In conversation with the members of our collective, we consistently found ourselves reminiscing of times other than the ones we are currently in, plagued by pandemic. In these conversations, we repeatedly came to acknowledge the power of music to transport us to the past.

When investigating what grants music the specific ability to do this, we come over and over again to the physical quality of how music used to exist; the past material qualities of music and the collectable quality of musical ephemera that transports us to a time other than the present. When we carried our music with us physically, and it existed outside of just the devices we use to listen to it. The personal, intimate connotations of physically having and carrying the music we love with us is a quality that is absent in the days of Spotify and the cloud. After acknowledging the physical qualities that make music a powerful tool for mental time travel, we also found ourselves curious why our brains do this, which lead us to dive into the psychology of nostalgia.

We hope as you observe this collection, you learn more about the ability music has to remind of the way things used to be and that you too feel the temporal associations to the physical form of the objects and information curated within.