January Happenings
As it turns out, the January report is rather short! I've been hard at work at different things for the near-ish future and the only thing that I released in January (I think?) was my Soundcloud-only release 4 Phones, a trippy slushy workout of some classic mid-2010s rap bangers. I don't know why I didn't put it up on Bandcamp, just felt like a Soundcloud kind of thing. I made a couple remixes for folks to come out in the future, a video for an MKA project coming out soon, an album cover for YANKEES SUCK.
But the big January project (which is technically a February release but I will talk about it right now) was the preparation of my new album Commitment and the creation of the accompanying visual album. This was a project I had thought about for a lot of the second half of 2025. I went back to my first two EPs, which both told an incomplete version of the same story. So I combined and rearranged the tracks, adding a few more new ones to tell a more complete (if still somewhat abstracted) tale of love challenged and achieved. Huge thanks to all the talented visual artists and friends who helped me create the visual version of this album, which came off even better than I had originally imagined.
December Happenings
December was a busy month, a little busier IRL than URL but still a fair amount to report. I spent a lot of time in December preparing some projects that will be coming in soon and collaborating with old friends and new friends on really fun things. I also started the month off with a great interview with Ureterocele, something which helped cement our connection across the Pacific and I expect to bear more fruit in the future. The holidays interrupted my interview schedule for a few weeks but I've got a couple good ones coming soon.
The holidays were a happy offline distraction from the online churn of music production but I was happy to help bring together two excellent compilations with the Children of Vapor crew (which grew by 3 in December alone!). We had our first Christmas compilation and I was able to get a bunch of our friends from the Vaporwave Alive festival to contribute some truly excellent holiday jams. We also had the first listening party on Bandcamp with this album right before Christmas, which was fun and felt appropriately festive. And I'm particularly proud of the track that I made for it so give it a listen even if the holiday season is over. And then the next week we followed it up with our end of the year Best of CoV 2025 compilation . HD did a great job working through our whole album output in 2025 and picking a great track from each one. I hope that this will serve not just as a "best of" but also an introduction to our first year in operation and the breadth and quality of what we are up to.
Welcome to the Plant Shoppe! + October/November Happenings
After a very long construction period, the Plant Shoppe is now open for business! This side of the website will be mostly for documenting my own projects and releases, as well as the occasional essay or review when I feel inspired.
While I haven't had a proper release since Time Slip: Solid Gold in July, I have been very busy. First of all was a major undertaking, the first Children of Vapor URL Festival You Wouldn't Download That's What I Call Vaporwave Alive Ultimate URL Hits Vol. 1. Nightleek タマネギ, Robin Circle, and I brought together most of the CoV crew along with other friends and some great acts that we connected with for the first time. All along we were able to raise around $800 for The Trevor Project and really strengthen our friendships and connections in the vaporwave scene. Definitely looking forward to doing other versions of fests and shows in the future!
For the festival I made two different music sets looking back to early musical inspirations, both of which can be listened to here. Subaqueous Transmissions was really the genesis of the whole festival, a collaboration between myself and ishiiburidai after connecting over a love for early dubstep during a summer url festival. I dug back into my archives to find the deepest, dubbiest dubstep that first caught my attention in the mid-2000s. You can see that video here. But after I finished that I wanted to keep going so I returned to a project first conceived in the spring, taking the classic cuts from early-2010s vaporwave and giving them the phonk treatment. I enjoyed it so much I ended up mashing up a bunch of '90s Memphis rap over the top. I tapped Robin Circle to do the visuals and you can find that video here.