Electronica went through a renaissance in the 2010’s with the rising popularity of online music hubs like Soundcloud. The site went from 1 million listeners to 10 million in the short span of 2010-2012, a meteoric gain that connected artists through a timeline of endless noise curated by creators. Pioneers in experimental electronic music found a new home on a platform that drove artists to create music that would either expand the mainstream EDM zeitgeist, or further insulate it into fringe genres. I think Brasstracks said it best:

Close association of artists-inspiring-artists generated the ideal concoction of lateral music making, a social evolution of sound design.
In 2013, a new oddity arose in the digital music sphere. It’s a subgenre that didn’t receive extensive fanfare, but it’s echoes are still heard in its modern EDM variants. The namesake isn’t universally known or accepted, but some followers clung to it’s humble origin. So how did a movement emerge from a chopped n’ screwed remix of Aaliyah‘s “Are You That Somebody“? Take a trip back to the early 2010’s with me and I’ll show (or reintroduce) you to a blip on the cloudy radar; the Dofflin.
What is Dofflin?
This here was the birth of a new genus in digital music, a whole bank of hypermelodic, bubblegum synth-bass that became definitive to “Dofflin-style” music, all rooted to the release of a single track. It’s 2013 contemporaries were a quilt of EDM genres: Big Room House was thriving, Dubstep was ever-relevant, Vaporwave was still young, and JerseyClub was seeing a resurgence with the help of a pseudonym-clad Norwegian producer repurposing timeless 2000’s R&B. Electronic music was changing, and it’s limitless potential was truly being tapped into.
Here’s some context. There’s no way I can possibly get to everything, but these are the artists and tracks that tie the bubblegum aesthetic and R&B remixing into a cohesive movement.
[I’ll try not to conflate the somewhat small acceptance of the term, Dofflin. Here’s an Urban Dictionary definition from 2015, an ancient Prime Loops Sample Pack, and a subreddit that’s been compiling tracks for years. I’ll give the disclaimer that many of the following tracks and artists also fall into much larger categories]
Enter: Cosmo’s Midnight

Hot off their hit remix of Flume’s “Sleepless”, the twin duo from Sydney, Australia, were cooking up a hydro-charged remix of an Aaliyah classic, aptly named:
They emerged during a time where Soundcloud was gaining legitimacy as a springboard platform for musicians, where mega stars were formed from nothing but bedroom-producer gusto and a creative style. The titular track is an Aaliyah remix, full of blippy synths, descending percussive triplets, and a woozy aquatic backdrop of what sounds like… dolphin clicks? No seriously, that’s what it’s called:

It’s bizarre.
The track is muffled, often with detuned samples, warbling like the song’s being played from the bottom of a swimming pool. It’s eyebrow-raising synth tone sounds like the lead’s being played on an inflatable saxophone or something. The cacophonous triplet snare hits, the reckless arpeggios, shit man, there was nothing like it.
I try to remember my headspace in 2013, and it seems like a fucking fantasy, a fever dream. Hearing the Dofflin for the first time, and the subsequent Wave Racer remix feels like formative moments. On paper, it’s ridiculous. Like a song that should’ve been written off as a meme, but the execution was… good? A bit eccentric? But yeah, good.
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Enter: Wave Racer

Wave Racer embraced the track and ran, obliterating any preconceived rules I thought there were to music production. Wave Racer‘s remix and own body of work reflected everything that the “Dofflin” idea would soon embody, and is arguably the quintessential component to the growth of the movement. I mean, just look at the album cover of the first 2 Wave Racer singles (Rock U Tonite, Stoopid) that dropped on the Future Classic label, home to similar experimental music worthy of praise (honorable mention: Cashmere Cat).

This idyllic dolphin imagery was set in stone as the visual simulacrum of the sound; if Stoopid is the second “dofflin-style” track you’ve ever heard, you can probably pick apart the similar sound and style of the original The Dofflin track. Wild, jangly synth arpeggios, goofy sampling techniques, pitch shifted vocal chops, the same degree of bonkers.
Enter: Trippy Turtle and Neo-JerseyClub

Adjacent artists were peaking in popularity, or evolving into newer movements that adopted similar textural motifs. 2013 was the same year that Trippy Turtle ascended onto the scene, with his own brand of bright, synthy, sample heavy (aaand somewhat appropriative) JerseyClub style music. Trippy Turtle created a parallel explosion of lavish R&B remixing, and maybe contributed to a revival in the JerseyClub scene. (A retrospective on JerseyClub is well deserved, I’ll get to it soon!)
Enter: PC MUSIC

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