For the last year I've been semi-daily posting "What I'm Listening To Today" links in this thread:
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/108199886340178151
The thread is now so long it is increasingly breaking Mastodon, so I am making a new thread, starting here.
To recap, here's the entirety of the year-one thread in the most impractical possible format: A YouTube playlist containing 246 songs and running for just over 47 hours:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLIjft6ja7DP_GwDs3XuTbiFmHYTwJWa7
... show moreFor the last year I've been semi-daily posting "What I'm Listening To Today" links in this thread:
https://mastodon.social/@mcc/108199886340178151
The thread is now so long it is increasingly breaking Mastodon, so I am making a new thread, starting here.
To recap, here's the entirety of the year-one thread in the most impractical possible format: A YouTube playlist containing 246 songs and running for just over 47 hours:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLIjft6ja7DP_GwDs3XuTbiFmHYTwJWa7
What I'm listening to today: "space jam"YouTube has this incredible wealth of people performing little improvised electronic sets pieces in bedrooms and on kitchen tables with whatever equipment they have and this has honestly been most of my music diet the last few years. A lot of these pieces have like 20 views yet are breathtaking. This is a 30-minute(!) ambient piece that starts as repetitive humming tones but finds a captivating hypnotic groove like… 12 minutes in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MUkdU67-Gg
I make a daily(~) post on Mastodon chronicling cool music I find on YouTube. I did this for one year. Here is every song I linked (except a few that aren't o...
YouTube
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: Track 17, The Mathletes
I think I've mentioned Joe Mathlete who I went to high school with and made music on four-track tapes. Most of his music was earnest indie folk-pop but he had this one song I loved that was a deafening blast of exuberant, overdistorted emotional noise. This was given to me directly by Joe on an unlabeled CD-R, so I always thought of this song as "17". I think the actual name was something like "illegal ghost bikes".
https://data.runhello.com/The%20Mathletes%20-%2017.mp3
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Untitled 7", Oval
Markus Popp did this thing in the 90s of scratching CDs by hand and sampling the glitches to make ambient music. Later he contracted someone to condense his artistic process into a computer program, so he could set it up in art galleries. Be Oval. He made an album ("ovalprocess") with this; it was the most alien music I'd ever heard. This is my fave track from it. It is harsh (no really, it's pretty shrill) and beautiful.
https://oval.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-07
Untitled 07, by Oval
Ovalmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Remotely", Coil
My favoritest ambient album ever is a 1992 album of "remixes and re-recordings" of Coil's 1984 debut single "How to Destroy Angels" (subtitle: "Ritual music for the accumulation of male sexual energy"). "Remixes" seems to mean "we recorded some new music with the same instruments". This one's the standout (other than the title track), a growling noise symphony that gives me stark images of looming forms gyrating in darkness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdunqv-loyU
- YouTube
www.youtube.commcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I listened to today: "CT-0W0 Computer Cowbell", emma essex
This brave VST author made a whole synth based on a hyper-advanced version of the old (distinctive, but little-loved) Roland 808 "cowbell" drum voice, with dozens of controls and modular patchpoints, then recorded this fascinating EP-length demo video for it. It starts as recognizable techno, ranges into mysterious sounds and ends as terrifying, abstract dark ambient. My favorite part is "The World's Maw".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N291i0UEB_E
"CT-0W0 Computer Cowbell" - a mutant 808-inspired synth
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "ecnalubma", awk
I made this song, in 2001, via about 5 lines of C and Perl mashed together on a Linux command line and piped directly into /dev/audio. I used slightly different code on the left and right channels. I wasn't trying to make "music", just a byte pattern so complex I no longer understood it, to see what it sounded like. The result was shockingly structured and undergoes multiple cryptic phase changes over 20 minutes.
It's loud.
https://data.runhello.com/abk/awk%20-%20ecnalubma.mp3
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Die genaue Zeit", Einstürzende Neubauten
…German for "Collapsing New Buildings", were early industrial-music luminaries who used handmade instruments, concrete & metal reclaimed from demolition sites, and screaming to evoke landscapes of urban desolation. This song from 1983, translated, describes a sort of Muzak apocalypse, with all art replaced with elevator music and all speech replaced with a voice endlessly intoning the accurate time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAc8UvpKc4s
Die genaue Zeit
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "No-input mixer minimal techno", closedcircuits
You think of mixers as passive, but feedback through a bandpass filter can make tones. This leads to the idea of the "no input mixing board", most famously explored in a series of excellent ambient albums by Toshimaru Nakamura. This artist takes the idea one step further by using the technique for *rhythm*, cross-wiring two mixers into a funky drum machine in this quiet but rocking dance track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRueiWaQNKg
No-input mixer minimal techno
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Polyend Tracker Untitled Electronics Jam", Risa T
This is a short trip-hop jam on a portable hardware tracker. (Like, the kind of tracker one would normally associate with text-mode DOS or the Atari ST. There have been a couple attempts recently to put one in a standalone hardware device.) Skittering, glitchy beats and a kind of mysterious air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFeyfladlEY
Polyend Tracker Untitled Electronics Jam by Risa T (Polyend Tracker Scene)
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Battle Against Belch", Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka (Nintendo)
Earthbound is the game that famously managed to permanently change how every millennial video game hipster thinks about games, without being what Nintendo would consider a financial success. This dark jazz track from the equally influential soundtrack stitches a series of samples and ~leitmotifs~ which appear before and after it in the game, together with a grinding bass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtCtagbcwUk
Battle Against Belch
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Magritte's Dream", Yusuke Shirakawa
Music concrète on a desktop, this piece is made with tape loops and scavenged-looking cassette equipment (including one literal loop of magnetic tape which appears to have no "cassette" attached). With one four-track tape and one mono, the artist has five faders that (in a performance with no instruments) they can play like an instrument to create peaceful and only slightly creeptastic ambiance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXKzopLSvU
Magritte's Dream
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Flowing Water"
This is a piece of classical Chinese music, whose score was first written down around 1350 CE, though according to various sources on Google it existed in some form as far back as 500 BCE (and according to the YouTube summary here the most recent "paragraph" was added around 1850 CE). Here it's performed on the guqin with a devastating gentleness, each of the five(?) sections keeping a distinct and sharp emotional tenor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcElotwrZ8o
Chinese Guqin : Flowing water Guqin 流水 古琴曲
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Modular Notes 88 - ER301 Study I", mafmadmaf
This is a skewed-feeling but very carefully composed collection of beeps and tones over about six minutes. Not sure how to describe it. It speaks for itself.
