Flop rock: contained in the underground floppy disk music scene

The primary computery factor I do within the yr 2024 is nudge a 3.5-inch floppy disk right into a USB floppy drive that I purchased from a web based service provider understanding of Singapore’s onetime hotbed of ’90s laptop piracy. I’m briefly startled by the drive’s low mechanical whirring — a heat, ambient background rating that immediately transports me again to my childhood. A few of my first painfully preteen journals had been hidden poorly on nondescript floppies identical to this one. I click on on the disk’s sole file, an MP3 titled “Lack of ability to Carry out Social Actions Is Thought-about Inferior,” and Yasuyuki Uesugi’s growling wall of experimental noise rolls by my condominium like a rogue wave on the seaside. The observe is one minute, 27 seconds lengthy, and at 1.33MB, it virtually hits the diskette’s restrict of 1.44MB. 

Subsequent up is a break up launch by two artists — Pregnant Lloyd and Workforce Phosphenes — then one other full of a mixture of quick experimental tracks. These small treasures have all come from a floppy-only web label referred to as Floppy Kick, a one-man operation run by Mark Windisch in Debrecen, Hungary. Every disk is numbered as a part of a restricted run. My copy of “Lack of ability to Carry out Social Actions Is Thought-about Inferior” is the third of 5, which is sensible since there’s a finite variety of floppies being circulated world wide. 

Floppy disk music arguably peaked within the 2010s, however within the 2020s, it’s nonetheless going sturdy; Discogs.com reveals a wholesome 500-plus floppy releases within the 2020 class, which is greater than the documented variety of floppy music releases within the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s altogether. Maybe it’s as a result of we’ve moved slightly nearer to their impending extinction. Or perhaps they’re excellent reminders of how violently smashing bytes collectively on a skinny, susceptible plastic / magnet sandwich continues to be one of the vital punk issues you are able to do as a musician and artist. 

Greater than 10 years in the past, Windisch wished to launch his personal noise music undertaking, Eoforwine, in an “excessive” format. “I discovered some sealed packages (of floppy disks) within the attic at our outdated home, so it appeared like a good suggestion,” he says. “I used to be already conversant in Discogs.com, so I made a correct entry for the discharge, additionally made a small weblog and a Fb web page for the label.” Inside a month, a man from Greece messaged about releasing a floppy demo; quickly, Windisch was operating Floppy Kick, attending to know different floppy fans, and swapping releases with different floppy labels. “(I had) first used floppy diskettes (the bigger, versatile ones) for my C64 laptop after I was younger,” he provides, recalling childhood online game swaps in addition to his father’s use of floppies to switch MIDI recordsdata from his synths to his laptop computer. “I identical to how restricted the format is, and it’s not straightforward to point out one thing in such a small quantity of knowledge.”

For many years, the floppy has been a quiet mainstay in DIY-driven media, particularly in lobit subculture, which celebrates low-bitrate music as a type of artwork and practicality. The added incontrovertible fact that floppies aren’t made for long-term storage additionally forces their customers to confront the transience of artwork and data within the face of time and decay. In 1993, Billy Idol launched a multimedia floppy disk to accompany Cyberpunk — the primary promo of its type (impressed by a 1991 HyperCard stack) that arguably left extra of a mark on popular culture than the album. In 2009, artist and professor Florian Cramer compressed each Oscars Finest Movie nominee onto a single floppy disk, so that every was represented by an summary, virtually Mark Rothko-like shifting picture. And floppy music, in its powerfully bizarre little area of interest, continues to be alive and kicking even because the anemic stays of bodily media are being miserably, myopically phased out of on a regular basis retail. 

There are virtually 2,300 floppy releases listed on Discogs.com, most of that are digital, however different genres embody hip-hop, a smattering of classical and jazz, a bunch of steel subgenres, and “non-music” like experimental subject recordings from Norway and spoken phrase from China. In 2018, Rolling Stone lined a “mini-boom” of vaporwave releases on floppies, noting that the lo-fi, lobit nature of vaporwave was an apparent match for the storage constraints of the three.5-inch. There are web labels like Loser Crew, Pionierska Information, and Strudelsoft dedicated to floppy releases, that are snapped up as quickly as they launch. Floppies additionally pop up on broader retro labels like DataDoor, which does Commodore 64 music. Floppy disks are a realm of technical extremities and a number of the rarest and most collectible music on the earth. 

