Torus of Fizzosophy
The Torus of Fizzosophy (Aka. The Torus) is a donut-shaped manifesto laying out the interconnected principles of the Fizz genre and movement, all of which stem from Jazz x Bass Music, Zoomer Internet Culture and the 3 Axioms. The Torus is an example of Fizz De Novism.
History
The Torus was formed during the creation process of Fizz Vol. 1, an album whose goal was to represent the Fizzosophy. The initial “flat version” of the manifesto featured red arrows going in one side and coming out the other, making the image a topological torus, which was later projected onto an actual donut shape. The Torus first shows up publicly in the "What Is Fizz?" video, posted to the IJ and phonon YouTube channel on June 24th, 2025. This video describes more loosely the existence of Fizz as a movement and a genre, but the Torus zeroes in more on the philosophy and culture driving Fizz original music and Fizz remixes.
Jazz x Bass Music
Fizz is a subgenre of EDM, borrowing most of its sound design and song structure from the Bass music playbook. Despite technically not being Jazz, Fizz borrows a ton of harmonic and rhythmic elements from Jazztronica and Nu-Jazz specifically, with many Fizz artists drawing inspiration from Knower, Bill Wurtz, and Jacob Collier. This makes Fizz very compositionally dense, relative to other EDM subgenres.
Music Theory/Sound Design Indulgence
Both Jazz and Bass music have a sizeable subset of “music nerds” within their community, with Bass nerds specializing in production and sound design, and Jazz nerds specializing in composition and music theory. Despite how compatible these two communities are, with Jazz being occasionally used as an “accessory” in Dubstep and vice versa, they rarely collide head-on. Bridging that gap by collaborating and knowledge sharing is one of the most important objectives in the Fizz community.
Allergy to Unstimulating, Cliche Musical Ideas
Fizz is opposed to the kind of cliché, insincere decision-making that’s all too common in music and art in general. This is born from the music theory and sound design enthusiasm prevalent in the Fizz community. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the same thing as an allergy to simple musical ideas; it’s an opposition to ideas born from a lazy, careless mindset. Many avid Fizz listeners have reported feeling unsatisfied by other music after listening to Fizz music for an extended period of time.
Fizz Remix Philosophy
Similar to Jazz and EDM, it’s extremely common to remix other media in Fizz music.
“In EDM, there’s a tradition of spicing up other artist's works, usually by taking a sound recording of a work, or the stems thereof, and playing with it. This is what everyone thinks of when they hear the word “remix”. In Jazz, there’s a similar tradition of taking the melody of a work and the harmonic content surrounding it, and playing with that. A Fizz remix is the result of combining these different traditions in an aggressive fashion, insatiably rearranging, reharmonizing, sonically transforming and improvising over a work in order to absolutely rip it apart, mock it and honour it.” - Fizz Remix Philosophy, 2024 by IJ and phonon.
Extreme Information Density
Fizz rejects the popular artistic dogma of “less is more”. This dogma is viewed as an unjustified mechanism by which innovative music with layered chord progressions, rhythms, and bass lines gets artificially suppressed by mainstream thought leaders. Fizz has also been appealing to many people in the neurodivergent community, as much of it is extremely stimulating, layered, and detail-heavy at every level. Fizz has been described by fans and haters as "ADHD music", which is an apt description as many individuals in the Fizz movement are neurodivergent, including those who are autistic or have ADHD and OCD.
Zoomer Internet Culture
Zoomers didn’t invent Jazz Fusion or Dubstep, but there’s a sense in which zoomers are uniquely accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of such genres, making it intuitive for them to understand why the two genres are so similar and compatible; the biggest reason for this being popular video game soundtracks like Geometry Dash and Beat Saber for dubstep, as well as Wii Sports and Mario Kart for Jazz. Memes and remix culture are a huge part of the culture, with Fizz fans commonly using memes to spread Fizz.
"2000s nostalgia and zoomer internet culture cut deep, meaning they’ve both been exposed to everything from Animusic to YouTube gaming dubstep intros." - phonon in “What is Fizz”.
Taking a Thing and Exhaustively Milking It
The internet is notorious for memeing everything that it touches. This can be dangerous when applied to important information like news or science, but it can breed interesting results when applied to art, some of the most wholesome examples being the overabundance of EDM remixes of media, Jazz reharmonization and “shred” videos, and the tidal wave of funny YTPs and edits of every type of media you can imagine. This type of high-effort, chaotic remix culture was pioneered by the millennial generation, which left online zoomers to grow up in that cesspool. The fast-paced, chaotic nature of the internet shaped the Fizz remix philosophy and Fizz in general, with its sporadic, over-the-top motivic development, resampling, and rearranging.
2000s nostalgia
Since Fizz is most commonly made by Gen-Z, nostalgia for the early 2000s has a tendency of making its way into the music, either in terms of style, audio that gets remixed, or even visuals that accompany the music.
Post-Irony
As illustrated a bit more clearly with the memes made about Fizz, there’s this sense that Fizz, in all its seriousness and grandiosity, is a complete joke at the same time (a sh*tpost, if you will). Fizz has been described as “absurdist” by fans and critics alike.
Self Referentiality
Self referentiality.
3 Axioms
The 3 axioms: We love everything, we hate everything, everything matters make up one of the core pillars of Fizz. The phonon quote “We love everything and hate how it’s treated” is a popular summarization for these seemingly contradictory axioms. Unlike the first two axioms of Fizz, “Everything matters” doesn’t have an opposing counterpart, making Fizz one of four possible positions on a larger spectrum. Other possible positions on this “Fizz political compass” include Rotational-Fizz, Anti-Fizz, and Rotational-Anti-Fizz.
1: We Love Everything
Music theory, sound design, funky bass lines, pretty melodies, mind-blowing chords, the endless potential of Fizz exploiting it all - we love everything.
2: We Hate Everything
Fizz was born out of a love for everything, but also a deep hatred for the way it’s treated. Using AI to offload creative decisions, trying to appeal to other people instead of making what you believe in, settling for less - these things are antithetical to Fizz. This “hatred” is characterized by ravenousness and a chronic dissatisfaction with what currently exists in music and art, and an obsession with making it better.
3: Everything Matters
Widely viewed as the most important of the 3 axioms, there’s no such thing as a detail too insignificant to be worth caring about in Fizz. Obsession over big and ridiculously small things is a core part of Fizz.
Unhinged Musical Shenanigans
Fizz musicians are a melting pot of instrumentalists, producers, theorists, shredders, and all-around lovers of music who aren’t afraid of going insane and pushing against the status quo (especially followers of Dark Fizz, who are driven to endlessly pursue the Thing). This makes Fizz uniquely conducive to the creation of some of the most cutting-edge, boundary-pushing music.