One interesting thing about this composition is it's made on modular, but each of the four individual modules is digital and two are general-purpose computer modules. The modular rack here exists to be a tactile interface for software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccuBRpixpmc
Modular Notes 88 模塊兒筆記 - ER301 Study I
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Time Eater", Gold Panda (Ssighborggg and Luna re-cover)
Gold Panda is an electronic musician I'm fond of, one of those sample-oriented hip-hop-sorta artists on the Bonobo/Blockhead model. This is one of Gold Panda's better songs being performed, with samples replaced by a live-instruments arrangement, by an American/Korean math-rock group and a traditional Korean gayageum player. I would describe the effect as "rocking".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKaRKKI5q7g
Time Eater (Ssighborggg Re-cover)
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Puppygirl Forever", minasheep (Jami Lynne remix)
This is "breakcore" (is this breakcore? I think it is breakcore), cheerful happy hardcore pop, but in this remix it's going just a little too hard, the accelerator's pushed just a little too much, giddy until it gets a sort of a sinister edge, like a upbeat sugar high gone just a little too far, like… okay I guess like a puppy girl that's just a little too excited. I was trying not to say it
https://minasheep.bandcamp.com/track/puppygirl-forever-lynnedrum-puppydog-without-u-mix
Puppygirl Forever (lynnedrum PUPPYDOG WITHOUT U mix), by lynnedrum
MinaSheepmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "System Jam #3", Edd Butterworth
A lot of the live synth performance videos on YouTube are either posted by, or made possible by gear donations by, the companies that make the synth equipment, as semi-covert ads. The good news is instead of buying the equipment you can just watch the videos. This video was posted by ALM/Busy Circuits to show off their eurorack line but by itself it's a funky weird-noises rave with captivatingly screwy beats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZHuagvQ1XY
System Jam #3
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "∆°S-P-3-C-1-3-S_U-N-K-N-0-W-N°∆", Th3Pock3tOp3rat0r
One for the "doing the most with the least" category, this is Teenage Engineering's cheap toy sampler/drum machine run into Korg's cheap toy echo unit. The sound here is huge, the PO-33 is pushed to the limit of its sequencing abilities and the track is hard and driving, electro rock with a touch of 80s feel. Imagine a 00s metroidvania that the only reason you remember it is this one song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XUHatuShuU
∆°S-P-3-C-1-3-S_U-N-K-N-0-W-N°∆
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Live Tribe Tekno 147bpm with Eowave Quadrantid Swarm and more Hardware!", dReadSolJah
This is a 70-minute live set of industrial-y rave techno, based on a mix of live synthesizers (with the Swarm at the center) and pre-recorded Ableton loops. A couple different days now I've listened to this while working and both times I could not tell you what happened during that hour, I just entered this totally hypnotized trance state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbWAdMz8VYQ
Live Tribe Tekno 147bpm with Eowave Quadrantid Swarm and more Hardware!
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Modular Synth Triggered by Drum", Djo HxC
This track pairs a sick modular-synthesizer Cool Noise with the trick (there were a couple of these in my last thread) where a drum is rigged to fire a trigger on the eurorack, playing a note keyed to the synth's current pattern. So the drummer is kind of playing drums and bass synth at once. And then: *drum solo*. This is kind of short and it doesn't really go anywhere, but it's fun while it lasts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIFgk7LQsk
Modular Synth Triggered by Drum
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Heavy Balloon", Fiona Apple
"Fetch the Boltcutters" was released 1 month into COVID. Ah!, we all went. How resonant! Everyone in lockdown can relate to this! Nobody noticed the fridge horror. She released it at the *start* of lockdown. So *before COVID started* Fiona had *already been holed up inside*, for however long, teaching herself the drums & stewing about ex-boyfriends.
Anyway here's a funk song about being depressed but also angry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8whTAkkBv6U
Fiona Apple - Heavy Balloon (Official Audio)
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Pop 6", Gas
This is some jangling, indistinct ambient. Sometimes it is good to listen to one meticulously-crafted sound for ten minutes. There's a bit of variation to keep things interesting but mostly this is just sort of like an atmospheric soundtrack to your life, assuming that the thing happening in your life right now is at least somewhat ominous.
https://kompakt-gas.bandcamp.com/track/pop-6
Pop 6, by GAS
GASmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "He Turns Down", Cat Power
Cat Power was the queen of the 90s/00s indie/lo-fi folk-rock set. This is the song that best embodies her off-kilter style; everything feels like Take One, feels a little unstable, like the song is about to topple over and take you with it. What sticks with me here is the flute accompaniment, doing something seemingly totally unrelated to the rest of the song. I don't know what that flute means. It seems important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzXkea6gmPY
He Turns Down
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Abalone", PACKS
This is a fun, messy indie rock jam from 2022. I actually don't know much about this band! Wikipedia says they're from Toronto? The album cover has a feeling of old family vacation photos.
