Playlisting the Anthropocene: Doomer and Solarpunk Perspectives
When I’m studying I usually listen to music. Typically something ambient I find on YouTube: 1 hour loops of Aphex Twin’s Rhubarb or slow-focus playlists. But the other night, as I sifted through the suggestions I came across a thumbnail: an illustration of Wojak dressed as Travis Bickle, driving a taxi cab through a dreary cityscape. The title read, “1976 Late Night Taxi Driving (Doomer Jazz 1 Hour)”. The term ‘doomer’ raised an eyebrow. Who or what is a ‘doomer’? What is ‘doomer jazz’? My curiosity led me to Wikipedia, which is where a second term cropped up — ‘solarpunk’. Soon, I’d completely forgotten the assignment I was working on. Instead, I was going deeper and deeper, exploring these two emerging archetypes, doomer and solarpunk. Each presenting a moral commentary on the Anthropocene — our current geological epoch in which human activity has emerged as the dominant influence on the climate and ecosystems.
I’m fascinated by the way terms like this can arise suddenly and transform how we perceive certain music, magnifying the sentiment of a particular song or making us rethink the lyrics of another. These two are especially interesting because they embody how we envision the future as humans, and how music can soundtrack that vision. I’d like to document here all I’ve learned about Solarpunks and doomers and how I perceive they’ve become intertwined with music.
Firstly, as the name implies, doomers embody a sense of fatalism regarding the future of our planet. The doomer perspective focuses on the overwhelming challenges that lie ahead, such as resource depletion, pollution, and inequality. Aesthetically, doomers produce art and media depicting dark, moody, and dystopian futures, where hope seems distant or altogether lost. It is not just a passive resignation but often an active critique of the techno-optimism that pervades certain segments of society, or what they call ‘bloomer’ culture.
The rise of the term doomer is significantly attributed to memes circulating the internet, especially within alt-right forums like 4chan. Through memes, doomers are usually depicted as a despondent Wojak, often with hollow eyes, clad in a black sweater and beanie, overwhelmed by the world, grappling with the pressures of contemporary society, existential dread, and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness. The memes voice a despair and disenchantment, especially felt by young people confronting today’s economic and environmental context. It’s important to distinguish between the broader doomer perspective, rooted in this type of existential and environmental disillusionment, and shitposting culture, prepper culture and others using doomer sentiment as a springboard for ultra-nationalist and extremist right-wing ideals on some of the forums.
Ok, but what is ‘doomer jazz’? Well, doomer jazz, at its core, is not a new genre or subgenre but the curation of jazz music to suit the mood of doomers. Modern music consumption through streaming services like Spotify lends itself to the championing of moods over artists and genres. Sadly, excluding a few artists that cross into the mainstream, I feel like most music is consumed purely as sonic fodder for our ultra-niche musical tastes nowadays. Obviously not a great situation, but on the plus side this gives rise to things like doomer jazz: people playlisting modal and noir jazz pieces with a melancholy mood aligned with their current outlook.
In some ways this form of appropriation reminds me of the way balearic, cosmic and even the first stages of disco evolved through DJs repurposing music from diverse genres in new and exciting ways. Except in this case, the music is sad jazz ballads being broadcast by lonely young guys on Youtube and spotify playlists rather than by DJs at a dance party. So there’s limited scope for this evolving into something larger or more mainstream. But it is interesting. Doomer jazz: the perfect “vibes” soundtrack for my solo study while awaiting the demise of civilization. I later discovered people were making doomer playlists of everything: doomer brazilian folk, doomer soviet pop, 90s midwest emo doomer, doomer post-rock and the list goes on…
But when we’re not completely jaded about the state of the world, who is providing a more optimistic vision of humanity’s future through music? In stark contrast to doomerism stands solarpunk, a movement that imagines a future where humans have overcome the ecological and societal challenges of the present through innovative and sustainable solutions. Solarpunk envisions a world powered by renewable energy, characterised by green architecture, community-driven initiatives, and a harmonious balance between nature and technology. It is about imagining a better tomorrow.
Aesthetically, solarpunk borrows from Studio Ghibli film stills, art nouveau, and the futuristic architectural prototypes of Vincent Callebaut. Solarpunk doesn’t dismiss the challenges of the Anthropocene but instead proposes optimistic and sustainable solutions to confront them.
