![]() “PC Music has always had simple, strong, high fidelity imagery,” says Max Schramp, one of the co-founders and designers at Parent Company, a design studio that has been creating visuals and graphics for PC Music since 2018. When I speak to the flurry of artists and musicians involved with PC Music, each conversation seems to underline PC’s commitment to its aesthetic and sonic output as entirely genuine and innovative. was always committed to crafting serious tributes to a culture he took quite seriously. ![]() It seemed, from the onset, many branded PC’s artistry as weird or kitsch parodies of pop. is right in that the visual was generally received quite well – if you’re willing to look beyond the storm of confusion, criticism, and ignorance that plagued its sonic output of the time. “For me, it was important that each artist on the label would have their own specific visual aesthetic, and I spent a lot of time encouraging variety rather than something that could be easily pigeonholed.” A. “There’s always a discussion about how divisive PC Music was, but I think the visual side was received quite well, and explained the label’s musical aims pretty efficiently,” A. There is no denying that PC Music’s aesthetic identity has always been synonymous with its pop and internet-orientated sound. ![]() It is, of course, the most exhilarating record label of the 2010s – but perhaps just as importantly, it is the most exhilarating visual art collective of that same decade. In Dazed’s 2019 retrospective of the label, the magazine heralded PC Music as “the most exhilarating record label of the 2010s.” Whilst undeniably true, it summarises a more acute problem with the discourse over PC Music since its conception. “By the 2010s, virtual space became much more defined by apps and social media, and I remember feeling nostalgic for that previous version of computer games and the internet, one that was a bit more unpredictable and DIY.”Įver since the 2013 debut, so much about PC Music has already been said, discussed, and dissected across the internet that it’s hard to know where to even begin. tells me when we sit down to talk about the label’s early days. “I was born in 1990, so I’ve got distinct memories of custom-coded GeoCities and Angelfire sites and elaborate Neopets guilds, as well as point-and-click games like The Longest Journey and The Neverhood,” A. G.’s desire to take these aesthetic queues further into the virtual realm set it apart from the rest. ![]() The reappropriation of glossy hi-fidelity imagery was already being seen in the contemporary art world at the time (most noticeably by the collective DIS), but A. G.” Cook, the “DIY” label came onto the scene with a play on the visual language of 2000s minisites, and the glossy CGI-laden stock photos of popular advertising. Starting in 2013 by musician and composer Alex “A. One such cultural reset belongs to the record label and art collective PC Music. I’m talking about moments of rupture powerful enough to release tremors felt by the culture years after first breaking ground. So often is the phrase “cultural reset” touted today that we regularly lose sight of the genuine moments which ruptured the zeitgeist.
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