KONPEITO, Gemini and Gopher
December 07, 2019 —
Carlos Fenollosa
KONPEITO is quarterly Lo-fi hip hop & chill bootleg mixtape, distributed exclusively through the Gemini protocol. Each tape is a half-hour mix, clean on side A and repeated on side B with an added ambient background noise layer for atmosphere. Tapes are generally released in the first week of each meteorological season.
Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here.
- KONPEITO is a very nice chill mixtape with a couple mp3 files that I found thanks to Tomasino on Mastodon
- These files are distributed over the Gemini protocol, via this link
- Gemini is a new internet procotol in between Gopher and HTTP
- There is one Gemini client available, AV-98
- The specs of the Gemini protocol can be accessed via this Gopher link
- Gopher is a protocol that ruled over the internet once but got replaced by HTTP, what we know as "the Web" nowadays
- You can reach Gopher links with
lynxor a web proxy, but there are no modern graphical clients - Gopher is making a niche comeback among a few enthusiasts and you should definitely check it out if only for its nostalgic and historical value
Now that's one hell of a rabbit hole. If you reach the end you'll find a very cool mp3 mixtape.