Music Written to the Internet Machinery

By Allegra Cuomo

It’s late in the evening. I’m skipping through my Spotify playlists and tracks because lately, nothing has really been clicking with me at all. I’m finding all my usual songs boring, uninspiring, or plain, and this is coming from someone who listens to a pretty big variety of music.

The catchiness of my favourite pop songs, the rawness of the rock sonegs, the energy of dance, the smoothness of RnB, or the lyricism in rap tracks, this time round wasn’t getting me up and excited.

Particularly when it comes to EDM, I’m up for anything. Truly, just anything that makes me want to get up and dance. And lately, to switch things up, I had been diving into the realms of glitch, hyperpop, even bloghouse, with the recent influence of these genres on the mainstream resulting from Gen Z’s fascination with indie sleaze.

This is music I find to be great fun; I certainly wouldn’t shy away from songs that sound dirty, hazy, messy, and won’t deny being a self-professed lover of ‘music I imagine gives the vibe of a Window’s PC in the 2000s’ (I’m barely old enough to remember use of CDs beyond being collectibles and a world before Spotify streaming).

So when I first heard Ninajirachi’s song ‘iPod Touch’ that late evening, in the middle of my musical existential crisis, I was immediately obsessed. Obsessed with this technological, melodic burst of lightening with tongue-in-cheek lyrics about the nostalgia of school and hiding her computer under her pillow when she was meant to be asleep.

Following this, I gave Ninajirachi’s debut album I Love My Computer a listen (which featured ‘iPod Touch’ as a single), fell down an internet rabbit hole about complextro music, and found out the artist name ‘Ninajirachi’ (full name: Nina Wilson) was a combination of her first name and Jirachi, a Pokemon, which felt like an apt homage to the digital world she and her music derived from.

Ninajirachi has been releasing music since 2017, releasing her debut EP Lapland in 2019, and taught herself electronic music production as a teenager, something she sings about in iPod Touch with “FL Studio free download in my search history.”

She also developed the official demo project for Ableton Live 11, and her focus on how she used music production as a creative medium, and her mastery and love for creating music with DAWs (digital audio workstations), are central themes in her debut album.

I Love My Computer was released in August 2025, featuring 12 tracks across 39 minutes. Tracks 1–5 bleed into one another, meaning if you aren’t paying close attention, you won’t hear when one switches to the next, even with the distinct sounds between each individual song.

The album opens with ‘London Song’, with the first lyric asking “Um, do you wanna listen to it?” before the tune begins. This moment of intimacy, as though we are being let in on a secret or something yet to be released, draws the listener in immediately. Our brief moment of closeness with the song is interrupted by a shift from a distorted bassline to an accompaniment of industrial drums and synths that almost scramble your brain. From this point, the record begins its rollercoaster, not slowing down until the second half of the album.

After asking if you want to listen to her music, Ninajirachi gives us the perfect device to listen to on ‘iPod Touch.’ As mentioned before, the song recalls when she discovered electronic music online as a teen, spending late nights on her computer learning as much as she could about music and production. The excitement of discovering and exploring a world she is so curious about is euphoric, and the image of staying up late online when she should have been sleeping is something I’m certain swathes of Gen Z can relate to.

‘F*ck my Computer’ is the third track. A glitched-out blare of bleeps and mechanical spirals descends into an electronic chaos. Ninajirachi’s repetition of the lyrics ‘I wanna f*ck my computer / ’Cause no one in the world knows me better’, is both a joke and not really a joke at all. Growing up in a world where your device can permit you access to whole worlds of people and ideas beyond your ‘physical reality’ through social media, gaming, and digital platforms is where people, especially teens and young people, often find their safe spaces and niches.

The album maps out the experience of a generation that was handed devices and the internet with very few guardrails. ‘CSIRAC’ explores the relationship, dependency, and form of intimacy we have with our devices; ‘Delete’ is about posting on social media for a crush and immediately regretting it (we’ve all been there); or ‘Battery Death’, a futuristic dubstep track about overworking your computer to the point where it completely shuts down.

One of my favourite lines in the record is during ‘Delete’ when Ninajirachi describes taking a photo in a particular outfit and posting it soundtracked to her crush’s favourite song, and this behaviour being part of a ‘modern, mega, digital, meta, matin’-ritual’. In an age of digital courtship, dating norms are warped, leaving our speaker anxious immediately after posting the photo. She reflects the confusion and anxiety surrounding young people as they attempt to find love in the modern age, having to read between the lines of these unnatural, digital ‘mating rituals.’

A standout song for me is Track 8: ‘Infohazard.’ In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ninajiachi revealed the song is about being exposed to disturbing content online, something that is almost inevitable as a young person growing up with the internet. Repeating the alternate lines ‘In my dream / On my screen’ emphasises how the content she viewed continues to replay in both her thoughts and dreams, remaining with her permanently.

The album’s closer ‘All At Once’ is the longest track on the record and features an extended instrumental intro of colliding drum beats and synths characterised by a scanning audio, continuing that connection to the technology with which all this music was produced. Ninajirachi speaks about how much music production is a part of her, and the joy making music brings her. The song feels like it's going a hundred miles an hour until the very end, coming to a halt in a sharp, measured way, finally logging off for the night.

I have now listened to this album countless times, and even if I have only the faintest memory of iPods, the aforementioned song and album exemplify something I’ve always found hard to put into words for those who didn’t grow up in the digital age: the idea that the digital world and the physical world/reality/real-life are not two distinct places.

Every friendship and relationship I’ve ever had has been at least partially shaped by the digital world through texting, FaceTime, Instagram stories, and Snapchat streaks. I have never not had the ability to Google something and find the answer to a question immediately. When I was in school, my homework would be sent to me online via an app, and now as an adult, my primary workspaces are online through Medium, LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, Soundcloud, Podbean, Spotify, you name it.

Ninajirachi recounts the lived experience of this paradox; she understands the impossibility of separating our physical and digital lives because our real lives are shaped by both. There is a feeling among those who grew up with the internet and personal devices of not quite inhabiting the physical world because some part of your brain is permanently somewhere else.

The experience of being chronically online, unable to switch off, and attached to your device is not something to be ashamed of, but rather worth examining. The internet can open up entire possibilities you would never have known existed: in Ninajirachi’s case, with her computer and growing up in a regional Australian town, she could access a world of music far beyond what she thinks she would have been exposed to, making this the subject of her art.

We are in a moment where the discourse around phones and screens tends to oscillate between moral panic and defensive denial. Making an album that celebrates the creativity and experience unlocked by these technologies while simultaneously acknowledging the permanent effects they had on her demonstrates their multifaceted nature.

The most stripped-back and introspective song on the album is ‘Sing Good,’ the tenth track. Ninajirachi divulges to the listener that “I can’t really play good, but I’ve got a computer / and I put in the practice, so I’m gonna use it”. I find this sentiment so powerful because, while she feared not being the best singer or never having produced a song before, through her practice and with her computer, she accessed the creativity within her.

And here I am on my computer, my own portal of discovery, where I began and continue to hone my own creative expression through writing, music, and storytelling.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I put my headphones on, queue up a few tracks on my phone (let’s pretend it’s an iPod Touch), and listen over and over again to transport myself to that ephemeral digital nostalgia.