Desert Sand

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

William Hallworth-Cook's music prior to the Desert Sand Feels Warm at Night pseudonym consisted mostly of minor aliases focused on faster-paced electronic music. He began experimenting with combinations of vaporwave and ambient in 2018, releasing albums such as Desert Sand Feels Warm at Night in 2018. Hallworth-Cook said his first sample-free release, Desert Sand Feels Warm at Night (2018), was 'a real treat for me to make', as he and his fans found 'inner peace' from listening to it. He continued to experiment with sample-free slushwave in 2020 with Night Road.

In Their Own Story

Desert Sand's third album of 2021, New World Disciples, arrived in May. To promote the album, a music video for the track 'He Is Here' accompanied its release, featuring what Mick R. of New Noise Magazine described as a message 'about the nature of work and our relationship to technology'. In February 2022, Hallworth-Cook released the four-hour-long Dream Desert, which was named one of the best albums of 2022 by WKNC-FM. Its YouTube upload was highlighted by Dennis Mikula, owner of record label Geometric Lullaby, for surpassing two million views — a rare milestone for ambient music on the platform. In August 2022, Hallworth-Cook performed in Brooklyn for the third edition of ElectroniCon, a vaporwave music festival organized by musician George Clanton, and was described by Tori-Lynne Davis of Bearded Gentlemen Music as a 'particularly interest[ing]' figure of the event. For his first live performance, Hallworth-Cook reported feeling nervous in anticipation, and said it had not 'sunk in throughout the years of this project that it has a big fanbase.' In a 2022 interview, he hinted at a future collaboration with electronic musician MindSpring Memories, which materialized as the 2023 release Desert Memories. In 2025, Hallworth-Cook performed again in Brooklyn for Flamingofest, a vaporwave festival promoted by labels Utopia District and My Pet Flamingo. That same year, he also released a video album compiling works from 2022 to 2024 on his YouTube channel, under the alias Paradise Mountain. He also took part in three consecutive editions of the Slushwave festival, in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Reader's Guide

Hallworth-Cook's main points of inspiration were the music of slushwave figure Telepath, an alias of American

Did You Know?

• Hallworth-Cook's first sample-free release, Desert Sand Feels Warm at Night (2018), was described by him as 'a real treat for me to make' and helped him and his fans find 'inner peace'.
• The opening track of New World Disciples, 'Eternal Hope', took only two hours to create.
• Dream Desert's YouTube upload surpassed two million views, as highlighted by Geometric Lullaby owner Dennis Mikula.
• Hallworth-Cook performed his first live show as Desert Sand at a different event or date; ElectroniCon 3 took place in 2023, not 2022.
• He travelled to the desert twice in his life: Death Valley and 'one near Dubai'.