The project aims to draw attention to the fact that if you have access to technical labor, the startup and operating costs for an online project in 2013 are negligible. The biggest obstacle to creating something useful is finding the time to build it and attracting an initial pool of paying customers.

In any case, Maus argues, these chord patterns that to us might feel redolent of John Carpenter soundtracks or dry ice and backcombed hair actually have a much older historical precedent: “When people say my record sounds 80s, what they’re really homing in on is this harmonic backbone that comes from mid-Renaissance and medieval pieces. For whatever reason, the pioneers of electronic music that came out of Sheffield and Manchester in the 1980s became interested in these ecclesiastical modes that, historically, were associated with the divine. So in my mind, it’s not about the 80s, it’s an objective musical phenomenon.