creative zen's 'zenternet browsing' mix, and MTV2 reminiscing

Long time no see, friends. Hope you're all doing well! Since releasing the follow up to creative zen's touch entitled micro (which you can find here), I'd been thinking about doing a fun mix of y2k, frutiger-related tracks I've found in the last year, and I made it happen. I guess this counts as a brief commercial break "exclusive", LOL 

creative zen - zenternet browsing

"songs i've scrobbled in the last few months"

1. ax14 - Morning dew
2. 486 Paradise - MediaCenter
3. Dreaming Diary - JPEG Flowers
4. General Translator - 歓迎Plasma Lounge
5. chlorophyll - escalator dreams
6. HANAWARI YUMEKO - 世界間のつながり
7. TCR-4 - pay-per-view menu
8. post dive - Dreamcore
9. Brickmason - s e t . a l a r m . 0 6 : 3 0
10. alyzea - dream OS
11. enterprises - lukes birthday party.jpg
12. frutiger pm - frutiger pm
13. Aero Corp - ! ! motivating forces ! !
14. STAQQ OVERFLO - natural logon (3)
15. Agnar - MP3 for Humanity
16. Satin Sheets - OPUS
17. 世纪重塑 - 数字花园Digital Garden
18. climbing waterfalls - condensation room
19. Ghost Enterprise - Deep Web Dance Club
20. Your Bestest Friend :) - FOREVER CONNECTED
21. INTERNET CLUB - MAPMAKER
22. Mr. Roy G Biv - Goodnight

Click here to download the mix.

Kind of related, but I've been thinking back to 2001-2002, the days when my high school bestie's mom would pet sit for a friend of hers who was pretty well off. Their house blew my mind as a person who lived in a pretty dilapidated house as a child. Three floors, a beautiful backyard, and most significantly, a fully furnished basement with a TV, two couches, and a fancy office with two Compaq computers. That basement became our palace. I watched as my bestie, J, flirted with randos in Yahoo Messenger chat rooms who would send her bouquet emotes, and we searched through the family's folders for photos we could edit on Paint Shop Pro; thankfully they were mostly family photos and stock images, nothing too crazy. We watched Homestar Runner videos and went to random flash sites, hoping that we wouldn't infect the family's computers and get ourselves banned from using their PCs ever again. I have a specific memory of watching the banned version of Incubus' Wish You Were Here (in a freshly post-9/11 world, the visual of the members jumping off of a bridge could evoke memories of people jumping out of the towers, so Incubus redid the video with footage from the Morning View house instead), an .rm file that was pixelated to all hell, my stan flag flying with pride. But that's not the point of this tangent. 

This family could afford to have satellite TV.

This family had MTV2. 

I'd heard about MTV2, but us poors with normal cable (saying this tongue-in-cheek, of course) didn't get MTV2 until, like...2004, 2005ish? When more TV shows were taking over the channel, and it wasn't as focused on music as I saw it in 2001. 2001 MTV2 blew my fucking mind, and we basically kept it on in the background at all times, but I most of all cherished sitting on the couch, glued to the screen, watching MTV2's Control Freak. Looking back, why did we never use the computer to vote for our favorites? Maybe I was too mesmerized? Maybe J didn't want to use her email? I know I didn't have an email at that time, this was just before I got a computer of my own. Maybe we were too young to register an account and were too goody goody to lie? (Well, idk about that, I feel like J lied about her age for lols in those Yahoo Messenger chats) But the main reason why I fell in love with that channel was because MTV2 was digging deeper than main MTV was. They were showing videos by more underground artists, videos of various genres beyond what was popular at the time. It was truly my exposure to electronic music. The excitement I felt is something I'll never forget.

VHS rips of that show seem to be few and far between, possibly because of copyright, possibly because the tapes got tossed into a dump before somebody could preserve them 10-20 years later. I did find a brief rip of a Control Freak recording, courtesy of a private VHS-related torrent site that I'm thankful still exists (sadly, they closed off invites around the time I disappeared in 2016). I hope one day, somebody comes through with the ultimate jackpot so I can fully go down the rabbit hole, explore what I wish I could have witnessed for longer than a few hours every few weeks or months. 

Anywho, videos I fondly remember from my brief love affair with MTV2:
Nikka Costa - Like A Feather
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
The White Stripes - Fell In Love With A Girl
Daft Punk - One More Time
Alicia Keys - Fallin'
Lil' Mo - Superwoman (feat. Fabolous)
Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At
Moby - Natural Blues
Cake - Short Skirt/Long Jacket
The Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be

Glad I got to experience that time while I could.

Hopefully another post soon with things I've liked lately. For now, take care!

Florida Rains - Trop (and new releases for November 27, 2024)

 

Florida Rains has been quite prolific in 2024, releasing 17 albums in eleven months. I'm slowly catching up on checking out their discography, but between Downtown Tampa and the album I'm discussing in today's post, I'm really enjoying what I've heard of their output. Named after a Rainfall Amounts segment on The Weather Channel, Florida Rains is another artist I've found whose Weather Channel-inspired releases have not been the same ol' formula that many other meteorologically themed vaporwave albums have followed in the last decade, choosing to go more into a late night lo-fi territory and using some really lovely lo-fi jazz samples. There's some excellent curation on Trop, and if you don't come out of hearing this album feeling extremely cozy, idk what to tell you. It was hard to choose a single track to upload to YouTube, but the track Joyce is just...SO FUCKING CUTE. I didn't realize until just now that the titles are the names of baseball players from their local team. Another reason why this album is so damn charming! I'm excited to hear more of what Florida Rains puts out in the future. 

You can find this album digitally at the link below:

https://floridarains.bandcamp.com/album/trop

Now, here are plenty of new releases to check out if you desire. As always, links open in a new window:

Dirty River - Between us - Released November 15, 2024

Fornax Void - Music for Dystopian Concrete Buildings: The Future of Void Corp. - Released November 15, 2024

Mabisyo - Beatmaking Sessions Vol.1 - Released November 15, 2024

Dan Mason - Bleed - Released November 15, 2024

Mom and Dad's Computer - Home Design 3D - Released November 21, 2024

Tele + 1 & Paco Moreno - analog ghost - Released November 22, 2024

LEI WOLUNG - SMOKE AND MIRRORS - Released November 22, 2024

ユリア★ & HANAWARI YUMEKO - NEO​​​マ​​​ジ​​​カ​​​ル​​​★​​​ガ​​​ー​​​ル - Released November 22, 2024

Lost Colossus - 死​の​競​争 (Death Race) - Released November 8, 2024

TCR-4 - M o n d a y - Released November 19, 2024

Minuit Café - CLUB ☆ NOSTALGIA 『​ク​ラ​ブ​・​ノ​ス​タ​ル​ジ​ア​』 - Released November 8, 2024

HYDROPLANED INTO A FALSE REALITY! - Limbo - Released November 15, 2024

bentoboy - DEPTHS-OF-MY-MIND - Released November 21, 2024

Crystal Eternal - Eyes Without a Face - Single. Released November 19, 2024

Blogspot removed everything I typed up after the links, what the hell! My apologies that not everybody in the New Releases section are in the tags due to the character limit. And an additional apology if my writing in this post is coming off clunky; I slept like pure garbo and I don't think this caffeine will ever kick in.

A quick shoutout to another music blog out there posting about vaporwave and other cool underground music, listencorp. Make sure to subscribe to their emails, as they go very in-depth in them in a way that I find to be super cool. Check them out!