https://packstheband.bandcamp.com/track/abalone
Abalone, by PACKS
PACKSmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "verZion", Syphus
A mod tracker has a finite number of sample channels, and each is monophonic. So if you want sounds with long tails, like piano notes, you have to do tricks like alternating notes in different channels so each sound completes before the next one starts. Sometimes this gives tracker music, when viewed *in* the tracker, a fascinating two-dimensional ascii art structure, like the long diagonal chains in this banger of a song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKhUB7baGoU
Syphus - verZion
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Distorted Ambience - Lyra-8 / Strega Into Modular FX", Brodie Peterson
Built from two synthesizers which can both be described as "a simple tone generator bolted to a powerful drone echo", this is a sublime symphony of metal sounds, clanking and banging and grinding howls, "Industrial" in a very literal sense. I like how the synthesized moans punctuating the backing sound eventually line up in surprising melody, like a slowed-down pop song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWy3g9J6a78
Distorted Ambience - Lyra-8 / Strega Into Modular FX
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Not Surprised", Boris and Uniform
Normally I'd say much of why I like Boris is they deliver metal without falling into a kind of squawky vocals I don't favor. Here tho they collaborate with an American group to make exactly that sort of metal, and it really works. Herein the genre of death metal is slowed down, disassembled and rebuilt wrong in a splayed-out open-skeleton structure. It reminds me of Pink Lemonade. This really did it for me!
https://boris.bandcamp.com/track/not-surprised
Not Surprised, by Boris & Uniform
Borismcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "far up close (live improv ambient)",
TRDRT
9 minutes of calm background-music echo shimmers and synth sparks from a modular rack (with some good stickers). The note patterns were composed in realtime on a Synthstrom Deluge, by alternately adjusting patterns on the grid view and playing notes in the isometric keyboard mode. The title calls it ambient but this is a highly structured piece. If this was made in the 90s we'd call it "New Age".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7bc4CAW6Fs
far up close (live improv ambient)
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Rossum Panharmonium + Instruo Lubadh + Plaits + Rings", Sascha Neudeck
This is an intense, fascinating ambient journey through a series of sounds and textures, with sparky serrated-edge waves cycling in and out of your perception. Intermittent scrolling subtitles at the bottom of the video explain, in an entirely unhelpful level of detail, how the modular patch driving the track was created.
Stereo or headphones recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej0NGboMlPw
Rossum Panharmonium + Instruo Lubadh + Plaits + Rings
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Jamuary 02 2022", Waveformer
A virtuoso synth performance, leading you through a series of sounds and moods. Recorded live on the standard low-end setup of a Microfreak and three separate echo pedals, it's dark and expressive. If this had been recorded in 1990 it would have been distributed accompanied by a video of a long CGI tunnel like at the end of "2001", or maybe a slowed-down VHS of a handcam walking unsteadily through some woods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHmkErVcDdc
Jamuary 02 2022 - MicroFreak, NTS-1, EHX 720, MS-70CDR #jamuary2022
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "found a hatch", riueru
This one's simple but strange, a randomly lurching tourgroup of synth lines driven by a randomness source and an irrationally-phased LFO. It starts suddenly and cuts off suddenly and in between shows a thoughtful, incredibly human degree of subtlety and emotional variation. But there's no human in the loop. It's beautiful and a little unsettling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Dv--lI3z0
found a hatch | mewsic box + marbles, plaits, monsoon, ochd
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "live @ Red Ink, Providence 5/6/23", Cryptwarblr
If I told you to trust me— would you take my hand and take a step with me off the edge, into the abyss? This is what I now ask of you. This is a ten-minute performance on a card table at a leftist community bookstore. The noises here alternate quiet and violence— sharp, intense, unpredictable. There's a structure to it, I think. There's a meaning in here somewhere. I can't see it but I feel it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyr363zg_70
Cryptwarblr_ live @ Red Ink, Providence 5/6/23
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "MESS MOOG SYSTEM 55 WAVEFORM", Christian Hogue
Five minutes of sinewaves composed on the legendary and extremely rare Moog 1973 modular analog system, illustrated on an analog oscilloscope. Starts with a simple line of tones and evolves into menacing, increasingly overdriven multipart antiharmony. Makes a really intense mood. Warning, parts are a bit high pitched.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJLIXJu30GQ
MESS MOOG SYSTEM 55 WAVEFORM
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Cruel like Flint", Amon Tobin
So after "Foley Room", drum&bass-adjacent jazz god Amon Tobin went in a *very* odd direction, focusing on complex live shows and ever-more-fine-tuned monophonic sounds. His newer stuff's pretty challenging even for me…!
But this one track from a sampler album of the label he founded really does it for me. Mind-expanding timbres and a quirky rhythm, a cool mix of his old and new sounds. Like feedback dubstep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqNAxl1PiVo
Cruel Like Flint
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Quick Jam with the Moog Mavis", HeadyBeatShell
This is a fun dance techno duet between a simple analog synth and some complex digital synths. Good robot noises and some really effective production for a desktop jam. The Mavis doesn't have a sequencer hooked up so the musician has to play the little toy frontplate keyboard all the way through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PNdt_zG6lM
Quick Jam with the Moog Mavis
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Gaia floating in me", Cube
80s samplers had limited resolution— 12 bit DACs, limited sample memory. Early hip hop leaned into this, finding low sample rates gave drums a pleasant crunchy feel. This 2008 MS-DOS tracker jam makes great use of similar limitations, especially at the start where the resolution goes so low it's like a bitcrush effect. Actually, this entire track is incredibly sick. It sounds like a rave in Donkey Kong Country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzRuea5ViEk
Cube - Gaia floating in me
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Luxe", Holy F*** + Alexis Taylor
This is one of my most-listened tracks on Tidal; I think of it as a pandemic classic. It's Rapture-y synthrock, one of those songs that lays out a series of elements then lets them all converge at once like a magic eye becoming an image.
