Discover more from Satellite Cult

the only weekly look at internet music, art, and visual culture, with nods to web history, online communities, old gaming, and retro tech.

satellite cult 30.30

wild berries, classic vapor, crackdubz, alt tumblr

trshboyoli

Jun 2, 2023

welcome to this week’s satellite cult dispatch. i’m so glad you’re here. i hope the artifacts i present you with will take you for a refreshing electro swim in the digiocean. you always knew this was the right time to join a surf club.

please be aware that the void dive section below contains flashing gifs. if you’re viewing this on the website, forgive the way Substack formats some Bandcamp embeds.

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Flawed Angel

vaportrap pioneer VAPERROR released a new breakcore single under his DJ CAMGIRL alias. sometimes sparkly, sometimes serious, with a touch of utopian virtual, it brought me back to Y2K era street racing games and snowboarding games alike. it won’t surprise me if i hear this one on someone’s summer dance playlist.

Wild Berries

speaking of game music, this jungle EP by gu-100 is inspired by the soundtracks of PS1 games. brisk and clean as springtime air at night, it feels like the moment you step outside after hours, traversing a neighborhood of warehouses aimlessly until you happen upon the party you’ve always dreamed of.

John Houston's Eccojams Vol.1

a homage to the proto-vaporwave classic Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1, John Houston's Eccojams Vol.1 is floating, choppy plunderphonics at its best. as the recent resurgence of interest in classic vaporwave continues to grow, we’re seeing more and more producers bring a fresh perspective to the sound, and this album is a great example.

さざ波の時間

さざ波の時間, which translates to ripple time, the latest from PUDERPOLLI, is one part cozy game soundtrack, one part daytime TV signalwave, one part slushy eccojams. sometimes jazzy (almost barber beats jazzy), and ending on an ethereal note, it’s an album that feels simultaneously like the peak heat of a sauna and the moment you step out and can finally breathe.

rain tomorrow, rain today

combining ambient breakcore, drone, and vaporwave, this album by The First Ghost is all bittersweet yearning, but it’s also a crystal cave where every inch of surface is bathed in the reflections of soft, glowing lights.

Secret Rare

these two tracks of Yu-Gi-Oh! aesthetic sextrance by phosphorrgirl are acidic, pulsing, and sparkly all at once.

dub history

if you were like me in 2009 (15 years old, aggressively online, not cool), you probably spent a lot of your free time watching anime on the internet. a decade ago we had a plethora of streaming sites that hosted fan made subs and dubs, back before the US Department of Justice ruined all the fun by taking down Megavideo.

the site is permanently down, but CrackDubz used to be the destination for anime streaming, and thanks to the Wayback Machine, even without full episodes, you can still read the comments on each and every episode of Soul Eater or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya—it’s an incredible time capsule into a community and fandom largely inseparable from the internet, both the good and the bad1. you can also check out this forum post from 2009, which includes a list of popular anime streaming sites from the time, and was updated regularly by the person who complied it.

not tumblr

Tumblr has been my social network of choice since at least 2010, and while many of its features (and bugs) have historically been preferable to the likes of Instagram or Twitter, Tumblr is also still a corporate-owned platform, and after its recent resurgence in popularity due to TikTok driven nostalgia, the site is changing in a way i don’t like. while looking for a viable alternative, i came across this platform: Co-host.