I've mentioned the podcast Major Label Debutmanytimes. I was even a guest one time! That is to say, I hope you know of the show and are already subscribed. If not, here's more fodder to draw you in!
The show's premise is - talk to artists that signed to a major label and see what their experience was like. For me, there's no better candidate for such a conversation than The Features. I first heard them in 1997 and was an instant fan. Their live shows were incredible and I loved their self-titled EP, their 10" single for "Thursday" and the follow-up EP called The Beginning. I always wondered why there was never an album from them,* so I was quite excited to find out in the early aughts they would be releasing their major label debut with Universal Records... Exhibit A.
The album was released in 2004. The band released videos, got played on MTV, toured heavily and then was abruptly dropped by the label in the lead up to the second album because they did not want to record a Beatles cover for a bank commercial.
The band went on after their major label experience to make many more great albums with smaller independent outlets and seem to have come out the other side all the better for it but I am sure it had its hardships. But I don't have to guess about that because Major Label Debut talks to Rollum Haas, drummer for The Features, all about all of the above. His attitude about the whole thing is strikingly positive - not something you'd expect given all of the above but that's what makes the conversation so compelling!
So, yea, give the episode a listen and make sure you're subscribed to the show in some capacity!
* Later on I would find out that the band did record two full-length albums. One became The Mahaffey Sessions 1999 and the other is still only floating around in bootleg form. I hope to fix that one day!
We're in a period of web homogenization right now - with AI Agents pumping out sites that all kind of look the same. But I think we're also in a rather fertile time for lots of new UI's to emerge and diversify things in a pleasant way.
For instance, this new Jelly UI interface kit is very fun - providing lots of squishy, squirty, soft interactions with textfields, checkboxes, etc. Drop this in to your next project and its instantly 60% more enjoyable.
240-MP is an open-source frontend that connects to local files, PLEX, Jellyfin, YouTube, et al media managers and creates a very simple, retro, interface.
I do not lament the days of navigating VCR menus. I quite enjoy being able to see poster art on my PLEX instead of just a list of raw files. BUT I can't deny that this is a delightful labor of love. Connect a Raspberry Pi to your CRT, spin up 240-MP and you've got yourself a fun little experience.
I'm often on the lookout for some daily game that will wiggle it's way into my routine. I was a Wordle guy. I've been a NY Times Crossword guy. I've been a Snood guy. I still miss a now-defunct iOS game called Merged that I played every day on the subway. I was also a fan of Heardle before Spotify shut it down.
Now I'm giving Sound of Silver a whirl. It's a daily game that plays snippets of songs and you pick who it is. It's slightly less challenging than Heardle because you've got a list to select from rather than a textfield but it's maybe more rewarding because of that. I've played it once but it's tickling all the right sensors. Maybe it will for you, too.
Every time yk releases a video, it gets added to this page. That's seventeen years of music videos. Maybe too few on the page given that timeline but it's still a lot to choose from - especially if you're entirely unfamiliar with all of it. How could I make these creations discoverable in some way? Ideally, in a passive way!?
Introducing YK TV, a lean back music video viewer. Load it up and let it ride. You can't scrub, you can't queue, you don't browse at all - you just watch. Sure, you can skip or shuffle but it's meant to be playing ambiently and, hopefully, serving you some new treats. Give it a whirl.
You ever been in a group meeting and wished your cursor wasn't so dang boring?? Well, Pokey will fix you right up by transforming your cursor into a giant cartoon finger with an extra long arm and explosive poking action. What's not to love?
His latest is The BBC's World Cup mic is weird - an exploration of understanding why the announcer at the World Cup uses such a funny looking mic. The basic answer is clear to everyone - it blocks out background noise - but Spargo explores that answer in an entertaining 8minutes and 40 seconds.
Would you like to take a trip through each and every computer shown in 1993's Jurassic Park? Well, Fabien Sanglard has you covered with Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail - a phenomenal blog post that documents every computer shown and some factoids about them (both in relation to the movie and to computing in general).
In the shot above, Dennis Nedry has a "Motorola Envoy" in front of him... but the Envoy wasn't released publicly until 1995. The film was shot in 1992, how could this be?! The solution is in the blog:
The head of frogdesign (Hartmut Esslinger) ended up running into Spielberg on a plane and showed it to him. The one in the movie is an original mockup (source and discussion). &emdash; kalleboo
I don't have hardcore nostalgia for Jurassic Park but I do have the utmost respect for anyone willing to pull together any movie trivia like this. It's a great read.
If you're unfamiliar with the band Snooper, I suggest you take some time to listen through their body of work - Compilation of the Hits is as good of a place to start as any. They are considered "egg punk" and I imagine that's a genre label they hate - it's lo-fi, high energy, punky and unbelievably fun aesthetic. There's also something a little something tense about it.. a kind of anxiety that I appreciate. If nothing else, look at this gallery of characters - giant paper mache creatures that show up at shows. Insane in the absolute best way. Here's a good introductory song.