There's a ("Mea Culpa" inspired?) music video that comes close to meeting the song's surging energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6gP4IijTCM but warning, flashing. Or listen on Bandcamp:
https://holyfuck.bandcamp.com/track/luxe-ft-alexis-taylor
Holy Fuck - Luxe (ft. Alexis Taylor)
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Tangie 1hr+ improvised modular techno (live)", Tangie
An unseen person with a modular rack and an octotrack delivering a good 80 minutes of driving, industrial-flavored rave techno. The sound design is consistently full of pleasant surprises and I'm not sure how they keep the energy level up this long while improvising but they somehow do. I would describe this set as "hott" with two Ts. Hott like homotopy type theory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8TKE1xk84
Tangie 1hr+ improvised modular techno (live)
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "pikocore", infinitedigits
This is a very short drum & bass / breakcore freakout performed on the most minimal hardware available: a tiny shield/hat for the Raspberry Pi Pico with four buttons and four potentiometer knobs. (The device, an "open hardware" sample mangler apparently created and sold by the musician/YouTuber, is linked in the YouTube description.) Goes hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3kc5KxCLs
pikocore
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Dirge", Tragic Laurel
https://tragiclaurel.bandcamp.com/track/dirge
I get a lot of these synth videos I post from Reddit /r/synthesizers, which went down last week for the Reddit protests. At the start of the strike the community (or part of it) started a treehouse Lemmy instance named https://waveform.social; this was the first piece of music posted there, last Monday. Nice little jam! Spooky drunk-feeling vaporwave with slow quirky beats. I didn't post it then but I'm posting it now.
Dirge, by Tragic Laurel
Tragic Laurelmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Black Crow", Namoli Brennet
Trans folksinger Namoli Brennet wrote this song as the title track on one of her albums, but this live version, recorded on an acoustic guitar in the back of a bookstore in New Haven with Brennet's voice ragged from cough medicine, is my favorite. This recording just absolutely wrecks me every time. The song gets to this one part and I just start like ugly crying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2JXUuaYFGQ
Namoli Brennet - Black Crow
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Vallentin Rd", kirkis
While trying to learn more about "Czochralski Cells" I found this artist's baffling YouTube page, which hosts:
- All the official videos for the "Destiny+" handmade synthesizer company
- Several breakcore albums
- A standalone video for this one terrifying moth song, with no information attached except a URL shortener link which currently appears to be redirecting to malware.
The song is a Tiger Electronics onslaught
https://kirkismoded.bandcamp.com/track/vallentin-rd
Vallentin Rd, by kirkis
kirkismcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Stay Crunchy", Ronald Jenkees
In this video a man in a little hat yells "Hello YouTubes" and slams directly into performing an absolutely mindblowing four-minute solo, on a MIDI electric piano VST over FruityLoops beats. (FLStudio/FruityLoops, is IMO, underrated as a serious production music tool.) Ronald, the musician, was an early vlogger who had a whole thing going on and this was the track of his that went most widely viral. It slaps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg8LfoyDFUM
"stay crunchy" - messin with an e-piano sound
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "The Mother of All Funk Chords", Kutiman
This was posted in 2009, at the peak of Internet Optimism, as track 1 of "Thru You", a project mixing unrelated YouTube videos of people playing music into complete songs.
This song summarizes YouTube in the image of every single person on earth simultaneously playing a giant chord on every single instrument. It remains the most powerful document I have ever encountered for the power of the Internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA
Kutiman - Thru-you - 01 - Mother of All Funk Chords
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: Improv, Tori Amos
Around 2001 I got an mp3 off Gnutella titled "Tori Amos - Improv.mp3", in which Tori launches into a bizarre rant on stage in response to a fan yelling "Take me home with you!". All the while she's doing an absolutely gorgeous improvised organ solo that haunted me for years.
Searching now, I find that this clip is more commonly titled "Foodgasm", and it's taken from a recording of a show from the Dew Drop Inn tour in 1996.
https://youtu.be/3eyGg7BzSss
Tori Amos - Foodgasm
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Modular synth, drone, 4MS Ensemble oscillator, Qubit prism", grumpfigrumpf
A series of ambient hums, hisses and coos, sounding alternately like an air conditioning unit heard from the other end of a parking garage or an alien spacecraft taking off. It's long (20 minutes) but continuously satisfying, changing enough it feels like there's a narrative to it. If you listen on good speakers you'll be rewarded.
If you like Coil, listen to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRJtUHgHB8
Modular synth, drone, 4MS Ensemble oscillator, Qubit prism
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Chill granular meditation music w/ Prismatic Spray, monome norns, Phantasmal Force, 1010 lemondrop"
This piece takes four separate cheap tabletop granular synthesis devices and cross-wires them to make a dreamy, melodious noise ocean. The patch is endlessly self-generating so apparently the musician (the developer of the Prismatic Spray) ran it for 40 entire hours one week and just dipped in at some point to clip this six-minute recording.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaL5EcVImc4
Chill granular meditation music w/ Prismatic Spray, monome norns, Phantasmal Force, 1010 lemondrop
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Somasynth Connection: ENNER + COSMOS + LYRA8", Giovanni B
This is like the fourth time I've posted a "Enner + Cosmos" video, and they all sound so different.
This is a 11-minute virtuoso noise performance beginning with raw clicking and slowly coalescing into organ sounds twisting like worms. The start sounds like someone rhythmically changing the station on a radio, later parts feel like distorted dub reggae.
Stereo speakers recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz_FYMLhFA4
Somasynth Connection: ENNER + COSMOS + LYRA8
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Uses of Zener Noise", Peter B
This unsettlingly quiet piece is a slightly-overlapping arrangement of two performances on unusual/handmade musical instruments, both based on the principle of "Zener Noise". Together it has the feeling of a guided meditation, like being lead blindfolded down a path of hissing noise and burbling whistles. I never know if anyone else will see the emotions I see in music but I find this one actually frightening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxYhwLglky4
Uses of Zener Noise
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Ceremonial Grade", Jon Gee
Again, the Cosmos.
Jon Gee shows again his skill at ambient soundscapes. This piece, based on layer and layer and layer of chaotically-phasing synth swells, has a good subtle structure to it, starting as chaotic waves of noise but at some point sort of clicking first into musical logic and then a long fadeout. I imagine a movie soundtrack, switching over at some critical moment from establishing shots to action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fesalu9VkWU
Ceremonial Grade // Moog Matriarch & Soma Cosmos
YouTubemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Soft", Pulp
I'm breaking my format rules here: This song runs from 1:01:09 to 1:05:30 in the linked video (a cassette tape compilation from 1990). This seems to be the only copy of the song on the Internet. I find no other record of the band ("Pulp") existing.
