Dream Catalogue

Dream Catalogue

Artist

Dream Catalogue is a vaporwave/dreampunk label started in 2014 by British artist HKE and originally in collaboration with t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者.

In its early years, Dream Catalogue was widely regarded as the preeminent vaporwave label and has released work by some of the genre’s most popular artists of the time, including t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者, death’s dynamic shroud, and VAPERROR among others. At various points in its history, the label has undergone changes in direction and style, and has since mostly disassociated from the vaporwave genre and moved towards a self-described “dreampunk” style.

A significant portion of Dream Catalogue’s historical discography is no longer available through the label officially, most releases being purged sometime in 2016 unbeknownst to the artists involved. Many of those releases' removals can be ascribed to copyright concerns, although stylistic reasons have been alluded to as a reason as well, seeing as many removed releases were sample-based. Multiple removals came from disputes between the artists and label, notably including VAPERROR, Windows 98の and Hantasi. This sudden stylistic shift in the label led fans to form a separate Bandcamp page titled Dream Graveyard, preserving both the releases and original visual style of the label before the mass-removal. However, this created a trend of negativity and heel-ism from the label towards the vaporwave genre starting with the release of End Of World Rave and steadily continuing throughout the transformation of the label.

Another notable trait of the label is its variety of sublabels and sister projects, including TKX (along with Vaults EVE and XYO), Nirvana Port, PYRAMIDS, and ETERNAL FORTUNE LONDON.

Throughout 2019 and 2020, the label would reach more experimental directions inside and outside of the dreampunk scene, including the recruitment of Shima33 and Nitego. In this period the label began hosting a podcast series under the name of “CANVAS”, later moved to Shima33’s personal YouTube channel in May of 2020.

In late 2020, after multiple releases (including a substantial amount of singles), the label was announced to be shut down, effective January 2021. Days before this announcement, HKE left the label and announced the creation of a ‘supra-label’ by the name of DREAM ULTIMA, which was put on indefinite hiatus before any releases were announced. This announcement would prove to be essentially farce, as the January shutdown date led to another two months of releases, followed by the announcement of a “reboot” of the label involving continued physical releases and news activity. This announcement was later paired with the creation of a new label titled “End Of Dream” centered on UK techno artists.

The amount of new activity and sub-projects almost humorously contrasts to the initial news of shutdown. Despite this shift, in April 2021 it was revealed that Dream Catalogue would resume its label status full-time out of spite of others republishing their old, private releases onto physicals, making the news cycle of shutdown more a promotional effort than anything.