iloyd appreciation post
I saw this post on X:
For some reason, this is the first song that came to mind:
It's not very well known but I still think it's a very beautiful and moving track. It was also featured on the Discovery channel in 2005—The "Okavango Untamed" episode of Animal Planet.
On second thought, it might not be the best song to blast from a giant speaker, but it's still the first track that came to mind for me.
Here are some of the reasons I still think about iloyd and this song.
The Novelty (and Nostalgia)
This song brings me back to some of my first memories of the internet. I remember collecting Weird Al songs on Limewire (including all the random comedy songs that people had labelled as "Weird Al".) Waiting hours to download an extremely low quality trailer for Shrek. Listening to random internet radio comedy stations and discovering Mitch Hedberg and Steven Wright. Chatting online with random teenagers who lived in little towns in the middle of Alaska. And somehow stumbling upon the music of iloyd. I can't remember how. It might have been via the VST plugins that he wrote and shared on some forums, since I liked to collect free VSTs and make my own electronic music.
The Backstory
iloyd is the solo project of a man named Tolga Gurpinar. He grew up in Turkey and now lives in Los Angeles. He works at Spectrasonics, and his music has been licensed by networks like MTV, VH1, Discovery, History, etc.
I remember being fascinated by the "Who is iloyd?" page on his website, which hasn't really changed since I first read it around 25 years ago:
Here is a short excerpt and some photos / videos from his website. (I hope he doesn't mind.)
During my early childhood years in Istanbul, I was inspired by the natural and textural diversity of the land and the Black Sea stretching north of the city.
Photos from https://www.iloyd.com/whoisiloyd.htm
"A short video (age 1 to 4 ) from 8mm films", from https://www.iloyd.com/whoisiloyd.htm
Reading this page when I was around 11 years old was a magical experience. I was connected to a random stranger on the other side of the world, watching 8mm films from a childhood that was very different to mine. We were different ages but had a lot in common—I also loved music, electronic gadgets, and drawing pictures of inventions.
I also liked looking at his galleries of random photos and art:
You can listen to iloyd on SoundCloud and Spotify.
