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Utopian virtual is a style of Vapor which evolved as part of the Vaporwave scene in the early to mid-2010s. The genre focuses on the sound and aesthetics of commercial Electronic music of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly corporate-associated background music such as Muzak releases which vaporwave and Mallsoft artists also utilize. The genre takes inspiration from a variety of sounds, particularly New Age, Easy Listening, and Smooth Jazz, with compositional influences from Hypnagogic Pop and Synthpop. The wide array of influences are brought together with a limited sound palette inspired by the "tacky" sound of late 20th century synthesizers, ringtones, and sample-based synthesis as found in Sequencer & Tracker and particularly MIDI Music from early game consoles and home computers. The name comes from genre-defining 2011 album Far Side Virtual by James Ferraro, which built on the nostalgic atmosphere and technological utopian themes of previous Ferraro and Spencer Clark works within hypnagogic pop, specifically iAsia, Pixarni, and The Spectacle of Light Abductions. Much of the same themes are shared between Ferraro’s hypnagogic pop and utopian virtual releases, but the latter would eschew lo-fi, repetitive, long-form ambience in exchange for hi-fi, layered arrangements that sought to emulate the phenomenon of uncanny valley (an uneasy feeling received from the sensation that something is neither clearly human nor artificial.) Although it evolved in parallel to vaporwave and utilizes similar aesthetics, utopian virtual does not typically sample recordings of the period wholesale, and its artists instead rely on emulation of this sound for their original compositions. Even as it remained a fairly niche style, prominent vaporwave artists dabbled in utopian virtual, like Vektroid under the alias PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises, who built nostalgic atmospheres by recontextualizing MIDI arrangements of actual corporate and easy listening music from decades past. Other artists like Eyeliner and Graham Kartna, would take the sound in a more Pop-oriented direction, with influences from Chillwave and even Electro-Disco. The genre would also leave its mark on the experimental and Progressive Electronic music of the 2010s, particularly releases on Orange Milk Records and by artists like Giant Claw and Nico Niquo. https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/utopi...