Hey everybody,
I know there are multiple ways into this channel but by far the most popular is Sleepcore.
Regardless of how you came here, I know it isn’t the clearest as to what exactly Sleepcore
is, so here, on its third anniversary, I’d like to take a bit of time and unpack it.
Explore what it means to me, why I do it and how it’s changed over the years, you know,
what it is.
So the less satisfying answer is the obvious.
It is a show.
A curated collection of media intended to replicate the experience of late night channel
surfing.
I’ve never slept well.
I’ve spent many sleepless nights with media, falling in and out of sleep with dreams being
influenced by said media.
Sleepcore is not intended to be a sleep aid in that it will make you fall asleep or help
you stay asleep.
If it works like that for you, great, happy to help, but they’re produced to enhance
the experience of falling asleep.
This media is meant to compliment that period between being awake and falling asleep, where
you sometimes slip into memory, guilt, regret, that sort of thing.
I sometimes think of it like a television signal broadcast from memories and not always
your own.
It grew out of vaporwave and the idea of being nostalgic or comforted by something you’ve
never experienced.
There is a lot of terrible vaporwave admittedly but when it clicks and works.
It’s amazing.
I love it.
I was also watching a lot of found VHS around the time I came up with the idea, home recordings
that would be taped over several times so that one show or recording would sometimes
abruptly cut away to another or just static and then something else would fade out of
that, because of how these tapes were made.
Someone recording something and then quickly grabbing a tape to record something else,
so you get these sometimes eclectic media mixes, that are curated by impulse.
I’ve always wanted to curate or program a television channel.
Sleepcore was that on a small scale.
I’ve since stepped that up so that it is part of a larger network of different series
that have spanned multiple “seasons” even.
I never wanted it to be a content dump.
I wanted the clips to matter.
I want them be something more than also just pandering nostalgia, you know, remember when?
That sort of thing.
I think you can do so much more with nostalgia.
Not to say to I’ve always been successful and that I haven’t played up nostalgia,
but the goal has always been to take people on a trip, and not always a fun trip.
Sometimes it does get dark.
See Nightmarecore as an example.
My biggest inspiration was Night Moves or Walk or Ride.
I’ve talked about this before.
It was a series in the ‘80s that ran overnight in the Toronto area that was more or less,
a walk or drive around the city with some great 80s jazz.
This was something I discovered later on. I didn't watch it when it aired.
I also did not watch Night Flight.
Learning about that, I think it definitely deserves a shout out.
Broadcasting was a big part of Sleepcore early on.
I used to stream until it became clear my computer could not longer handle it, at least
not reliably.
I would announce streams and build hype, as much hype as I could build at the time and
things would go wrong.
The best example was the Screamathon 2019.
It went out about three hours in and I felt awful because we were getting about 3 or 4
times our normal viewership and I feel like I let people down.
There was a lot of excitement around that so that was a bummer.
Up until about six months ago everything was done on a 2014 Mac Mini.
The first anniversary stream, the six hour one, nearly killed it.
That’s still the best Sleepcore ever.
Dreams, Media and Memories.
It streamed between midnight and 6 a.m and that really allowed the themes to develop:
loneliness, crime, anxiety, fading in and out of dreams based on what you were watching.
Media triggers.
I still think this is peak Sleepcore and everything else has been trying to replicate it.
Everything I ever wanted Sleepcore to be, you can find it there.
You can watch it for free on our Patreon.
I’ll post a link but yeah.
Dreams.
Dreams are weird.
Sometimes they start out warm and pleasant and quickly turn terrifying as seen in the
two Nightmarecores.
Honorable mention to both of them.
Those are also some of my favourites, though 2020 I think was better, conceptually.
Because of some of the more popular themes, Sleepcore gets associated with nostalgia, like we were talking about earlier
and warm feelings but its not uncommon for some really dark shit to come to you while you’re
trying to go to sleep and Nightmarecore gets to explore that.
I’ve since upgraded my computer but have not returned to streaming because I think
Sleepcore is more effective as an individual experience rather than a shared one.
Not to say it can't be fun watching along and laughing like MST3K but I find 1 on 1 to be more effective in getting
some of the dreamy qualities acrossed.
Some people don’t get it and that’s fine.
I remember one piece of criticism I got was the ordering of clips.
Someone thought they should’ve played chronologically and told me to organise them better and I
just can’t imagine watching Sleepcore and thinking about chronology or time because it travels
through it. That's a huge appeal of it, I think.
I know there are some of you who grew up with this content and have your own memories attached
to it and I also know that many of you grew up without traditional television.
Sleepcore has always existed.
I used to say it’s an aesthetic I contextualised and have since applied that to music playlists.
You can follow us on Spotify.
There is four playlists over there now, including a new one, that try to capture a similar feeling.
The most interesting period of Sleepcore in my opinion was the Patreon Era.
They are available free and I used them to explore the ideas I still got excited over.
So you get a lot of dreamy, I used to call them dreamscapes. Media mixes to older songs. Not really based around theme.
The later ones start getting really personal in a way, though I guess that could be said
for any of the ones I put together.
A lot of you make suggestions for themes and that’s great and welcomed but I encourage
you to create your own Sleepcore.
It’s fun, calming and pretty easy.
Between the channel and Patreon, I produce 8 or 9 videos a month ranging in intensity
and effort and it’s exhausting.
I love it but I would be lying if I said I never get burnt out.
I always use Sleepcore, putting it together, as a sort of meditative experience.
It’s always very relaxing and satisfying just looking for stuff to use.
I sometimes think I’m over it and I never want to do it again and then I come up an
edit and it’s like, holy shit.
It’s the best.
Anyway, that’s how I see Sleepcore.
I think it’s unavoidable that something like Sleepcore is taken many different ways
and so to some of you this sounds very pretentious and you’re thinking it’s just fun clips,
get over yourself, and that’s cool too.
So yeah, let me know what you think of Sleepcore.
Let me know what Sleepcore means to you down below.
I have done something similar the past couple of years, so if you want to see how my own
perception of Sleepcore has changed over the years, you can check out those videos.
If you enjoyed this one, give us a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven’t.
We are entirely supported by our patrons.
I do not monetize any of my videos and in return, I produce a lot of exclusive content
and series.
patreon.com/picsnportraits.
If you haven’t seen it already, we also recently put up a best of all time with some
of our favourite and most memorable clips used in Sleepcore or examples of Sleepcore.
So please check that out if you haven’t.
Thank you all for making Sleepcore what it is because when I first came up with it I
did not imagine the hundreds of thousands of views that its gotten and that it resonates
with people and I think that’s really amazing.
So thank you so much for your interest in this channel and thank you so much for watching.
Stay safe out there.