But I'm not here to talk about their music or their aesthetic. I'm here to tell you they also have their own videogames. Truthfully, that's much less outlandish in 2026 than it was in, say, 1988 but it's still pretty rare! Accompanying their latest release is a new game called Snooper Recess, built by Sketchy Dumpster.
Fantastic art direction, perfectly strange story mode and honest entertainment while playing it. The band also has other games on their site (by the same developer / artist) if you're looking to continue investing in the Snooperverse.
I really enjoy this work. It is a mixture of lo-fi, glitch, collage, datamoshing, late 90s gmunk, hacker aesthetics and even a bit of Renaissance and classical arts. The animations imbue much of the same magical mixture of styles.
Now, I realize that because AI is one of the tools in this toolkit, that mixture may not be coming directly from the brain of an individual. I'm not privy to Elfilter's process but it's possible that a chunk of this is the fever dream mixture of the AI itself, under their direction. I would love to know more about the process, not as a critique of it but purely out of curiosity.
At the end of the day, I simply can't deny I like what I'm looking at... whoever or whatever made it!
I've been a fan of Sam Hoffman for some time. I think he came across my radar back in 2018 with Fairweather, a languid and melancholy album that I revisit regularly still today. If you're not familiar, go ahead and get him on to your "I should check this out" playlist (if nothing else, put "Glencrest Lane" into heavy rotation).
He recently released the new track "Afloat" and it seems he's turning a new leaf with his approach. It's always a treat when artists explore new territory and it's double-y satisfying when they actually do it this well. The track is psychedelic and floaty - never moving along with urgency but also never sprawling out too far to lose interest. Hoffman's voice is the perfect fit for this kind of music; thoughtful, curious and evoking a worldly disconnection. I hope this is the first of many new tracks to come but even if it's a standalone, I'm happy to have it.
I didn't get MTV until high school (that's the mid-90s for anyone keeping score) but, once I did, I voraciously consumed every moment of 120 Minutes I could get my eyeballs on. I primarily associate the show with host Matt Pinfield but he only took over in 1995. The show was created by Dave Kendall, a British journalist and early MTV VJ. He passed away this week but I would be remiss if I did not honor the impact his creation had on my life.
I'm not alone in my love of 120 Minutes. There's a massive archive that documents every episode that aired, what videos they played and tries to recreate that content with what is available on streaming. A herculean effort that is highly appreciated. There are also loads of fans posting full episodes to Archive.org. You can even just search directly for "Dave Kendall" to get straight to the goods. There's treasure troves on YouTube as well. It's everywhere!
Kendall hosted 120 Minutes from 1998 to 1992 and always had such great rapport with the bands he interviewed. I am not sure how involved he was in the specific music selections episode-to-episode but he should get credit for creating the environment where less-than-mainstream videos could find a home (Yes, I realize music videos in 1988 still cost an arm and a leg but all the more reason to give them a place to air!).
Big fan of Dave Kendall and I urge you to celebrate his life by partaking in some 120 Minutes.
I was gonna have the cover GIF be footballer Erling Haaland getting spooked by his own reflection and let you know it's a deepfake manipulated from a clip originally created by Chinese creator Jin Long... but that's not what Friday videos are about! No soul crushing reminders of modern times! Just stupid videos. Let's go.
The absolute best thing you'll see this week is "heaven let your eent shine down," which can not be embedded outside YouTube so you'll just have to trust me and go enjoy it. absolute perfection.
PROFITWAVE!!! - I was confident this was AI. A Star Trek-esque theme song from Philip Morris to promote profits from cigarette inventory. Nope, this is a 1987 reality. Also, a total bop.
Center Core Never More - a music video made in the early 90s on an Amiga 500. Impressive and insane to say the least. Also kind of a bop if we're being honest.
Tango (1980) - Oscar winning short film featuring an absolutely insane number of looping animations. I can not fathom the work involved to create this. Yes, its 8 minutes but it is captivating.
What's Michael? - some things you don't need to understand, you just enjoy that they exist.
Back in April, yk Records released Seeds for Cosmic Radio, a seventeen track electronic ambient album that was inspired by something especially not electronic... gardening!
Infinite Limb (aka Kyle Numann) was tending to his home garden and pondering the relationship between the seeds in the soil and the cosmic fuel they receive from the sun. It's a rather incredible relationship that we're all aware of and likely take for granted! It's wild!
That idea fueled his work into culling through hours of improvisational pieces he had recorded and shaping them into something more thematic. I won't call it a concept record but it's inspired by some very specific things and sounds like those things as well. Our official writeup says:
The album forages the textures and rhythms of the natural universe, from the seed-small to the galaxy-wide: the bleary melody of spring thaw, the pulsing beat of cellular activity, the endless drone of interstellar space, and the radio signals of our most distant voyager.
All true!