The song is about four minutes of ambient rumbling. I've spent a lot of my life listening to ambient rumbling and this is some of the best rumbling I've ever heard. It's that good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je4HTllH7bA&t=3669s
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Elegy", Kai Saul
This piece gives the strong impression of being one single chord for six minutes. On a relisten today I find there are actual notes in there, but they're so drowned in echo you may or may not actually hear them. I recommend paying no attention whatsoever to this song as you listen to it. Just treat it like a pleasant feeling in a bottle. The feeling of a sudden blast from an air conditioner turning on. Ambient-ass ambient
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRRwzERsn_E
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "rpeg", Autechre
We used to split Æ into "early Autechre" and "late Autechre", like the Beatles, and this album (EP7) was the dividing line. It's "experimental", in the sense it's a series of experiments.
The way I think about this album is it's like a series of magic eye images with sounds— each track initially seems to be totally meaningless random noise and then there's always some point where it *shifts*, and suddenly you can See it
https://autechre.bandcamp.com/track/rpeg-1
Rpeg, by Autechre
Autechremcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Clipper", Autechre
So this is "old Autechre" (1995). Back then their whole thing was composing evocative melodies then fussily giving them the most interesting timbres possible with mid-90s synths. They were kinda heavily dependent on Loops in this period but still delivered some absolute jams, like "Clipper". This track has an epic, almost operatic quality to me. But like, sci fi opera.
Warning: Drums are a bit ear-piercing on headphones.
https://autechre.bandcamp.com/track/clipper
Clipper, by Autechre
Autechremcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "recks on", Autechre
This "early autechre/late autechre" model I'm banging on stopped working pretty quickly, as Æ eventually went through a *bunch* of wholly distinct phases. Their most recent phase, starting with "Exai", is just *really long* albums, like, 2 hours, 8 hours, 28 hours(!). Things you aren't even *meant* to listen to in entirety but dip into and out of at random.
This song: Stalked by breakbeats through labyrinthine corridors
https://autechre.bandcamp.com/track/recks-on
recks on, by Autechre
Autechremcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Lentic Catachresis", Autechre
This is my favorite song from my favorite Autechre album, the long outro to Confield (the "fully armed and operational" point for what I call Late Autechre).
This whole album is like music from another universe and this song particularly, with its weird tempo shifts, is an amazing mix of the human-crafted and algorithmic, like Rob & Sean drew an outline and Max/MSP filled in all the fractal details. DISCOVERY!
https://autechre.bandcamp.com/track/lentic-catachresis
Lentic Catachresis, by Autechre
Autechremcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Draun Quarter", Autechre
This is the last track of "Envane", a 4-track EP that samples Kool Keith and might be the most accessible thing in Æ's discography. This song's just really nice feeling. I don't even know what to say, it's just really pleasant. It's got some very Æ timbres but the anchor is ultimately some extremely emotive synth playing. Like if you gave Debussy a DX7.
https://autechre.bandcamp.com/track/draun-quarter-1
Draun Quarter, by Autechre
Autechremcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Coda Maestoso in F♭ Minor", Earth (Autechre Remix)
For a while Autechre did a series of absolutely brain-breaking, material-shredding remixes of indie rock bands (Lamb, Stereolab, Tortoise). And then when they decided to remix Earth, *already* bizarre and otherwordly, they… mastered it as pop. They made the song *less* weird. It sounds like Soundgarden now.
As if… whelp, gone as far as we can in that direction! Gotta stop and turn around??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NT3Kls8Jek
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "notwotwo", Autechre
"Quaristice" is Autechre's most accessible post-EP7 album— probably a good First Autechre Album. Part of how they restrained themselves was releasing, like, *three* albums worth of limited-edition bonus material, mostly much longer versions of nearly every song. The standout is this extended "notwo", adding an entire gorgeous additional movement to what was already one of Autechre's best ambient tracks.
Close your eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk4A2e9xqCM
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Shock Therapy 23", Cromag
This is a cool DOS-tracker proto-trance sort of thing. Really satisfying synths and beats.
Trying to look up when this was made, I find it is named "Shock Therapy 23" because Cromag made 23 of these, between (apparently) 1994 and 1999. More than anything, this sounds like a song made on a computer in 1999 (by the last person still using DOS in 1999).
https://youtu.be/6hxdZ8pFQ0E
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Dream Sequence", Stefan Torto
When Roland started making Volca-likes it seemed like they'd be watered-down versions of their super-expensive "boutique" virtual analog synths. But then the S-1 ($200) turned out to be *better* than the $600 SH-01A (unique features). Go figure.
Anyway this beatless but surprisingly intense track makes me think of: 80s production bumpers, sunrises with VHS tracking errors, a past when the future still existed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO_3JtsDQ0k
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Phase Shift", Hobboth Music
This one requires a bit of patience but it pays off. This is a modular jam based around two acid synth lines running at slightly different tempos so they run in and out of sync with each other. The introduction, like the first couple minutes, just lets this run unadorned. But then the musician starts adding complications and the piece transforms into complex, multilayered ambient. It's good music to zone out to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1yZuuxjnwk
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "four ( empress effects zoia, moog mother 32, make noise 0-coast )", i saw the SINE wav
Some excellent ambient/drone. Seems at first like it's just going to be unattended wom wom wom zone-out noises for 13 minutes, which would also have been good, but a few minutes in the musician starts more actively guiding things and some DC-offset popping noises that appear at first to be recording errors start to clump together into rhythmic percussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EPYU-1q_fw
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Vegas Bound & Down", brokensines
A fun dance techno jam with cool clicky beats, skittering tones and some absolutely enormous sidechains. Good energy level. The video description makes reference to VCV rack, meaning this song was apparently made with a mix of physical modular synths and virtual modular synths on a PC, but the VCV part isn't shown on camera so it's not clear how that works.
The video has a flashing warning due to vfx.
https://youtu.be/sqMwOU0V24U
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Music for Body Lockers", Chocolate Weasel
I am in the woods this weekend and this is what we are listening to in the woods.
