story of Vaporwave with high expectations. Thankfully, the film delivers something genuinely special: a lovingly crafted, glitch‑soaked, deeply affectionate chronicle of a genre that has always existed slightly out of reach, half‑remembered and half‑imagined.
The documentary, produced by Chris Britten, Enzo Van Baelen, Jay Sabourin and Thom Hosken, and scripted by Van Baelen, embraces vaporwave’s aesthetic DNA from the first frame. It’s a kaleidoscope of Memphis‑style colours, VHS fuzz, early‑internet UI windows, and surreal digital liminal spaces. The production team clearly poured years of passion into this — especially after COVID derailed their original 2020 plans and forced them to rebuild the project piece by piece.
What makes the film sing is its cast of notoriously elusive artists. Seeing names like Luxury Elite, Yung Bae, Nmesh, Contact Lens, Saint Pepsi, 猫 シ Corp, and VAPERROR appear on screen – often in playful, stylised setups — feels like a gift to fans who’ve only known these figures through album art and Discord servers. The virtual apartment space designed by VANITAS命死 is another highlight, packed with Easter eggs that reward anyone who’s ever fallen down a Bandcamp rabbit hole at 3am.
The soundtrack is, unsurprisingly, immaculate. Donor Lens’ score threads through classics and deep cuts from across the scene, creating a sonic timeline that feels both nostalgic and forward‑looking. And yes – the film is available on VHS, DVD, and C‑USB via My Pet Flamingo, which feels perfectly on‑brand for a genre built on physical‑media fetishism.
But as much as I loved the film, there’s a noticeable gap in its otherwise rich tapestry: vaporwave’s roots in Asian cultural aesthetics and Black music traditions. The genre’s sampling lineage – from Japanese city pop to funk, soul, R&B, and smooth jazz – is essential to understanding its evolution. While the film touches on nostalgia, capitalism, and internet‑born creativity, it misses an opportunity to acknowledge the cultural borrowing and remixing that shaped vaporwave’s earliest sound.
Still, Nobody Here remains a beautifully produced, emotionally resonant celebration of a scene that refuses to die – or perhaps keeps resurrecting itself in new forms. It captures the joy, the weirdness, the community, and the deeply personal nostalgia that keeps vaporwave alive.
Long live vaporwave. And long live My Pet Flamingo.