Based on Floppy Totaal’s Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar, Discogs is “essentially the most dependable supply” to get a really feel for what’s on the market. The 2 began Floppy Totaal as a competition in Rotterdam in 2014, till it morphed right into a full-blown analysis undertaking on out of date media as cultural phenomena. “We had additionally cassette occasions and minidisc occasions, at one level even mechanical music occasions with punch playing cards,” Hilkmann explains on a Zoom name. Across the identical time, they got here throughout the then-thriving floppy scene within the Netherlands, largely by the underground assessment weblog Yeah I Know It Sucks, which impressed them to dig deeper into their undertaking.

“Lots of people have recollections of floppy disks, or fascination for them, and so we quickly discovered that this little piece of plastic mainly was the one medium that everyone used (and) had in thoughts after they consider out of date or residual media,” provides Hilkmann. Final yr, Floppy Totaal printed its first guide, Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Versatile Medium, that includes interviews with the floppy web label Pionierska Information and Tom Persky, who runs floppydisk.com, the one remaining floppy vendor / recycler within the enterprise. 

One prolific determine who drove Hilkmann and Walskaar’s early induction into floppy music was Kai Nobuko, a critic for Yeah I Know It Sucks who makes music underneath the names Poisonous Rooster and Covolux. Nobuko’s catalog is huge and various; a visit by his outdated SoundCloud account conjures a heady specter of ’90s-era Warp Information electronica, wealthy, horn-laden drum and bass, and earnest lo-fi pop, whereas his extra up-to-date Bandcamp options journeys into psychedelia, improv sampling experiments, and gamelan music. 

“I began with making MIDI music recordsdata, that are so little that it was straightforward to retailer them on floppy disks,” says Nobuko. “This was (my) first time… utilizing floppies. Later I began to make use of FastTracker to make sample-based music,” he explains, sticking to low pattern charges, quick samples, and mono / single-channel sound to maintain file sizes small. “I needed to do numerous experimenting with lobit encoding to have the ability to make the music sound good (to my ears) and in addition to optimize the area of the floppy to comprise round 10 minutes of music through which the sounds had been listenable and distinguishable.” In his thoughts, it turned a kind of sport to make these 10-minute mini-albums, with the added benefit that the information loss inherent in excessive lobit would produce “good ringing tones.” 

Nobuko believes the proliferation of floppy music in Western cultures is linked to sturdy punk actions with a DIY aesthetic. “Additionally, the lobit scene appears to be larger in nations that had dangerous web connections, so they might already use lobit encoding to add or obtain issues on-line,” he explains. In an analogous vein, Hilkmann believes that floppy recordings are an explicitly anti-capitalist area of interest that exists exterior the same old technique of publishing music as we speak on Spotify and different streaming companies. “A medium, artistically, is just attention-grabbing so long as it’s obtainable,” he says. “Now that floppy disks have gotten an increasing number of tough to get, they’ve grow to be an increasing number of a collector’s merchandise virtually, whereas just a few years in the past, it was extra like virtually a trashy medium that you may rapidly get your fingers on and do enjoyable issues with.”

Hilkmann and Walskaar quickly realized that the floppy world — at the least the one they had been in a position to discover — was largely Western-oriented, with artists and musicians based mostly within the US, Europe, and sometimes Canada. “With the language barrier, it’s an enormous concern,” says Walskaar. “Should you can’t seek for it, it’s actually arduous to search out.” He informs me that the phrase for “floppy disk” varies by nation, to not point out quite a few variable phrases for various music subcultures and native slang. “Essentially the most well-known instance,” says Hilkmann with a smile, “is that in South Africa, the floppy disk is definitely referred to as the stiffy disk, as a result of it isn’t floppy in any respect.” 

