Diving Into the Sound of Love Potion

I first found Love Potion by Frez Wave by filtering on Bandcamp for artists tagged with Fort Collins. Intrigued by the album art, I gave it a listen. My ears were very pleased with what I found – a mysterious collage of distant, nostalgic sound. I reached out to Frez Wave to interview him about the album, and our conversation inspired an image of an emerging and prolific artist within a fringe genre.

Frez Wave is the pen name adopted by Jonas Creech after he started releasing music in 2020. The project emerged from the bonds of friendship. “Me and my friends would try to make beats on our phones so that we could freestyle over it, and we thought that was pretty fun, so I started figuring out how to make beats in Garage Band on my iPhone and everything.” But, it wasn’t long before his prolificity started to take shape. Creech started to ask, “Should I try to make an album by making a song every day of the month and putting it all together?” The result was his first album called “2025!”, which you can only find on soundcloud.

Unsurprisingly, Creech draws inspiration from other artists under the Vaporwave umbrella. “When I first started, it was George Clento and 18 Carat Affair, and I was really set on trying to make it sound identical to them.” But, even though he draws inspiration from these established artists, it’s clear Frez Wave is itching to find his own artistic voice. “What I quickly discovered was, by trying to mimic them, I was just sort of creating my own sound, so that was pretty cool.”

Love Potion – Frez Wave’s latest odyssey

Love Potion stands out from Frez Wave’s earlier work through its cohesiveness. The album really tells a story that begins with the warm, analog nostalgia that defines the Vaporwave genre, eventually evolving into an abstract swirl of just-out-of-reach emotion. “The first six tracks on Love Potion use the same kinds of samples and drums to it, and they’re sort of in the same vibe. And then the next two, Vienna Gallery and Bacan, are the next kind of vibe. I was just trying to make it sound like something off one of my older albums, like XOXO – something that feels nostalgic to me, or a bit more emotional.”

But, after the first few songs set the stage, Frez Wave jumps into some new territory, leaning more heavily on samples. “There’s that one portion of the album – SWOON, EYES GLUED, and BACKSEAT KISS – those ones are just straight sample loops that I’ve found by going through an archive of old weather channel music my friend sent me. I looped them and added some effects to them, and I thought it sounded really nice.” Vaporwave is such a sample-heavy genre. Creech’s decision to reach for something more pedestrian, maybe even something that most of us overlook when thinking of music as a whole, gives this part of the album a very unique flavor. But, Creech acknowledges that sample-heavy music is more about transformation of existing material. “I always kind of feel bad sampling that kind of stuff because, ‘damn, I’m kinda stealing.’ But, I’m trying to bring it into a new light and re-imagine it in a way that sort of floats the idea of what that song has brought to me.”

The next few songs on Love Potion also draw inspiration from unexpected places. “I tried to make it sound like a video game soundtrack, that sort of thing.” I was surprised to find that one of the tools Creech made use of when making this album was actually a video game. “I used a lot of Nintendo DS menu samples and drawn inspiration from PS2 and PS1 games. This one game, MTV Music 2000, I’ve recently used a lot of sounds from that game. It’s basically just a PS1 game that has a DAW in it. It gives you a whole variety of sounds that you can use, and I can create a pretty unique sound using those.” Aside from blowing my mind that there was a Playstation game that had some sort of DAW in it, I’m amazed at how elegantly this sound fits in to Love Potion.

But, Frez Wave doesn’t always rely on samples to craft his sound. “The last few are more of an ambient sound that slowly transitions into a quieter, slower ending.” Rather than using samples to spin up this expansive soundscape, he relies on the basic tools he has at his disposal. “I didn’t actually use any samples on those last few songs. I just used the Garage Band synths and added a ton of layers and effects to them. Just put it together with a bunch of different sounds.” The result is an emotionally vague, moody soundscape. Especially once I reached the final few tracks, I was most impressed by how intentional it all feels. “I try to organize it as much as I can so that it sounds like an album, but it’s just like a big collage of my stream of music that I’m saving,” Creech remarks. Collage or not, it certainly sounds like an album from front to back.