This is a cool electronic funk track with Parliamentary synths and classic 80s hip hop samples. I do not know anything at all about this band. This just happened to be the best track on an old Ninja Tune compilation album that was on my friend's phone music collection. I would describe this as "a jam".
https://youtu.be/1qWR_hjSXsE
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Cwejman, Trogotronic, Make Noise - 1st patch in the Needham Woodworks case with Eskatonic power", James Plotkin
An *incredibly* dirty modular synth jam with fast, borderline-IDM beats. Often modular synth music tends to single repeating measures in a way that doesn't lend itself to drum sounds, but this rack's so large it's able to support multiple complex parts and lots of different things going on. What do you call this? Dance industrial?
https://youtu.be/0IXoRwSTP1E
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "metronom", Duality Micro
Korg, who created a lot of synths including most of the good modern budget gear, once released a DS game. "Game", that is. KORG DS-10 was a little synthesizer/sequencer on a DS cart. (It was later released for Switch and iPhone/iPad as "Korg Gadget".)
This is a 2023 track composed on the DS-10 (with some very subtle bass guitar accompaniment) with a overpowered, Kraftwerky kick drum and a bumping groove. It's fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_UAK5VCgRI
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Emotional Noises 230527", ナカヤマコウジ
This is a short, cryptic noise electronica piece with avant-garde beats, some cool shimmery dubby noises and weird feedback. Made on the Make Noise Trio, though you can see a Korg NTS in the background doing goodness knows what.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL6dQVHdycA
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "SynTesla IX DIY Synthesizer DEMO", Pj Tardiveau
This YouTuber designed and handbuilt(?) a 7-voice polysynth on the design principle of "it should look like a submarine control panel". I'm reasonably certain the unit in the video is the only one that exists. The track is a single looping chord sequence but Pierre continuously retunes the knobs to, apparently, every sound the synth can produce so there's a song structure. Also breakbeats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODRFu_PcK8E
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "nebulosity", BrokenSines
This is a complex virtual/rack modular electronic piece (same musician I linked last week, with the VCV/physical hybrid setup) with slow, thumping beats and enormous, dirty sounds. It feels muggy, like swimming through molasses, or a sleep paralysis dream. Lights twinkle in the distance, but your eyelids are heavy and you cannot lift your head to see them properly.
Speed this up 180% and you can dance to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7JelusAdbM
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Melody Oracle + Wave Expander + B2600", A Magic Pulsewave
This is a short sound trip wherein chiptune tones are devoured by and re-emerge from clouds of echo fog. The track is created on, apparently, some sort of triangle, or multiple triangles possibly, festooned with lights and fractalline, possibly-occult designs. I don't actually know what's happening here and I have made a conscious decision to not find out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27jz7vwDXY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Live on KEXP", Black MIDI
Black MIDI is a British post-rock group that broke out around 2020. I tend to prefer their first album ("Of Schlagenheim"), but I highly recommend this live set, wherein they get an entire horn section on deck and really make their second album come alive. There's frenetic drumming and an upright piano and the lead vocalist is wearing a weird white suit. In all the world there's no escape from this infernal din
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebrpRKUMcss
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Violence", Andy Stott
Back in the 10s during whatever "Vaporwave" was, Andy Stott released a couple albums that either helped create the genre or elevated it to something else. "Faith in Strangers" is 54 minutes of darkness interrupted by half-glimpsed forms; "Violence", the high point, is a calm/terrifying blast of anti-pop, sharp blurry distorted objects, too close to see and too loud to hear. I can only describe it using visual metaphors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np-h6oLJOJ4
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Melodic Techno Live Looping Roland Juno 106 analog syntheziser at Mauerpark Berlin", TribalNeed
A man lays down a rug, a looper, a vintage Juno 106 synthesizer, and various toy instruments in a public park in Berlin, and as a crowd gathers he begins playing first chill techno and then dance rave music. Dancing ensues. Every person in this video is beautiful and it makes me happy just to know that this moment in space and time existed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saZBGGDo-lE
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "CZ-3000.mpeg", Grégoire Blanc
For a period in the 80s Casio produced a high-end "CZ" line, which used a unique synthesis method called "phase distortion"; it's like FM, but way cooler.
Grégoire Blanc is a professional concert thereminist. The video desc explains he found his old CZ-3000 in the attic and the wave of memories inspired him to compose this.
This is… beautiful, actually, and deeply enigmatic. What is the emotion of this piece?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flE6i98WLD8
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Live on KEXP", Squid
Squid is a British post-rock group that broke out around 2020. I tend to prefer their second album ("O Monolith"), but I highly recommend this live set, wherein they really make their first album come alive. They've got enough overlapping guitarists I lose count, and the drummer sings, and there's a five-minute drone freakout segment with a trumpet. That's why I don't go outside
Video switches to an interview at 35:40.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JWNggMB58
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Pianophonic Module Extended Demo", Knobula
This device makes realistic piano sounds using wavetable synthesis, where a sampled sound is cut up into individual microsounds. This video demonstrates what happens if you mess with the parameters to make hyper-un-realistic piano sounds, creating awe-inspiring drone. Imagine you're in a David Lynch movie and someone is playing the piano while simultaneously the concept of "a piano" is degrading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPt82-cNORQ
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "7", Luke Stewart
Some algorithm burped this up for me (YouTube or Tidal, I forget) and it gripped my heart. I'd never heard of Luke Stewart but apparently he's in like 6 bands and Wikipedia assures me he's a big deal in contemporary jazz. This is from "Works for upright bass and amplifier, Vol 2", one of two solo drone albums in which Stewart makes unearthly, impossible sounds with a cello and amp feedback. It's cinematic and super intense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXLd63i6TzY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Blue Skies", maleficent hardware
A "modular study" wherein cross-wired modules self-generate an ambient composition made of distant howls and shimmers and occasional interruptions from a corrupt harpsicord. A hand occasionally snakes in to nudge the machine's momentum in whatever mysterious direction, but less often than I'd have expected given the complexity of the piece. Uses that one pedal that makes everything sound like old cassettes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON5_5fm9RPk
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "200528 Quick FM Jomox Alpha Base", Calvin Cardioid
A short indie-game-soundtrack-ambient piece (my roommate actually came in and asked what game I was playing) with a funky, bumping beat. Makes you want to dance in ways the human skeleton doesn't move.
