Moss Garden
You know that feeling when you find something that feels like it was meant for you? Somehow, every aspect of it conforms with your tastes, your sensibilities, your whole being. Something that makes you proclaim "It was made for me"?
Well, I found something like this recently it's as mysterious as it is beautiful: Moss Garden.
It's a continuous stream of ambient music, heavily leaning on Japanese greats like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa or Haruomi Hosono, but also more contemporary artists like Boards of Canada and CFCF. Among so many others.
The site is extremely minimal. Nothing but a couple of buttons, the currently playing track and an extremely pleasant, slowly shifting gradient.
The source code features an ASCII bonsai tree and is similarly minimal:
<!--
,.,
MMMM_ ,..,
"_ "__"MMMMM ,...,,
,..., __." --" ,., _-"MMMMMMM
MMMMMM"___ "_._ MMM"_."" _ """"""
""""" "" , \_. "_. ."
,., _"__ \__./ ."
MMMMM_" "_ ./
'''' ( )
._______________.-'____"---._.
\ /
\________________________/
(_) (_)
-->
Notoriously absent are any credits. No link to socials, no "buy me a coffee", no authorship of any kind. I stumbled upon it by chance, exploring collections in Are.na related to some of my interests.
It's the kind of minimal, magical place that makes me fall in love with the Internet all over again. Someone out there put this together. I don't know if it's running off a randomized playlist, if there's any curation of the content. All I can do is tune in and listen. Sit for a while and watch the gradient move ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly. A digital garden in the purest sense.
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