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Apple Music tells me that this was one of my most-listened to albums of 2023, and it's still in regular rotation. Ten perfectly crafted electronic tone poems, or maybe short stories told in beeps and boops, by turns menacing, nostalgic, and sweet. Especially recommended to listen to on headphones after nibbling half an edible before drifting off to sleep. (See also NWBC co-collaborators' solo projects: DJ Python's hypnotic percussive tapestry Mas Amable, and Ana Roxanne's trippy ambient daydream Because of a Flower.)
Apr 7, 2024
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imagine the sound of early 2000s Japanese tech commercials —
polished, slow-motion shots of cellphones spinning midair, ambient synths playing over translucent interfaces, a clean digital world full of artificial calm.
that’s where "PurData" lives.
born in some facebook groups between 2017–2018, it didn’t start as a genre — it emerged as a mood. ppl began tagging certain tracks that felt like lost soundtracks for futuristic devices: synthetic but emotional, nostalgic but unplaceable. music that could play on the home screen of a PlayStation 2, or during the boot sequence of a dream you forgot.
and no, it’s not vaporwave lol. PurData isn’t ironic or consumerist — it’s tender, high-res, and full of emotional architecture. its roots are in Japanese video game soundtracks, ambient music, and old tech aesthetics that felt utopian, not decayed.
the artist who crystallized this language is DV-i — her visual + sonic work feels like interactive dreams from another OS. but she’s part of a constellation: Yesterdayneverhappened (who played on my radio show here in Brazil — his whole discography drips with PurData textures), ViRiX Dreamcore, UNIT KAI, NOLANBEROLLIN — each building sound worlds of translucent synths, gentle glitches and emotional stillness.
it also carries the DNA of: — Joe Hisaishi’s Ghibli soundtracks, — the ambient spirituality of Susumu Yokota, — Boogiepop Phantom’s eerie calm, — the surreal beauty of LSD: Dream Emulator, — ghostly ad loops like Ancetantina’s tapes, — and the sonic melancholy of Final Fantasy,Phantasy Star Online, Ghost in the Shell, and Love-de-Lic games.
rhythmically, it’s connected to Soichi Terada, Koji Nakagawa, and Studio Pressure, where jazz fusion meets breakbeat, trip-hop, jungle, dnb and synthetic longing.
some of it works on the dancefloor — soft, glitched, emotionally encrypted. but most of it feels like ambient music for a city inside a mainframe. music that opens like a file you didn’t know you missed.
🧬 I wrote a full deep dive on this digital microgenre — its roots, its references, its feeling. 👉 https://poliedral.substack.com/p/arqueologia-digital-purdata-ep02
I also left a link attached to this post to a great playlist on Spotify curated by me.
if you’re into soft futurism, synthetic nostalgia, ambient game scores and delicate internet ruins — follow my Substack called Poliedral. I write about glitch aesthetics (in Portuguese but it is easy to translate the page) , forgotten formats, and music that remembers. 💿🌫️🌐
born in some facebook groups between 2017–2018, it didn’t start as a genre — it emerged as a mood. ppl began tagging certain tracks that felt like lost soundtracks for futuristic devices: synthetic but emotional, nostalgic but unplaceable. music that could play on the home screen of a PlayStation 2, or during the boot sequence of a dream you forgot.
and no, it’s not vaporwave lol. PurData isn’t ironic or consumerist — it’s tender, high-res, and full of emotional architecture. its roots are in Japanese video game soundtracks, ambient music, and old tech aesthetics that felt utopian, not decayed.
the artist who crystallized this language is DV-i — her visual + sonic work feels like interactive dreams from another OS. but she’s part of a constellation: Yesterdayneverhappened (who played on my radio show here in Brazil — his whole discography drips with PurData textures), ViRiX Dreamcore, UNIT KAI, NOLANBEROLLIN — each building sound worlds of translucent synths, gentle glitches and emotional stillness.
