- A moody, footwork-infused reflection of what it's like to live in a city with a history of disaster.
- "We live in constant fear of the next flood," says Johnstown local Tatiana Triplin, whose work you may have come across without even realising it. She goes by many different names: Nondi_, Yakui, Fuuka ASMR, Crushing Union, Terri Howard and Riteskeeper, among others.. You'll find her music on her Horrible Recordings (HRR) imprint or over on EAT DIS, which is run by close friend DJ GIRL. Nondi_ is one of her more footwork-leaning projects, and it's in this guise that she debuts on Planet Mu with the experimental footwork album Flood City Trax, a collection of tracks (some new, some from singles released in 2020/21) meant to reflect what it feels like to live in Johnstown.
Over 2,000 people died in the Johnstown floods of 1889, not even counting two other fatal disasters in 1936 and 1977. What once harboured booming coal and steel mill industries has since been abandoned with little prospect for future business. With Flood City Trax, Triplin captures the subsequent fear, sadness, isolation and boredom of living in a place that's been left for dead. "Since the original flood in 1889, barely anything has been done to prevent another one from happening again. Everything that was good [about this town] is still in ruins," she told me in an interview over the phone. "It's like the past just didn't happen."
This aloofness is one of the first things you'll notice about the record. Nearly every song is shrouded in iridescent pads and sweet, bright tones that paint a pastel-hued picture of Johnstown. Triplin admits she has an affinity for cute things—see the AI generated plushies that adorn her recent Nondi_ singles on HRR or tracks named after Pokémon, like Lilligant—but here, rather than being cute, it makes everything feel dreamy and nostalgic, like a fond but fading memory of something that once was.
An album of just floaty music would be pretty dull to listen to, though, even if it did get across the idea that Johnstown once had potential and now exists in a sort of limbo. But Triplin's music does more than that, looking beyond the dreamlike facade and unveiling the many moods that come from living in a place like this. "Orchid Juke" is alarming: its spiralling effects like sirens, its hammering footwork drums manic. "Euphonic Daydream"'s overdriven sub bass and helter skelter synths are tempestuous, and the galloping basslines and stuttered vocal grabs on "01-25-2022" are angsty – you could easily imagine them on Jana Rush's Painful Enlightenment LP.
Flood City Trax is bleak in much a different way than that album. Like a kid in a crumbling home totally absorbed by her Nintendo Switch, or a security guard footworking on a street corner during their drab nine-to-five, the promises of something better feel like mere distractions on this album, and only serve to exacerbate the truth. "Long Ago" is the chirpiest song of the lot with its 2-step lilt, but the pitch-wobbling effects at the end – sounding like a chorus of rejoicing sprites– turn it fantastical. And if it's not fictitious then it's distant. The gated synths on "Sun Juke" are so muted that it's like you're hearing the remnants of a rave you weren't invited to. And the ditty that soundtracks "Harmoyear" could have been plucked straight out of a music box,
Flood City Trax is a feat of what you can say without saying much at all. When people speak of their hometowns, places they are fond of (and Triplin is fond of Johnstown), they might describe them with colourful adjectives – for better or for worse. Triplin uses moods from sad to bored to anxious to hopeful, instead. With such a range, there was every chance the album could have ended up muddled, but that is not the case. The Johnstown producer cultivates an array of contrasting emotions out of a bed of cotton-cloud effects and in doing so presents you with the very real and unnerving truth behind life in her town. "I feel like I'm making Johnstown music," she says. She's giving voice to a disillusioned community that's been drowned out for so long.
Tracklist01. FCD (Floaty Cloud Dream)
02. Orchid Juke
03. Sun Juke
04. Nondi Shadow
05. Euphonic Daydream
06. 01-25-2022
07. Healing Rain
08. Dusty
09. Nostalgic Vision
10. Long Ago
11. Sentimental Juke
12. Harmoyear