By examining the 1980s work of Mike Kelley, there appears to be an ideological or at least aesthetic affinity.

 In his talk at Walker Art Center (2014), Kelley said, “When I did a lot of work with craft materials, it was a lot about American folk art forms as given structures. I was playing with those structures and trying to find out what the formality was. Folk art is very invisible. We never look at it formally because it’s so pre-given.”

The same could be said for the kind of footwork tracks that are being made today. During the pre-Bangs & Works era of footwork, before Planet Mu contributed to the widespread familiarity of the scene, this was a folk tradition in the technical artistic sense. Tapes were spread through the internet and through local Chicago highschools. The development and social practice surrounding Juke and footwork culture was a local development in Chicago, and was, for a number of reasons, not pushed to the front of underground dance culture. 

Mike Kelley also said during his talk at Walker Art Center, “[Hans] Hoffman-esque practice is very much about organic application, which in American culture has to do with meaninglessness- the blob, slime, garbage- with geometry superimposed on it which gives it order and balance.”

Nondi_’s use of vaporwave and weightless sound design could fit into the framework supplied by Kelley. Also, her use of soundfonts and deteriorated sounds can be tied in as well. Vaporwave has always been about the kitchieness of muzak, broadly speaking, and weightless is more of a descriptor than a description of a music genre or scene. These sounds aesthetically compliment each other by the use of ephemerality, specifically their ungrounded dreamlike quality. They’re bloby, unbounded, and ambient in nature. Exactly what Kelley says about organic material. 

The comparison to Boards of Canada is an apt one, since the naturalistic quality to their song titles and foley. Nondi_’s music, however, is tied to the internet as it’s environment. It’s online folk art. She’ll be the first to tell you about her Tumblr days as youth. 

But the framework, or as Kelley says, “geometry superimposed on it which gives it order and balance,” is footwork. By building on genres of music born in the new millennium, and the past one, Nondi_ is building a different kind of culture and social structure, one born from material reality transposed online.

Follow nondi_:  hrrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/linear-extra-horizon 

Written By Rei Low: x.com/_rocktimist