From the comments section of a 1996 drum and bass mix YouTube put in my recommendations (which I’ve been enjoying very much, going into the weekend!), I discovered Bryce: a fractal terrain generator, modeling program, and lost art.

Surprisingly, there still remains an active community for this piece of software and you can still purchase Bryce 7 Pro from Daz 3D, with the same iconic interface and rendering style. Top row of the gallery above was rendered in Bryce 2, and the bottom row in Bryce 7.

I love the look of Bryce’s output. It’s so.. vibrant and wistful, and yet has this pinch of digital surrealism you can’t quite pinpoint. It’s like a dream where you can’t quite figure out what’s happening, but want to see what happens next. In the age where photorealistic computer graphics are ubiquitous, it’s refreshing, and oddly soothing. And just perhaps, it’s the old drum and bass to the clean-cut EDM of today.

Mmm. Makes me want to make album covers.