Related Recs

💌

LOVER BOY

This is the photo that I stare at longingly as we talk on the phone. I miss him terribly right now. We met outside of a funny little bar (Avant-Garde in Ottawa) during a break in sets where everyone was smoking outside. I actually came to see his friend’s band but he and his friends were absolutely tearing up the dance floor. I decided to go up and talk to the cute ginger boy (lover boy, Cam) and the goofy guy from the band (Noah) and they told me about a DJ set Noah was doing the next Friday. Cam never got my number so I had to go, obviously. He finally got my instagram (make better choices, ask for their number) that night and I dmed him and asked what he was doing the next day - he was going to read on his balcony. I’d learn later that this man is a very avid reader (love). I asked to join and that was our first date! He’s the first person to ever cook for me, and he even set me up on a chair and with a baguette with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. We dated for the rest of the summer, about two months, then I went back to school in a different city and we parted ways. He thought we’d never talk again but I hit him up whenever I came back to town and even asked if he’d like to spend a couple of days cooped up when I was back on winter break. He said yes and we drank wine and watched good movies and ate grapefruits. That weekend together brought us really close. I wasn’t in Ottawa the next summer but I did spend two weeks completely alone in Kakabeka Falls between forestry contracts in Northern Ontario. Those weeks I called him most days for hours despite us not having really talked in months. Then I came back to Ottawa for an internship this September. I’ve always been really weird about relationships, so I told him I just wanted to be friends. So we were, but also we would *platonically* share the twin bed I had at the time when it was late and I didn’t want him to spend exorbitant amounts of money getting home. He actually told me he wanted to be with me in October, but I was scared and said he wasn’t what I wanted. We stayed friends. December 21st I wanted to go see my favourite local band (Baby Richman) back at Avant-Garde. They have a super psychadelic sound and one of my roommates gave me shrooms to take. I was supposed to go with my other roommate, but she cancelled last minute. Not wanting to lightly trip alone in public, I invited Cam. The night was great, but when the music ended I didn’t want to stay out. I wanted to lie in my soft bed, feel my soft cotton pyjamas, and look up at my twinkly lights. Lying on my bed with Cam, we talked for hours. I cried at how beautifully he described his family’s Christmas traditions. That night I realized just how much I want to be an integral part of his life. We were a year and a half in the making. He is wonderful. He’s funny, incredibly smart, and inspires me to improve every day. He also always stuck around, despite many efforts to push something so good away. I am so lucky to be reunited with him in July.

@persimmons

May 26, 2025

🎼

A CONCERT, HINGE, AND BACK AGAIN

We met at a concert through a bunch of mutual friends and chatted for a while - we both had partners at the time so nothing came of it, but we matched on hinge a couple years later and he remember the exact conversation we had at the venue. We dated for a few months but it didn’t line up - we stayed friends and eventually were both single, doing everything together, and texting non-stop. He asked if I ever thought about us dating again and then I pretended to not be in love with him for about 3 months until I couldn’t take it anymore. We’ve been together for over a year now and he’s my best friend in the world - I love him so much and feel so grateful for the universe continuously putting us back together.

@morgantessier

Apr 22, 2025

⭐

SOmething I can't really forget

I used to hang out with a coworker of mine on our breaks, we would drive around in my car and just chat. The first time we ever hung out he was on aux and played The Reason by Hoobastank, he belted at full volume the entire song. This shocked me because luckily I am nonjudgemental and I thought this was fabulous, and it was such a vulnerable thing to do with me and I felt very trusted. Unluckily he ended up being kind of awful to me when I rejected his romantic advances, but I really enjoyed this moment together and I can't stop thinking about it.

@vague_magenta_porpoise

Jan 22, 2025

Top Recs from @royallmonarch

🌊

WATCHING MOVING WATER

just sit still and listen. drink it in.

@royallmonarch

5d ago

📴

DETACH from the algo, become an active participant in your own curation, form relationships to music, track your patterns

I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order. so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data. Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music. so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason. aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume

@royallmonarch

Feb 29, 2024

🚲

GOING ON A SUMMER SUNSET BIKE RIDE

many treats to be had

@royallmonarch

3d ago