Corvad [Music]

Dark, Russian, synth.
There are few things that beat the feeling and experience of discovering something new that is good. Especially when it's music. And especially when the good new music is paired with some mind blowing music videos. It's almost rapturous.

One of the grails that social media companies like to chase is "discoverability". For people new to a service it's incredibly important to be found, and for established people on a service it's incredibly important (for "engagement") to keep seeing new stuff/people you will enjoy. Quite a difficult problem for algorithms to solve, and I'm sure whoever gets it done will make a ton of money, but until this white whale is wrangled, it can be pretty simple (but admittedly time consuming) to discover good new stuff if users are given the right tools.

Tool 1: The ability to bookmark/save/easily return to creators that the user likes.

Tool 2: The ability to be able to see either the posts, OR the people that that creator likes or follows.

It's best if users can group creators as they see fit, but this is something most companies seem to not want to provide.

I discovered Corvad today because I really like the music of a guy out of New York who calls himself Designer Drugs. I checked Designer Drug's soundcloud page to see if he'd put out anything new (sadly not), then clicked over on the people he is following, and proceeded to open up a number at random.

The trick of course, and what makes an algorithmic discoverability solution exceptionally hard imo, is that just because you like a creator's creations, doesn't mean you're going to like everything that creator likes. However, there's almost guaranteed to be some overlap in tastes, and today I got lucky.

I lack the vocabulary to describe what it is that I most like about this music, but the "builds", "drops", "beats" and transitions resonate with me on some crazy primal level and is apparently exactly what my body needs to produce the natural drugs associated with music.

We conclude that endogenous opioids are critical to experiencing both positive and negative emotions in music, and that music uses the same reward pathways as food, drug and sexual pleasure. -Nature

The three blisteringly awesome artsy music videos certainly helped too.

Corvad - Tesla - Beautiful young woman finds portal in the Russian forests and appears to get witchy with it.

Corvad - Durmitor - Tattooed Russian thief gets philosophical and has problems in his abusive relationship.

Corvad - Ultraviolence - Some dude dances inside an apparently abandoned industrial complex and his bros show up to dance with him in strange pants.

Gotta say, of them all I think Ultraviolence is my favorite video of the three. You've got these "Vogue" type arm and hand moves, but you've also got the incorporation of these crazy traditional Russian "jump" steps and moves. And lots of physical movement that is aggressive/threatening and "enlarging" (serves to increase the amount of physical space he takes up). On the whole, the movements are very "masculine" without being completely reliant upon pelvic moves and "muh dik".