A Digital Sense of Community

In addition to standing out sonically, Love Potion stands out from Frez Wave’s earlier work in terms of community impact. This is Creech’s first release on an independent record label. “My friend Roge Corp was asking if I ever submitted any of my albums to any internet record labels, and I was like ‘no, I have not.’ He told me to submit it through Business Casual.” And, the independent label, which has been active online since 2013, agreed to distribute his album. You can support him and the label by purchasing a cassette of Love Potion here.

Looking into Business Casual started to paint a picture of a supportive and collaborative online community within the niche of Vaporwave. Though the genre is best known for its analog vibes, these artists have found a sense of community in hyperspace. “It’s pretty much entirely online,” Creech explains. “I mean, I have some friends and coworkers who also make music, but it’s totally different from what I’m trying to go for, and so I’m not really in any Fort Collins communities.” And, I can understand why. There isn’t much of a scene for Vaporwave music within Fort Collins specifically. These artists seem to pop up all over the place and find each other through the internet. “I’m in a variety of Discord servers,” Creech continues. “We all go to the same shows that our friends put together. There’s one called I2K that happens every year. Most of the people who are really close in the community will make it out to those kinds of events that our friends will put together. Rogecorp and Van Goh organize I2K and the people performing for that event are just other members of the community. I just think it’s really cool for them to put this event together to give these smaller names some more recognition.”

Indeed, Roge Corp seems to be the glue of this online community. “My buddy Roge Corp is doing a livestream in October for his birthday with a bunch of artists on the lineup. It’s an all-day livestream of different people in the community for Vaporwave and other electronic music. I’m pretty sure it’s a charity stream as well! I’ll also be doing my first live show there, out in Virginia.” Indeed, all ads I can find for this event indicate the stream will be donating to an Animal Sanctuary.

Bringing Vaporwave to Life

After discussing this livestream event with Jonas for a bit, I became curious about what it’s like to perform live as a Vaporwave artist. Electronic music artists develop a variety of techniques to make their live performances stand out. “With my style of music, it’s a challenge to figure out how I’m going to perform it live,” Creech remarks. “If that’s my goal, then how am I going to pull it off in a way that I see as aesthetically pleasing and something that I would want to see if I were a fan?”

And, within this genre, which is known for capturing analog, fuzzy nostalgia, the most obvious route for artists to go is with analog tape. Frez Wave has yet to perform live as of my interview with him, but he expressed a desire to experiment with tape. “I really like the sound of cassette tapes, so that would be amazing to use in a live setting. But, I don’t really know a whole lot about that, so I’d definitely have to learn.”

Electronic music artists will also often rely on visual art to diversify their live sets, and it’s clear that Frez Wave has plans to incorporate video into his live performances. “I really like the idea of the transitions between songs being that flash of static on a TV screen, and doing that visually would be really cool.”

Frez Wave’s undying pursuit of sound

As my conversation with Frez Wave wrapped up, I started to see just how dedicated he is to the pursuit of music. It’s something he seems to dedicate time to nearly every day. “I always have a lot of random stuff. I make music when I’m just bored. It’s like playing a game on my phone.” Indeed, Frez Wave’s primary DAW is Garage Band, which he has installed on his iPhone. “I sort of just put something together whether I like it or not, and a lot of times I just have stupid ones in my files. But, that’s what my side project, Agora Seductive, is for. It’s just alternate versions of songs that didn’t make it onto a Frez Wave album, and just songs I didn’t like enough to put on the album.” I was impressed to hear him mention a side project, considering Frez Wave already has such a massive body of work to listen to.

However, being prolific and productive isn’t really the point of Frez Wave. It’s clear that Creech’s steady and consistent creative output has a direction to it. “Trying to keep making music that you like is a challenge a lot of artists face. I’ve definitely gone through phases where I’m really into a certain style, but I’m not really able to pull it off. And then I really don’t like a release I put out, and in my head I have to keep trying to do this style that I really like over and over and over. And, it keeps being trash and something I’m not into until I can finally sort-of get it down in a way that I can enjoy it.” The iteration he puts himself through is all in pursuit of making his vision a reality, and after listening to Love Potion, I’m excited to hear what Frez Wave will make next.

You can best support Frez Wave by checking out a cassette from Business Casual, and by attending Roge Corp’s charity stream on October 18th!