Two years ago, my roommates and I were trying to define an electronic microgenre of "ambient music that sounds watery." Specifically, not too watery (i.e. oceanic amounts of water), just splashy, drippy, splooshing tracks. The playlist we made was used to weird out our houseguests whenever they came over, turning our apartment into a chilled-out boggy mancave. My roommates ended up settling on the term Pondcore for the genre. There were a bunch of artists we put on the list, but the patron saints of Pondcore are definitely the duo Salamanda, with other notable contributions from the other Human Pitch signees (Sphere by Salamanda is the Pondcore Bible, but it's not on Nina sadly).

And so Pondcore became a jokey genre between us that I would occasionally refer to when describing some of the production of my own music. But all this genre-defining had got me thinking (and thirsty): if I was really going to try to produce my own Pondcore, I'd need to get tapped in on the best water available (because "good food comes from good ingredients," etc). In my search for the scientifically best water on the market, I found one of my favourite niche websites in a long time: fine-liquids.com.

Fine Liquids is a site owned by water sommelier and self-proclaimed "water disruptor" Pat Eckert, operating out of Germany. On it, you can sign up for water sommelier training masterclasses, attend remote (?) water tasting sessions, and order bottles of aged mineral water, which can reach into the thousands of dollars. The site is largely populated with AI-generated images of people drinking water in various poses and places, and the pages have some truly awesome quotes like:

Which made me think I was definitely in the right place for improving my music production. So I decided to look around.

I was immediately presented with a $555 Evian x Jean-Paul Gaultier bottle from 2009 (was 2009 a good year for water? Could there even be good years for water?), which made me reconsider my whole approach to Pondcore production. Maybe all the money I've ever spent on VSTs and studio gear should have been going into my water consumption? Had I been feeding myself junk water for too long to make any good water-based music? I started to wonder if Salamanda's studio was just a room full of Evian and a MacBook, and if I needed to sign up for a virtual water-tasting masterclass. Then I saw something else:

And at that point, my heart dropped. I understood that water was something I truly knew nothing about. If there was a market for $14,000 water bottles, how could I claim to like it enough to make music about it? How could anyone, really? It seemed obvious in that moment that water was too niche of a hobby for me, and that if I wanted an accessible, affordable way to spend my time and money, I should stick to Eurorack.

And this is where I've left off. Pondcore is a genre I lovingly observe at a distance, one that I might someday pursue. But if you - like me - want to experience a fraction of Pat Eckert's water knowledge, you might learn something from listening to Pondcore.

Work from Salamanda and other Pondcore icons can be found at the official Nina hub, where we're compiling other splashy electronic that makes you feel vaguely amphibious. As more artists' catalogs get added to Nina, we'll try to recreate the same playlist we had on Sp**ify.

(And if you want to listen to some non-Pondcore music by someone who drinks Montreal tap water, consider listening to my stuff here). Cheers:)