Back in 2014, Melbourne producer Swick linked up with French producer King Doudou (Hugo Douster) for Internet Dreams, a multimedia web experience paired with an EP of four original tracks. Today, the project is resurrected – with the website being reinstated and the EP copping a re-release by NLV Records. LISTEN HERE.
The EP originally came about through a visit from Douster to Swick’s studio in Melbourne. “I was in Australia and I hung out for a few days with Swick in his garage,” he said. “We were eating lots of yellow food, like chips and fried chicken, and somewhere in the middle of the night, we were pretty high, sampling crappy novation tech-house synth sounds when the mini-jack found its way through Swick’s laptop output. I started sampling the sounds that came out of his internet and we made songs with those samples.”
The EP captures a moment in time that remains poignant – if anything, the release sounds closer to sounds being explored in 2022 than those that were being explored in 2014. Over the course of four tracks, both producers take us on a multi-dimensional trip; traversing through the sounds of reminiscent ringtones, hi-tech aesthetics and tactile Y2K samples to wholly capture a collage as advertised: of internet dreams.
‘CHAMPIONSHIP RINGTONE LEAGUE’ is an ode to the Nokia theme – arguably the Holy Grail of ringtones. ‘HACKERS CONVENTION JAM’ invokes intensity through vocal samples, with a fuzzy synth locking in your attention like a hacker to a computer screen. In an ode to dial-up internet, ‘56K DESERT CONNECTION’ harkens back to simpler times when an hour of your time would be spent downloading a couple of virus-laden MP3 files. A snake-charmer lead weaves in and out of punchy percussive stabs, leading us through the 56K Desert. And finally, ‘OS WAR III’ pits the big operating systems against one another in a clash of pounding, industrial-tech, rounding out the release with a motherboard-like menagerie of internet-ripped samples.
Through the Internet Dreams website, the pair were able to bring the EP to life – or to its second life, at least. The website takes on the aesthetics of films like Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic, with the site adopting a straightforward command-line terminal to do things like downloading the tracks and accessing alternative content such as videos and an audio teaser.
Internet Dreams is out now via NLV Records
Artist: Swick & King Doudou
Title: Internet Dreams
Tracklist:
1. OS WAR III
2. 56K DESERT CONNECTION
3. HACKERS CONVENTION JAM
4. CHAMPIONSHIP RINGTONE LEAGUE
Written, Produced & Mixed by: Swick & King Doudou
Mastered by: Swick
Release Date: 28/1/2022
Label: NLV Records
Catalogue Number: NLVR0055