earwander

for Lu, with love

earwander is a map of 6,291 genres of music, set as a manuscript: one word for each genre, placed by how it sounds, every word audible on touch. Each genre has a page of its own, with its artists on the same axes.

Down is more organic, up more mechanical and electric; left denser and more atmospheric, right spikier and bouncier. The sheet is set in one ink, and the ink does what colour would: heavier words are more electric, words that lean are bouncier, fainter words are more atmospheric, larger words are more listened to. The atlas sets the whole sheet on one page, its height pressed up to some twenty times harder than its width, so that up and down read nearer there than they are.

Every word can be heard. Drag the sheet; pinch or ctrl-scroll to zoom; touch a word to hear it, and the arrow in the margin to enter it. Scan lets the map walk; the line is where you have been. The thirty-second previews come from Deezer, and from Spotify where Deezer has none. Nothing you hear or choose is recorded anywhere but in this tab. There is no analytics; the only requests that leave this page go to Google Fonts, to Deezer, and to the two preview servers.