santpoort

Producer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist santpoort is a master of lush textures, field recordings, and found sounds. For his newest EP, dinosaur valley, the Sydney-based creative has gathered an entire universe. A world-building project both archaic and dystopian. Equipped with a pouch of snacks, a cassette player, and some good headphones, santpoort embarks on a timeless journey full of rainforests and densely packed earthscapes. If his last album (2024's maybe not tomorrow) was surrounded by an overgrowth of vines wrapping around desolate lands, then dinosaur valley brings the return of extinct beasts, roaming peacefully in their new claimed terrain.

In his own words, this EP is full of "fantastical worlds where humans coexist with dinosaurs."

dinosaur valley is a six song, fourteen minute EP. Layered with aquatic textures and nature elements, this project sounds like diving into a forbidden hidden lake and finding prehistoric bones resting at the bottom. Like soaring on the wings of an extinct pterodactyl and waking in a hammock on the coast. Like holding handfuls of amber and fossils while stumbling through a cave. Everything is comfortable yet nothing is familiar.

This project is a homage to forgotten digital relics from santpoort's mother's early 1990s computer. The era of Windows 3.1, MS DOS, and NES. Before wireless and wifi, before dial-up, even. Imagine that. Taking inspiration from the childhood book series Dinotopia, throwback computer games like Prehistorik 2 (1993) and Monster Bash (1993), as well as instrumental hip-hop pioneers like Nujabes, J. Dilla, DJ Shadow, and Q-Tip, the result is a project both vintage and modern. Old school and new. Nostalgic yet refreshing in its newfound sound.

Along with hip-hop inspirations, this project contains elements of lush dub, bass, and even downtempo electronica for a truly unique and signature sound. It's what we've come to expect from santpoort. Laid-back beats packed with replay value and cozy backdrops to soundtrack your every day.

"The breaks used on this EP," santpoort says, "are some of my first samples when I started to create beats on a Windows 95 computer in 2004. I haven’t touched them since and I wanted to re-contextualise these drums with a modern sound to bring us back to the early days of the internet."

Before the cloud, before flash drives, before smartphones. Back when floppy discs ruled the world. Back when joysticks were necessary, and remote controls had to be plugged into the gaming system in order to properly work. Back when games glitched and skipped and had to be blown on in order to function.

Everyone needs a trip back in time to the care-free living of their youth. Tapping into the past through a recording or a sound. Opening a screen in order to visit the past. Beyond traffic jams and beyond the trees, where there live creatures as big as buildings. Eggs the size of cars.

Through and through, this is a nostalgic project full of childhood curiosity and youthful bliss. Short and sweet, it sounds like when imagination was endless and social media meant going to a friend's house to play Nintendo. A lazy afternoon with nothing to do but relax and enjoy the day. It's exactly what we need right now.

- Written by Benjamin Niespodziany