When I heard this I was convinced I'd found the device 90% of all circa-2000 dub electronica was made on, but in fact it's from 2017 (tho apparently based on earlier Jomox standalone boxes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyPSxZwIoi4
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Drone Noise Performance 043", Stereo Pig
This is a weird NES dirge with lots of strange background noises in the background, performed by knob twiddling on a small Eurorack.
"Om" is understood to be the primordial noise, the still-resonating sound of the universe's creation. The contemplation or chanting of Om is understood to be putting oneself in alignment with that resonance, so reaching a higher, simplified mindstate, closer to Godhead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm8zjChHHkY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "45 minutes with Jomox Alpha Base", Mati
This is a 44-minute minimalist electronica live set in ye olde "Dub" style of the "aughts", made entirely on the Jomox Alpha Base groovebox (analog drum machine plus FM synth). The whole thing runs in one continuous slowly-evolving groove that I'm pretty sure the musician composed on the fly (during each song/loop you can watch him programming the next). Chill but with a relentless determined energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ0gqIbKtYo
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "41 - Distorted sounds from Instruo",
Dj Datch
Demonstrating how powerful a single held note can be if you filter it appropriately, this is a 7-minute minimal electronica jam that builds enormous atmosphere and some slowly-evolving structure out of one booming low noise, one fluttering high one and the distant thumping heartbeat of a kick drum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3Vz1wB1Bsk
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Silent Assassin", Tkay Maidza & Flume
Tkay Maidza is a Zimbabwean-Australian singer/songwriter/producer/rapper with consistently next-level production. This collaboration is somewhere in a gray area between trap and dubstep, and more than anything sounds like a sound some sort of industrial machinery would make to signal a fault requiring operator intervention. Atop this Tkay's vocals are an absolute onslaught. Brutalist music
https://soundcloud.com/tkaymaidza/tkay-maidza-flume-silent
Tkay Maidza & Flume - Silent Assassin
SoundCloudmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "What Have You Done For Me Lately", Janet Jackson
"Control", a 1986 artifact of back when musicians first tried to combine hip-hop with pop but hadn't figured out the most marketable way to do it yet, is a fascinating, still-unique experiment of an album. It's basically industrial music— stark, cold, isolated drums that the warmth of the vocals burn intensely against. Take this smoldering track, in which Janet chews out a no-good boyfriend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biL_or8C5Ac
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Swing My Way", K.P. & Envyi
This song, a procedural-drama narrative of a woman picking up a hot guy at a bar, is a one-off collaboration between two Atlanta-area R&B singers who were between girl-group gigs in 1998. It was *huge* on Houston-area radio.
This song stands out for its production being an amazing 50% blend of 1998 electronic dance music and 1998 R&B, in a way I've never heard another song attempt much less succeed at this hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opv45Aevuds
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "AA XXX", Peaches
I think Peaches is supposed to be a big deal but I only know this one electropop song in which she sing-raps about being small-chested and incredibly horny, with frankly hilarious lyrics about how she is going to obliterate these twinks. I like the innocent type. Deer in the headlights. Rocking me all night
Contains explicit lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVNhAG7Xzm4
Flat rights!
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Sike", Armani Caesar
Allow me to set for you a scene. Ms. Caesar has come to a private club to partake in the art of Dance. Her dance is skillful and alluring, which causes many men to believe that they will have sex with her this night. But inwardly, she is laughing. For she knows that they will not
https://daupe.bandcamp.com/track/sike-ft-queendom-come
Sike Ft Queendom Come, by Armani Caesar
Daupemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Star Cry", Foxy Brown
The Foxy Brown/Lil Kim archetype (confident, sexually liberated, sharp-edged) kinda disappeared from rap around 2000. But then there's the 2008 album Foxy Brown released after she got out of prison, with this "Remember me?" track.
It's got this fascinating sequence where she sort of de-rapper-ifies, takes all her jewelry off and platinum records off the wall and ends by introducing herself with "Hi, my name's Inga".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYEkF8ykVs
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Suck My Dick", Lil Kim
Lil Kim is *great*.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJS8Uk0twE
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Feng Shui Schematics", Radix
This is a serene, surprisingly quiet DOS mod/tracker tune with some meaty underlying bass and progressive, glitchy beats. A revival track by Radix— Radix was one of the tracker legends in the 90s, but this particular track dates from 2010.
Just a good feeling here. Beep beep, beep beep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WffRtoUAs0
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "It will never come back.", EAMFOS
A synth-solo-y 5-minute ambient track consisting of chime-y tones with deceptively complex timbres. Really emotionally evocative. Video shows fixed shots of empty fields and flowers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_oENexUIEw
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "One Channel Music", Aleksi Eeben
This piece is a sort of parlor trick. The C64 has three sound channels, but each is reprogrammable— each can play any sound the SID is capable of. So composing for C64 it's good practice to learn to cram "two channels into one", rapidly switching timbres to alternate instruments. This track goes all the way to fitting *the whole song* in 1 channel. It's complex and interesting sounding, and shockingly funky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsXCnND1SiI
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Elektrical Activity", Mind over MIDI
When this track initially popped up for me in a playlist I initially assumed it was a new song, and was like, wow! What a nostalgiac 90s feel this has! Then I looked up Mind Over MIDI and discovered this song was actually released in 1995, and the feeling changed to, wow! What a futuristic post-90s feel this has! Anyway this is a driving techno track with a sick groove and some aphexy sounding synths.