On Discogs, although, it’s doable to search out some Chinese language and Japanese floppy music, which would be the extent to which they’re discoverable on the anglophone web. Sifting by floppy releases, I grow to be acquainted with a powerviolence band from Argentina named after a campy Argentine actor; this 1995 prog rock soundtrack of the journey puzzle sport Milo; and Rob Michalchuk, who runs a floppy-friendly label referred to as Poor Little Music. Poring over the Floppy Kick choices is tantalizing, too — lots of its Bandcamp document pages don’t have embedded playable tracks, which implies the one approach to hear them is to slam that “purchase now” button. Windisch, who traveled to Rotterdam in 2019 to carry a workshop for Floppy Totaal, continues to be shocked and happy to satisfy new clients, particularly those that exit of their approach to comply with the artists he releases versus being drawn to the novelty of the floppies. “Solely a handful of floppy launch collectors and labels exist on the earth, however I can’t say that everyone knows one another,” he says. Floppy Kick, to today, is without doubt one of the oldest floppy labels nonetheless going sturdy. 

What everybody does appear to know is that the floppy is operating on borrowed time. Persky, the self-described “final man standing” within the floppy enterprise, supposedly has round half one million floppies in inventory but additionally advised Floppy Totaal that he doesn’t actually know the precise worth of his inventory. Walskaar recollects that 10 years in the past, floppies had been comparatively low cost and simple to search out and that “individuals had been throwing them at you free of charge, mainly.” At this time, it’s a distinct story. “Now, in the event you go on eBay or another model of eBay and attempt to discover floppies truly, price-wise, they’re fairly costly,” he says. “If you’d like new outdated shares or unused outdated floppies, like straight from the packet, that’s additionally getting expensive. Tom Persky confirmed that with us.”

For Walskaar, the floppy disk has grow to be symbolic, notably since he’s a graphic designer with a watch for visible that means. “It’s nonetheless the icon of saving,” he says. “I don’t assume the CD would be the ‘saving icon’ in a digital world. (The floppy) type of lingers on (as) residual media the place it sticks round society in a approach.” Hilkmann sees the floppy as a memento mori. “It reveals us that nothing is everlasting and every thing that appears to be very obscure or obscure, particularly within the digital realm, isn’t that in any respect and also will finally transfer away, change, and is one thing that we will additionally change for our personal recollections and on our personal accord,” he says. “I’m taking a look at it from a extra romantic view. However it is usually essential to do that, I believe. After we take into consideration media, we generally are inclined to neglect that these are literally bodily objects simply slowly shifting away.”

Cramer, the filmmaker who made the most effective Oscars movies floppy and ruthlessly dissected David Cronenberg’s movie adaptation of Bare Lunch to suit on a 3.5-inch, as soon as stated that the “floppy disk ought to die,” pointing to their ineffective, poisonous plasticness in a world the place it shouldn’t exist. Turning my new Floppy Kick orders over in my fingers, I perceive the thought behind Cramer’s phrases however stay torn between waves of sentimentality not only for the place of floppies in historical past however their presence as a tangible a part of my very own life. 

Nobuko, too, shares my inclination for sentimentality. “I don’t agree with Florian about how floppies ought to die, regardless that after all (they) will ultimately,” he says. “I believe it’s good to have the ability to maintain one thing in your hand, to gather one thing that turns into treasured to you. I discover it nice that there’s the choice to stream music, it helps you to hear and uncover music that we would not discover in any other case.” This, he says, is critical in a interval the place web platforms and music websites have confirmed to be unreliable, unstable, or unethical about artist funds. Even so, the floppy have to be protected; all through his e mail to me, he additionally reveals concern for the fragile nature of floppies and the ever-present risk of magnets — the enemy of any self-respecting floppy collector.

In Nobuko’s eyes, they’re a kind of mysterious treasure, cloaked in offline exclusivity and really actual shortage. “To me, the floppy represents a few issues,” he says. “Nostalgia, but additionally a punk ethos. It feels extremely private. The floppy, as fragile as it’s, needs to be dealt with rigorously. The label or musician has put a variety of ideas in it. And I do assume that they’re lovable.”