it also carries the DNA of: — Joe Hisaishi’s Ghibli soundtracks, — the ambient spirituality of Susumu Yokota, — Boogiepop Phantom’s eerie calm, — the surreal beauty of LSD: Dream Emulator, — ghostly ad loops like Ancetantina’s tapes, — and the sonic melancholy of Final Fantasy,Phantasy Star Online, Ghost in the Shell, and Love-de-Lic games.
rhythmically, it’s connected to Soichi Terada, Koji Nakagawa, and Studio Pressure, where jazz fusion meets breakbeat, trip-hop, jungle, dnb and synthetic longing.
some of it works on the dancefloor — soft, glitched, emotionally encrypted. but most of it feels like ambient music for a city inside a mainframe. music that opens like a file you didn’t know you missed.
🧬 I wrote a full deep dive on this digital microgenre — its roots, its references, its feeling. 👉 https://poliedral.substack.com/p/arqueologia-digital-purdata-ep02
I also left a link attached to this post to a great playlist on Spotify curated by me.
if you’re into soft futurism, synthetic nostalgia, ambient game scores and delicate internet ruins — follow my Substack called Poliedral. I write about glitch aesthetics (in Portuguese but it is easy to translate the page) , forgotten formats, and music that remembers. 💿🌫️🌐
Rec
this is like 70% the future of pop music and 30% prog rock, it's a concept album about transformation through the thematic lens of aliens sticking a CD in your head, and the nerds over on rateyourmusic are calling it the album of the year. get this - they're right. saw it live the other week and maybe got a gig of the year out of it as well. I mean look at that.
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here's a completely under the radar gem of weirdo bedroom folk pop filled with bubblings of synths and fluttering flutes and random eclectic acoustic instrumentations, fragments of hooks and choruses, digressions into distortions and reemergences of natural ambiances with waterfall sounds, harps, xylophones, all mixed together in such a wonderful and fascinating way and i've been obsessed now for months... it sounds to me as if daniel johnston in his prime had access to a DAW.
May 10, 2024
Top Recs from @jonnodotcom
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Along with keeping a water carafe next to your bed and linen spray, making your bed every morning is one of the most effective and underestimated things for maintaining good sleep hygiene, which is so important! I will never understand people who don't make their bed because it's just going to become unmade again (it took years of patient positive reinforcement training to get my boyfriend to stop being like this.) Making your bed as soon as you get up is not only empowering and gets your day off to a productive start— look, you've only been awake for five minutes and you've already accomplished something! — but evening you will be grateful to morning you for allowing you the luxurious experience of slipping into a properly made bed every night.
Apr 6, 2024
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Even though Peep Show always winds up on lists of the best TV comedies of all time it's still strangely underappreciated and not nearly as well known on this side of the Atlantic as it should be. David Mitchell and Robert Webb are comedic geniuses and raise cringe to a legitimate art form. Plus it's created and co-written by Jesse Armstrong, who later went on to make Succession, so it's better than anything else for filling any Succession-shaped holes in your life even though it's a completely different kind of show.
Apr 5, 2024
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Rich people’s bedrooms always smell really nice (ask me how I know this) as do expensive hotels - and your bedroom can smell great too! Find a small empty spray bottle and fill it up with half witch hazel (everyone should have witch hazel in their bathroom cabinet; stay tuned for another rec on this) and half filtered or bottled water (Evian or Fuji if you’re really feeling it.) Add your choice of essential oil(s) – start with about 20 drops per every cup of liquid and increase from there if needed. I like a blend of mostly lavender oil with a couple of drops of peppermint oil to open nasal passages and vetiver oil for grounding. Shake well and keep the bottle on your nightstand. Make a ritual of spraying it a few times over your pillow and sheets right before you climb in bed every night and I guarantee you will fall asleep faster, sleep more deeply, and have dreams in which you live in a gorgeous apartment in Paris.
Apr 6, 2024