Torus of Fizzosophy
The Torus of Fizzosophy is a donut-shaped manifesto which lays out the principles of Fizz. Jazz x Bass Music, Zoomer Internet Culture and the 3 Axioms are the main core principles from which all the other principles arise, as illustrated with the red arrows.
Jazz x Bass Music
Fizz is a subgenre of Bass Music, which itself is a subgenre of EDM. Fizz has harmonic influence from Nu-Jazz and Jazz adjacent artists (ex. Bill Wurtz, Knower, and Jacob Collier), which makes Fizz very compositionally dense compared to other Bass subgenres like Dubstep and Drum n Bass, It's also less rigid than other Bass subgenres about which sounds and BPMs you can use.
Music Theory/Sound Design Indulgence
The online communities of both Jazz and Bass music have a significant subset of music nerds, Jazz nerds focusing on music theory and virtuosity, and Bass nerds focused on sound design and production. Despite the obvious compatibility and various instances of cross-pollination between these two groups, they rarely collide head on. One of the main missions of Fizz is to fully bridge that gap, so collaboration and knowledge sharing between the two groups is very much encouraged.
Allergy to Unstimulating, Cliche Musical Ideas
Fizz has a culture of innovating and experimenting with music theory and sound design, and being all too aware of the endless possibilities that lie ahead. Safe, insincere and lazy decision making are widespread in music, and Fizz is the polar opposite of the mindset that gives rise to those things. Fizz fans thrive on stimulating, creative musical ideas. Fizz addicts have reported regular music feeling "empty" after listening to Fizz for too long.
Fizz Remix Philosophy
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.
Extreme Information Density
Because of it's roots in zoomer Jazz and Bass music online communities, Fizz has a high concentration of music enjoyers who aren't afraid of intricate, layered chord progressions, bass sounds and rhythms. Within the Fizz community, It's fashionable to reject the prevalent "Less is more" artistic dogma, and embrace maximalism. Fizz has been described as "ADHD Music", which is an appropriate description as many individuals in the Fizz movement are neurodivergent, including those who are autistic or have ADHD and OCD.
Zoomer Internet Culture
Taking a Thing and Exhaustively Milking It
In this age, everything gets beaten/memed to death on the internet, whether it be viral content, anything in the news cycle, or memes themselves. Remixes (video edits like YTPs and musical remixes in various EDM subgenres) are one of the more wholesome and artistic parts of that process. Remix culture as we know it today was established by millennials, but online zoomers internalized that kind of art at a young age, so it checks out that they would eventually create a high information, ironic yet sincere, fast paced, meme genre of music that reflects the environment they grew up in. This idea of taking something and ripping it apart in an over-the-top way is core to the Fizz Remix Philosophy and Fizz in general; The chaotic resampling and motivic development (and motivic abuse in some cases) in Fizz songs often makes it feel like the songs are a remix of themselves.
2000s Nostalgia
2000s nostalgia is a non-fundamental, yet recurring theme in Fizz.
Post-Irony
This other zoomer trope is explored in Fizz music in very abstract ways, but much more tangibly in Fizz edits and memes.
Self Referentiality
Self Referentiality
Zoomers are typically more accustomed to Jazz and Bass music than previous generations, making it easy for zoomer musicians from both the music theory/virtuosity side and the sound design/production side to understand the compatibility of one another. "2000s nostalgia and zoomer internet culture cut deep, meaning they’ve both been exposed to everything from Animusic to YouTube gaming dubstep intros." (from "What is Fizz"). Video games also had a hand in familiarizing a significant swath of zoomers with Dubstep (ex. Geometry Dash, Beat Saber), and Jazz (ex. Wii Sports, Mario Kart).
Since the start of the Fizz movement, various instagram pages have been created by the community to post edits and memes about Fizz, and Fizz artists will often meme their own music to promote it. Fizz isn't merely conducive to memes, memes are an integral part of Fizz.
The 3 Axioms
We Love Everything
We love everything. Nested tuplets, convolution reverb, polychords, vocal stacks, reese basses, earworm melodies, layered risers... We love it all.
We Hate Everything
Fizz was born out of a love for music, but it was also born out of a hatred for the way it's treated. Trend following, overusing tropes, creating music purely for "vibes" and not art, using AI to make important production or compositional decisions, settling for less, making what you think people want instead of what you believe in, these things are the opposite of what Fizz is about.
Everything Matters
Whether it manifests in love, hate, or an ironic layered version of either... Care and obsession over everything, including all the little insignificant details is at the heart of Fizz.
Blurred Line Between Veneration and Mockery
In Fizz, mockery is flavoured with veneration, and veneration is flavoured with mockery.
Unhinged Musical Shenanigans
Fizz's culture of enthusiasm for a melting-pot of music theory, virtuosity, sound design, production and rejection of the status quo make it uniquely positioned to be the home of some of the most innovative western music.