The very first twenty-four minutes and fifty-four seconds of February 26, 2021, were spent sitting cross-legged on my childhood bed with my laptop on, headphones snug around my ears, and voice-call connected. Like 200 others in the voice-call, I was listening to Jane Remover’s (then known as dltzk) album Teen Week for the very first time. This online listening party had been planned weeks in advance to go with the release of the album⸺ the first major cohesive project in this realm, highly anticipated by the blossoming and unique little underground community that coalesced around the genre ‘digicore’.

   I was so amazed by what I’d just heard. The production of every song was like nothing done before. Each song sounded noisy and raw, yet so precisely stitched together through the meticulous audio samples used. However, the lyrics were what really stuck with me. Songs like ‘cartridge’ and ‘beast friend’ spoke of both virtual and real world things I could relate to, like the pressure to appease parents, struggles with friendships and purpose, and using technology as a way to escape without even leaving your bedroom. Listening to “sorry i’m not what you wanted, I know you can’t try again” repeated over again at the end of ‘cartridge’ let me channel my feelings of guilt for not exceeding expectations. I felt like I was not alone. The album captured the loneliness, insecurity, and frustration of a teen in such an authentic way.

  I remember spending the rest of the night online, scrolling. The scene really felt like a family back then, with teenage artists and producers forming various collectives and treating music as something casual and fun. Everyone was each other's friends and fans. What made it so special was how real the connections felt. I spent most of 2020 and early 2021 in my room on my computer, so a large portion of my life and the things important to me were held together by networks.

   That night, everyone was buzzing with new-found inspiration. Just minutes after the listening party concluded, one artist tweeted “THIS IS YOUR SIGN TO PICK YOUR ASS UP AND OPEN UP FL STUDIO RIGHT NOW”. Despite not being a musician myself, I felt like I needed to channel this inspiration into my own work. The sense of community was so overwhelmingly present in every online space the scene inhibited. A year when the world sat inside allowed these people to create a space that would not have thrived the way it did otherwise. Granted, many of these artists were posting music on the internet long before that, with collectives like Planet Zero and NOVAGANG. But quarantine gave them the blessing of time, spending every day making music and connecting with the friendships they made online.

  Nowadays, two years after the world shut down, the scene has branched apart. Many artists are still close with their friends and co-collaborators, but like me, they’ve grown up. The ‘real world’ leaves little room for listening parties, digital festivals, and days spent online. Artists like glaive and ericdoa have gone on to join the mainstream and sign on to major labels. Others, like Jane, have carved out their own niches and developed a sound evolved from the glitchy and now-over-saturated sound of 2020 “hyperpop”. Watching everyone’s journey feels triumphant, but I, like many others, will dearly miss this brief bubble I watched flourish from a window, up close but so far off. I still go back and listen to Teen Week, and I dont think it will ever lose its pedestal in my mind.