This week curator is Nightleek タマネギ, a vaporwave and vapor-adjacent producer. As a co-founder of the collective Children of Vapor, Nightleek has helped shape a community-driven vision of the genre’s future. When not producing, they operate 222.5 FM Ghostwave Pirate Radio, a streaming YouTube station that keeps the pirate spirit of vaporwave alive—24/7 transmissions of ghostly grooves, corrupted elevator music, and out-of-band frequencies.
For this selection, we asked them to pick five albums that are especially meaningful to them. The result is a deeply personal journey through vaporwave, records that have shaped their sound, their identity, and their creative path.
As always these records are making their way into the Dungeon !
1. World Class – Luxury Elite
Ever since I got introduced to vaporwave in 2015 and got hypnotized by AkaneInTokyoTV’s W e l l n e s s / P l a z a vaporwave mix, one artist stood out to me as well as to my wife and kids, who apparently were not only putting up with my strange new taste in music but asking for it in the car. So I found Lux on Spotify, and the rest is history. Eleven years later, I still consider this album to be “my roots.” Any time I feel I’ve lost my way in vaporwave, I come back to this album and if you listen carefully to my tracks on Beautiful Business Woman (especially TV GUIDE and workplace RELATI♥️NSHIP), you’ll hear her influence.
Favorite track: Forever
2. Endless Summer – The Midnight
Nothing gets me wetter than a hot sax licking up my ear. Nothing gets me dancing faster than Michael Sembello–inspired drums. Very few music projects get me like The Midnight, and nothing of theirs gets me harder than Endless Summer. There is a little of The Midnight in everything I produce: sentimentality, sincerity, saxophonic saxuality down to some of the wavetable synths I make by hand and oh FUCK I can’t wait for y’all to hear Maximum Girlkisser. Originally, Nightleek タマネギ was going to be a synthwave project that borrowed heavily from The Midnight, Dance with the Dead, Gunship, and Perturbator, and Girlkisser is going to show off everything I’ve learned and how powerful I’ve become.
Favorite tracks: Vampires and Synthetic
3. 裸のローマ人 (Naked Romans) – Mary K Ashley
Okay, how am I supposed to pick just one album by the legendary, beautiful, hilarious, prolific, talented, creative powerhouse that is my friend Mary K Ashley? When I’m in a slump, I ask myself, “What would Ashley do?” Her music comes on my station and I say, “fuckin’ banger,” and I turn to look sure enough, it’s MKA’s music that caught my attention. I want to be just like her when I grow up. I settled on Naked Romans for my pick because it’s the one that stands out to me the most and I think that’s saying something when you’ve made as much music as MKA. Fuckin’ banger.
Favorite tracks: 仮想休暇 and N e w B o y f r i e n d
4. Melting Rejuvenation (Vaporwave ALIVE! 2025 set) – Anonymous420
It’s not so much that Melting Rejuvenation inspires me as an album, so much as it’s representative of the inspiration I get from Anonymous420 as an artist. I discovered Anonymous420 when I was first looking for CC0/royalty-free music to play on 222.5FM and was really digging the albums Startup Cemetery and Nostalgia. She makes tons of music in all sorts of genres, like punk rock and soundtracks for adult films and video games. She told me that when she makes vaporwave, she almost exclusively samples library/corporate music, because if vaporwave is commentary on capitalism, then why not steal from the soulless corporate music and turn it into something amazing? I had the privilege of watching a stream where she was working on “Love and Sex The Universe”, and to see the level of manipulation she puts into everything it’s multiple levels beyond anything I personally make.
Favorite track: Love and Sex the Universe
5. IONNAVERSE – IONNA
IONNA’s music is energy. It is whimsy. It is fire seen on the edge of the mountaintops of a distant planet.
The first time I heard IONNA, they were playing at the i2k festival, 2025. It was my first time seeing live vapor-and-adjacent-wave music, and I was losing my mind, thinking, “what if I did this too, though?”
Then Soraya pulled a sword out of fucking nowhere and started dubbing us Knights of the IONNAverse, and it hit me: these two people right now are having the time of their lives and inviting us to participate in their joy, their energy. The music was already good, but in that moment it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I have never been the same.
Favorite track: Supernatural
Thank you to Nightleek タマネギ for this powerful and deeply personal selection. She just released a collaborative album made entirely of singles . Yes, you read that right. I also encourage you to watch her Sanctuary 2026 set if you missed it ! And if you are craving for Bandcamp Codes there’s few codes left for Beautiful Business Woman her collaborative album with Mary K タマネギ !
Follow her everywhere : https://rc-nightleek.carrd.co/
See you next week !
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