Digging is a recurring feature where we talk to some of Nina’s most distinguished collectors of digital music. Today, we spoke with friends&, who is behind one of our favorite Hubs, laptop_twee, an inspired conceptual arrangement of what friends& sees as a burgeoning new sub-genre of indietronica that is both hyper-specific and capacious. It’s better to just let friends& explain it, though. Read our interview with the collector (and artist, you can scope some friends& music on Nina) below, and be sure to tap into the laptop_twee Hub.

How long have you been collecting digital music or any sort of digital files, really?

friends&: In 2007, I digitized a bunch of my dad’s CD collection to the Microsoft Zune.

How did you first find out about Nina?

 

Late in 2022, some of the younger mods became extremely passionate about introducing Nina Protocol embedded functionality on rateyourmusic main album pages. Unfortunately rym is a dinosaur so this tool is not yet available, but the discussion brought Nina into my consciousness. I started regularly reading articles after the Madjestic Kasual interview with $quib. Brock is one of my favorite artists and I was impressed there was a platform boosting a weirdo like them. 

Could you describe your taste? It seems as if you are interested in finding certain musical patterns and organizing them.

 

My father was a serious autistic record collector and early rym adopter. I was a p4k drone in high school. I lost my virginity to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and received a kind but stern rejection email from Orchid Tapes on the same day. In 2013, I got radicalized by tinymixtapes. Suddenly the guitar music I loved seemed completely regressive on a production level. All the Eureka! grad student essays about early vaporwave releases broke my brain and sent me deeper into the worlds of /mu/ topsters and rym esoteric charts.

Since my relationship with music has never been defined by the live performance experience or irl music scenes, the connections I make between songs are typically based on production techniques and songwriting approaches and my perceived understanding of what an artist was hoping to achieve with their music. You have to be pretty fried to start drawing connections between cleo walks through glass and The Postal Service, but it makes sense to me. My discord mutuals and I love arguing about this stuff. Curating playlists and creating Nina Hubs are fun for me because these tools force listeners to engage with my brainrot.

What is your preferred way to surf around Nina and look for new music?

I tend to get drawn into articles from your Instagram. I got a real kick out of the 300skullsandcounting interview. And lately I’ve been paying close attention to recent #indietronica uploads. The appeal of nina at this moment is that it still feels like a club for the coolest one percent of music nerds from every local scene. Nina is the only place on the internet where playing a random new release gives you a 50 percent chance of pulling an electro-acoustic-shitpost or some grad-student-pop-plugg. That’s based!! (Nina send me some merch I actually talk about your platform like this in irl settings 😫🙏)

How did the “laptop_twee” idea come about?

  

In July, my friend in The Lampreys stumbled across Worldpeace DMT on Nina. No one on my server knew anything about the band but Lindsey started freaking the fuck out. She was sending me walls of text telling me to listen to The Velvet Underground & Rowan immediately. Leo and Rowan offer such a fresh production approach to the p4k approved indie pop I grew up with that I became compelled to proselytize for their record. I stayed awake for like 40 hours writing a rambling rym review of that album which doubles as a proto-laptop_twee manifesto.

From there, Rowan Please and I ended up texting about Tek Lintowe and Blaketheman1000. I had a galaxy brain moment making connections between a bunch of my favourite current artists. I received visions that an indie pop vibeshift is underway and it sounds like every guitar-based Best New Music from 2005-2012 got put in a blender. Zoomers raised by Wilco moms are learning Ableton glitches from poetmistry. K Records nerds have sold their guitars and bought turntables. Bespoke indietronica telegram channels claim Republic is considering releasing The Dare’s shelved Jonathan Richman remix album. Bassvictim can’t stop putting Kimya Dawson songs in their Insta stories. I sent texts to like thirty server mutuals raving that “laptop_twee is indie sleaze for tenderqueers.” 

In the simplest terms, laptop_twee is twee-indietronica. Many of the reference points for laptop_twee stem from the wave of critically acclaimed 00s twee indie pop. I consider a release to be laptop_twee if it uses contemporary digital production techniques to achieve traditionally twee aesthetics like cuteness or intimacy in innovative ways. For example, the low-bitrate-soundfont-MIDI recreations of traditional twee pop instrumentation on frogtopia by b7lanket present a distinctly 21st century approach to the nostalgic-camp that underlies much twee. 

In many cases, laptop_twee emerges when a traditional Twee Pop song is produced in a way that feels distinctly post-hyperpop, like "Bernadette" by Frost Children or "The Most Dear and The Future" by ear. In a different way, ASMR-influenced high-fidelity-collage-music like Galen Tipton or Alexander Panos use contemporary sound design techniques to create the intimacy twee pop is associated with. I admit it’s a slippery idea, but it's really exciting to me.

I desperately want more music to sound like ear and ideasforconversations and cootie catcher and amigos imaginarios and Hearth Room and "Juliette" by Nikki Nair. The laptop_twee hub on Nina and the streaming service playlists hope to connect listeners to these artists I’m obsessed with and offer them some context. In my dreams, this silly genre tag might inspire new artists to make music in a style I love.

In a world where so much new music discovery is either motivated by PR money or opaque streaming algorithms, I believe it’s more important than ever for passionate fans to curate. I believe the invention of genres is fun and sparks conversation about new music. Maybe you think calling Veronica Everheart laptop_twee is inaccurate or reductive. If you start talking to your friends about why her music doesn’t belong in conversation with these other artists, then I take great joy in knowing I started a new conversation about her music. If someone new listens to Simulacrum because their friend needs to describe how stupid my ideas are, that’s a win for me.

Is there a release you discovered on Nina that is particularly close to your heart?

 

Yes!! Right now I’m obsessed with Josephine’s Next Million Miles. They have this track called Dust Mites which sounds like someone put a gun to Alexander Panos’ head and told him to write an indie pop song. Also, b7lanket discovered the laptop_twee hub after listening to "Polka Dot Perfect Uniform" by Her Story. They connected with me and their album frogtopia has become one of my fav releases of the year and was an instant add to the hub. Gotta thank nina for that one too.

Where does your Nina username come from? Why did you choose it?

 

friends& is a corruption of my old /mu/ trip. If there are any sickos from 2013 Grimes General threads reading this: I’m sorry about any psychic damage I caused. I was heavily involved in the oblivion mv gore controversy but I would deny any narratives that my posts primarily led to Claire’s waifu tumblr callout.