I am biased because of my involvement but it's a very rewarding listen start to finish. It's ambient but it's immersive. It's also just now available on all streaming services. We've been holding off for a number of reasons but this week it unleashed itself everywhere! So, if you wanna support it on Bandcamp, Ampwall, Mirlo, or Subvert - you certainly can! You can also stream it on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music and everywhere else.
It's also worth noting that the physical version of this release is a packet of seeds; culled from Numann's own garden where the original inspiration took place. He says they are "hearty bloomers."
Pop Rock Record continues to be a wellspring of great new music discovery. For example, a recent post led me to the full-length, self-titled, debut of Softjaw. The platitudes from the review include "Beatlesque charms", "strong Big Star flash" and "guitar-hook rush from start to finish." Certainly more than enough to hit play!
If you do hit play, you're likely to hear "Playing Bogart" - the last track on the album but the default selection. Much to my surprise, that's a cover of 23 Jewels from 1979. Equally surprising, the track preceeding it - "Working Too Hard" - is a cover of The Nerves (you know the one). They're at the end of the record but they really do serve as the perfect introduction to the band.
The website of artist Ezla Li Eismont is intentionally minimal. Specifically he says "I am opting for less screen time as I strive to find the time to create new physical works, and spending time researching music." Admirable! But his Instagram and Patreon have plenty to see.
I find myself incredibly fascinated with these literal vinyl collages aka "Cut Ups." Eismont slices up actual records and glues them back together, resulting in these incredible - somewhat accidental, somewhat curated - sound collages. Check out examples here, here, here and here (just to start). Phenomenal.
There must be something in the air recently. I found myself deep diving into the FuelTV archive and now I'm rummaging around the Pinkpop Archive. I'd heard of the festival in the Netherlands but never really paid much attention to its lineage. Turns out, having a music festival running since 1970 with fully recorded and broadcast performances since 1992 results in quite a few delightful goodies. Here's a sampling of items I plan to partake:
Radiohead - 1996 - a much different band than today but still quite a compelling setlist
Nada Surf - 1997 - their later albums were stellar but I never spent much time with this era
Bjork - 1994 - again, a much different Bjork than modern times but still fascinating
Deftones - 2006 - maybe the unhealthiest era of the band but a helluva setlist.
Funny story, Vimeo is shutting down their On Demand service. As of November 2026, it will no longer be available at all. Truth be told, it's been a long neglected service and (mostly) unnecessary since Vimeo acquired VHX, aka Vimeo Streaming, in 2016.
Another funny story: right around the same time as the VHX acquisition, Vimeo announced Vimeo Originals - a slate of exclusives and Vimeo-funded endeavors - and their own SVOD service. The plan was for people to subscribe to Vimeo content in the same way you would subscribe to Netflix. Those plans were nixed in 2016. I am not privy to the exact reasons why but I do recall it being a surprising bit of news when I worked there.*
One of the headlining pieces of content for that forthcoming Vimeo SVOD service was 555, a five episode series from Kate Berlant and John Early, directed by Andrew DeYoung. The episodes were all released and have been available for years but I just recently noticed that John Early has been posting them to his YouTube account.
Are the episodes being shared because Vimeo On Demand is finally being shut down? Is it promotion for Early's new film Maddie's Secret? Probably a bit of both and I'm happy for it! Here's all the episodes (and the bloopers) in one playlist - let it roll!
* Worth saying: the slate of content from Vimeo Originals was actually quite good and very well curated. The idea of a Vimeo service ala Netflix is a different conversation to have. I hope that Vimeo's legacy is that they highlighted a lot of great, independent, content and even managed to create some of it themselves.
This performance from The Helio Sequence was posted just a few weeks ago in mid-June 2026. It's taken from The Daily Habit, a show on Fuel TV... an Action Sports channel. I've not heard of any of this and, clearly, this footage is not from 2026.
The Fuel TV Channel is filled with hundreds of performances from this late aughts era:
There are so many performances here and most of them have been viewed less than 100 times. The entire channel has less than 1 Million views. This is a phenomenal, untapped, time capsule, truly.
It's wild to me that someone has been uploading to this massive archive but not even bothering to put the airdate alongside each video. There's not even a link accompanying subscription channel for FuelTV+ - a site that also makes no mention of these performances. I think it's probably safe to assume that this isn't really a Vevo channel, despite the clever naming.
Wild stuff here folks. I hope someone is downloading all of this before it's zapped away forever.
I'm a bit shocked at myself for never having mentioned Christian Marclay's The Clock. If you are unfamiliar, it is a 24-hour film composed of film and television clips showing the exact time of day. It will screen in a museum and when it's 12:05 here on Earth, The Clock is showing you snippets of media that display 12:05. It's very difficult to see this creation because it's incredibly long, it simply rarely screens anywhere and its not exactly fast paced. This thing is a gauntlet. You can watch a bootleg snippet of it here or read about the experience here.
I've never seen it myself. I did see another enormous installation from Marclay back in 2015 called Surround Sounds that left quite an impression tho.. so I am intrigued by his works.
