Dragon Con Phonk
ISSUE #213
Labor Day weekend means Dragon Con, the largest multi-genre convention in the country, where five of Atlanta’s biggest tower hotels are taken over for five days by genre fans and cosplayers. Over 80,000 people stop by to listen to gamers, writers, filmmakers, and actors. They have arcade games you can only play in Japan. They have arcade games you could only play a few decades ago. They have rooms full of board games open all night long. They have DJs in every ballroom and parties in every corridor.
Today’s playlist was inspired by Dragon Con. I packed it full of drift phonk, a newer genre of electronic music born from phonk, a.k.a. chopped-and-screwed hip hop that takes old-school Memphis rap samples, compresses them until their flat as a tin pancake, and buries them beneath distorted 808s and lo-fi trap rhythms. Drift phonk emerged when Eastern European producers picked up phonk songs and samples through YouTube mixes featuring automotive imagery and atomized them until they became more atmospheric, twisting them into night-drive music. These are songs from Memphis fused in Russia and made to sound like Japan.
I’ve been fully immersed since discovering the genre, floating under hypnotic beams like I’m sleep-driving a circuit of Need for Speed. I thought I’d share the feeling. Whether you’re at the convention or miles away, we could all use a little more neon.
Trance is one of the cheesiest genres in the world, which makes it one of the very best. Contrary to the name, it is not conventionally relaxing, though I find strange comfort when awash in it. It usually starts with a kick drum, then a tide of synthesizers, then arpeggios that dart and echo like a bee trapped in a concert hall.