CapCut Records: Istanbul Memories in Vinyl

This project was built as a submission for the CapCut x Contra Challenge. It didn't place in the top 10 winners, but the work stands on its own. Sometimes the best projects come from competitions you don't win.

CapCut Records is an interactive web experience built around a fictional concept: an independent luxury vinyl studio and sonic arts imprint that preserves urban memories by pressing them into physical grooves.

The site is a love letter to Istanbul. Specifically, to Bagdat Street, Caddebostan, and the basketball courts that shaped a life.

The experience opens with an audio track initialization sequence and a scroll prompt. From there, three vinyl-inspired chapters unfold:

Sounds of the Bagdat Street: The sensory chaos, greenery, and modern pulse of Istanbul's iconic avenue.

Scents of the Caddebostan: Raw coastal energy, magnetic city life, and the gravity that always pulls you back.

Ballers of Istanbul: The asphalt courts, the basketball subculture, and ten-hour days dissolved into concrete.

Each chapter pairs photography with poetic narration, grounded in real coordinates and real places.

All visuals throughout the site were personally shot on location in Istanbul. I walked the streets of Bagdat Avenue, the Caddebostan coastline, and the basketball courts, capturing the textures, light, and energy of each place firsthand. Some shots include myself as part of the narrative. Nothing was sourced from stock libraries; every frame is original.

The audio tracks and ambient soundscapes featured throughout the experience were entirely composed and produced by me. From the vinyl initialization sequence to the chapter-specific sonic layers, every sound was crafted from scratch to match the emotional tone of each neighborhood's story.

The initial concept and creative direction for CapCut Records were developed through brainstorming sessions with CapCut AI. The ideation process, including the fictional brand identity, narrative structure, and visual direction, was shaped through iterative conversations and creative exchanges with the tool. The 8-bit pixel art assets, custom cursors, and retro UI elements featured on the site were also generated using CapCut AI, then refined and integrated into the final build.

The site includes a dedicated behind-the-scenes section that documents the full creative journey: from early ideation and AI-assisted brainstorming, through on-location photography sessions in Istanbul, to the music production process and final development. It's a transparent look at how every layer of the project came together.

There's a secret vinyl hidden in the experience. Find it, and you unlock the developer's voice record. The site also contains a design manifesto:

I do not copy reality; I re-engineer urban emotions.

Brutalist simplicity over sterile digital perfection.

Code is the infrastructure, but interaction is the soul.

The aesthetic is analog luxury. Dark backgrounds, vinyl textures, heavyweight typography, and deliberate pacing. The scroll drives the narrative forward like a needle on a record. Nothing moves without purpose.

Built entirely with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No frameworks, no libraries. The scroll-driven animations, audio integration, hidden interactions, and responsive layout are all hand-coded. The site runs in any modern browser.

Experience it live: erogludemo.com/capcutrecords