But how is the solarpunk ethos being expressed through music so far? When I tried to discover music adopting the tag, I quickly came across vaporwave playlists on Youtube and original compilations on Bandcamp. I think it’s arguably becoming a new genre of vaporwave. At first glance this seemed somewhat contradictory, since solarpunk is completely future-focussed, while vaporwave is deeply concerned with nostalgia. Its soundscapes are characterised by slowed-down samples from ’80s and ’90s music, advertisements, and muzak. Visually, it involves pastel colors, ancient greek statues, Japanese kanji characters and old computer graphics to evoke a kind of dreamy surrealism. Beyond its nostalgic veneer, vaporwave critiques consumerism and the hollow promises of late-stage capitalism. It wasn’t immediately clear to me how this detached and cynical exploration of the past could co-exist with wide-eyed and optimistic solarpunk. I dug a little deeper though and started to explore one of vaporwave’s numerous subgenres called ‘faux utopian’. This provided some clarity.
Through sampling and pastiche mimicry faux utopian channels a mood of early silicon valley optimism. That feeling the western world had pre 9–11, around the time Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history. I can remember the initial exhilaration of powering up Windows 95, humming the Encarta theme song, and endless hours immersed in Pokémon Yellow. I was a kid then and the nostalgia never leaves me. It is precisely this feeling that faux utopian music seeks to generate and examine. One of the seminal releases of the genre is James Ferraro’s ‘Far Side Virtual’. Ferraro manages to conjure this shiny, happy potential of a world enhanced and interconnected by digital technology. The melodies and harmonies are bright and upbeat, mimicking the kind of music we might’ve heard in a commercial selling the latest tech gadget or in a Nokia’s ringtone.
I believe it’s in their shared engagement with utopian visions of technology that the conceptual and sonic connection takes place between solarpunk and vaporwave. While solarpunk is about the end of capitalism, vaporwave is about mourning its failings and exploring its graveyards in the shopping malls and tech-detritus of the 80s and 90s. When combined, this amounts to a longing for the innocence of the past with the hope of a better future. This is probably why the imagery from some of Hayao Miyazaki’s films has such appeal to solarpunks. In their fusion of futuristic technology and traditional, almost pastoral settings, Miyazaki’s films also capture the wonder and imagination of childhood. I’ve started to think Joe Hisaishi, the Ghibli OST producer, and Miyazaki could probably be described as Proto-solarpunks, the sonic and visual forefathers of this emerging genre.
Solarpunk, in its vaporwave iterations, is typically a kind of world-building new age music with a digital sheen, featuring luscious synths and emotive melodies, sometimes percussion, sometimes breakbeats, maybe some samples of cicadas or creek ripples being manipulated through modular synthesizers. There is naturally so much crossover between this and other forms of music, notably Japanese BGM, iconic JRPG soundtracks, and much of new age music, old and new. However, the solarpunk label hinges most on a track’s sense of scale: can it soundtrack aerial visuals of eco-cities in the future? This is the criteria I use myself.
Am I a solarpunk or a doomer? I’m partial to both: a solarpunk overwhelmed by the vast amounts of doom in the world. Especially now, with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the endless fallout from covid, and new temperature records being beaten year after year. It’s hard to imagine us finding solutions to the big problems like climate change in a world consumed by perpetual conflict, disease and natural disasters. Yet, I want to believe it’s possible. To briefly take my mind away from things, I decided to make a couple of playlists including some of my findings as I was writing this. A Solarpunk mix and a Doomer mix. Choose your own adventure. Choose your future vision.
Here’s some further reading:
- “Un Manifiesto Solarpunk” (Note: translation from Spanish is available on the website.)
- “Solarpunk: A Reference Guide” on Medium.
- “Solarpunk: Architecture and the Built Future” on Architizer.
- “Screw It, Let’s Talk About Doomer Jazz” on Medium.
- “Explainer: Solarpunk, or how to be an optimistic radical” on The Conversation.
- “Vaporwave Is Not a Critique of Capitalism: Genre Work in An Online Music Scene” on ResearchGate.
- “What Happened to Vaporwave?” on Esquire.
- “Solarpunk: Notes Toward a Manifesto” on Project Hieroglyph.
- “Solarpunk Wants to Change the World — Should We Take It Seriously?” on Medium.
