For anyone familiar with kids cartoon Steven Universe, the leisurely scat of Laura Les’ ‘how to dress as human’ from her 2017 release ‘i just dont wanna name it anything with "beach" in the title’ reads as a reference to the titular half-human, half-Gem boy protagonist. With its foregrounding of LGBTQ themes, the animated series has become somewhat of a cultural touchstone for a younger generation of queer-identifying artists. 26-year-old Ohio-based producer Galen Tipton notes the show as one of a long list of influences, alongside the textural elements and experimentation of SOPHIE. “Her whole public coming out, and all of the songs related to her trans-ness and identity gave me so much life, as a non-binary, trans girl producer,” they explain. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the 'It’s Okay To Cry’ music video and teared up lmao.”

You can hear elements of SOPHIE’s dissonant spectacles of near-tangible sonic objects in Tipton’s ‘Queer Flesh’ cassette tape, released on Post-Geography last year. The 12 tracks are shattered into countless cracked and crackling fragments of contrasting sounds, ideas and stylistic references. ‘Crystal Blood’ starts in hi-tech noise before moving through trap and bass, a marimba melody, and atmospheric drone in the span of three minutes. The track listing plays out like a selection of attention deficit sound sketches rather than individual songs, similar to the impulsive and intuitive footwork and house fusions of international producers like 食品まつり a.k.a foodman, DJWWWW and toiret status. “I don’t consider my music footwork, by any stretch, but I feel a strong creative kinship with the Japanese experimental scene that dabbles in footwork,” Galen explains. ”To me, the music these artists make sounds like pure freedom and play, and that’s the space I like to create from—one of unrestricted expression and emotion.”

Tipton made their own reworking of umru and osno1’s 'popular', which goes some way in reinforcing the highly networked nature and remix culture of the community surrounding this URL scene. Minecraft-specific music event Fire Festival goes further. A clear play on the infamous millennial fail that was the “luxury” Fyre Festival, the virtual festival took place on two stages within the video game and featured an epic line-up, including Anamanaguchi, Water Spirit and Kai Whiston, among others. “Basically, that began with a friend’s joke idea for a birthday party in Minecraft and somehow evolved into a full-blown online music festival that I helped curate and manage,” umru says, about the occasion organised by 21-year-old producer Sleepycatt, which also drew cameos from Charli XCX and A. G. Cook. “I think it was a very insane testament to how strong the various online music scenes that came together for the festival have become.”

A standout in the 13-hour-long SoundCloud recap of Fire Festival is a mix by Roxas and Klahrk collaborative project quavis, where a jump-up d'n'b reworking of Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ by Sherekhan meets the industrial hip hop of Death Grips. Originally distributing and developing his music via Soundcloud from “a sleepy town in the south of England”, Klahrk first met Argentinian producer Roxas via the music-sharing platform. “We instantly had a connection through our outrageously similar music tastes and have been making music together since 2016,” he writes on the beginnings of the original quavis duo. They have since renamed themselves Klahrk & Roxas and released their debut album ‘QUAVIS’ via Activia Benz on June 14. The music from the record is less focused on the cute and femme aesthetics, and more on the chaotic dynamics and crunchy sampling of their PC Music precursors. “Their hyper-real take on pop music was such a fresh break from everything else I was listening to at the time I found them in 2014 and has continued to develop since,” Klahrk explains, in the meantime acknowledging that it's the label’s business and distribution method that informs how his own WARE collective works. “The thing that I admire most about PC Music and that has influenced me is how they are run as an internet-based label.”

In one quavis track, called ‘hypertension’, the frenetic oscillations at the fore briefly yield to a murky vox pop of an interview with umru on YouTuber Lauren Engel’s Sidewalk Talk channel. It’s a detail only a loyal fan would recognise but given the countless reddit threads and live show bootlegs devoted to reporting on all things PC Music, it’s one that would surely not go unmissed. Columbus, Georgia-based 18-year-old Dvnots (aka Lilah Duncan) is one such fan, whose comments and corrections you can find across online platforms. “I can definitely admit that when I first started out as Dvnots four years ago, quite a bit of my stuff at the time (which has mostly, thankfully, disappeared from the internet) was a bit derivative,” Duncan writes about her developing catalogue. “The first things on my Soundcloud were remasters of live SOPHIE rips but I took those all down a really long time ago.” Her work is now more personal, while still counting SOPHIE and felicita as major influences. Their mark is audible in the topsy-turvy clicks, pops and bounces of Dvnots track ‘It's Pouring / Lux (To Be A Child Again)’, and is felt in the sub bass kick and dance-oriented modulations of ‘Siberia’ from her Betrail Mix.