https://mindovermidi.bandcamp.com/track/elektrical-aktivity
Elektrical Aktivity, by Mind over MIDI
Mind over MIDImcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Transforming", EAMFOS
This starts off as a nice hypnotic synth drone and electric-piano jam. Then at some point there's a sort of strange shift, like two bones settling against each other in a way it doesn't feel like they're supposed to, and suddenly it feels more like something adjacent to epic heavy metal, the kind made in Scandinavia circa 2001. I have absolutely no idea what is happening in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C86BWMMgtrw
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Modification (Acid Jam 6.0)", INKOЯREꓘT
This is some hardkore, four-on-the-floor 90s techno, interestingly made entirely of newer reproductions of classic 90s gear: A tracker to drive the thing, but a Polyend Tracker instead of an old Atari; a 303, but a modern Behringer analog remake; a 606, but a modern Roland digital desktop remake; and an Access Virus, just an Access Virus (though I think the build they introduced in 2008). It's fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rjMxZ5vG8w
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "MELANCHOLIA", roxxx303
Made on Roland's new budget desktop remakes of the 303/808 and Jupiter-8, this is a slow, gradually-developing, low-bpm acid techno jam with a good chill vibe. There's something nicely unique about this one I can't quite describe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URgJ18mKE74
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "07", Scoth
Yamaha's QY line, first released in 1990 (three years before the Apple Newton!) and awkwardly branded as a "Walkstation", was an attempt to make something totally new— a fully portable, handheld MIDI music production station, run off AA batteries. This modern track was made entirely on a 1997 QY70 and it sounds great. Peppy fusion funk grooves and some gorgeous pad sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_g3MFWFJZ0
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "SOMA Pulsar-23 + Piano // Dreamy Ambient Machine", Dexba
This is a gorgeous piano piece, played on an electric piano overlooking a window somewhere in Ho Chi Minh City (and accompanied by a few beastly glitch machines— but↓ reverb-squashed down until all you hear is the quiet rush of a river and the strange distant chirping of robot birds). Is the music I link sometimes… uh, a bit much for you? Well, here's something a bit gentler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUIIt_qD3M
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "You Didn't Break Me", Pedestrian Deposit
NOISE TIME. This is some kinda strange post-rock/metal… song? EP? I'm not sure. There's no separations, just one 20-minute track, but it has multiple distinct movements within it that feel like different songs but also like part of one whole. Big shifts, violins falling into harsh noise and such, like a harder Godspeed You Black Emperor. Definitely hits the feels hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0U7PA2teMs
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "War Photographer"
Jason Forrest. Sample artist. Originally used the recording alias "Donna Summer" just to see how long it would take him to get sued. Creator of songs such as "My 36 Favorite Punk Songs" (it samples them all). His one brush with popular appeal was this *absolutely incredible* music video, which presents some kind of baffling narrative about a Viking mecha powered by rock music. You want to watch the video while you listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtYEz4OKCn8
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Joyous", 12 Rounds
I was one of 12 Rounds [ft Atticus Ross]'s very few devoted fans in the 90s, but I didn't even know until recently about their first, pre-Nothing album, which apparently got so buried CDNow never listed it. "Jitter Juice" is 1/3 tripe, 1/3 tracks that later appeared on My Big Hero, and 1/3 solid gold, ending with this lovely little, fully-orchestrated, goth/trip-hop kiss-off. The lyrics have deep personal resonance to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwaVP9BYQo
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Testing stereo field", Fantastic Dan
I was watching through this musician's videos on YouTube and my favorite wound up being their very first. It's clearly a test video (it cuts off suddenly at the end), and it's got unusual binaural audio that pans as the cellphone moves. But I really just love the groove!
This video is 4 years old, and in all this time it's only got 18 views. The Internet is full of beautiful and secret things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UhK33bjBO8
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Buchla 200 at the Evergreen State College.", Giselle Garcia
Some drums-not-needed analog synth music on a vintage unit at a college in Olympia, Washington. Chill but with a distinctly sharp energy. What I used to think of as "Space Mountain Music".
There's a gap of about two minutes halfway through this video as the musician configures the unit for her second song so you may want to stop the video at 2:40, but I do like the closeout track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgl-UuwMUKs
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Estuary", nk
This week I've been posting tracks in which a modular synthesizer makes many short, fast notes in a random-feeling way. This is… that again, to start, but it quickly changes, dropping in a skittering, jazzy-erratic beat and droning bassline. Once it gets going the mood of the piece is really interesting, very determined, like something large and heavy in dogged motion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyCtqyyX5ts
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Cottonwool", Lamb
In the golden age of trip-hop, Lamb was known for two things: A really good Kruder & Dorfmeister remix; and an undignified incident where one of their albums got widely distributed on Napster/Gnutella after someone relabeled it as an "unreleased" Portishead album. Unfortunate: Lamb deserves to stand alone. I like this track for its layers of lounge jazz and breakbeats, satisfyingly distinct and unmixing like oil and water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvHMHOGrG8E
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Morning Practice", Todd Barton
Made on a modern reissue of one of Buchla's "Easel" style suitcase units, this is an improvised performance of strange, quietly unnerving alien sounds. You may not recognize this as "music". It's basically the noises you'd hear in the background in some sort of science lab or alien spacecraft in a 60s movie (probably because those sounds, in those movies, were in fact made on Buchlas). It's definitely intense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrvpTaMl6nw
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "AMBIVALENT", Human Motives
Humming buzzing noises and bright chords like sunlight glinting off metal, this is six minutes of ambient music made on a modular pipeline that features not one but two granular sound-stretchers chained end to end. Something relaxed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLw59F34y_Q
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Neutral Labs Elmyra DIY drone synthesizer & friends", nyppy
The Elmyra was a DIY/"Open Hardware" clone of the SOMA LYRA-8, with 3 operators instead of 8. A drone box, basically. In this video the box's designer demos the Elmyra with a variety of other equipment (including, in some clips, a LYRA-8). A buffet of atmospheric booming sounds.
I try to limit this thread to single tracks but frankly, all 22 of these pieces are really compelling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I5FMplMQOY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "The Day Of Opening The Tomb", Aural Holograms
This is a 23-minute recording of atmospheric drone ambient, from 2008 and a genre somewhere adjacent to black metal. Metal sounds and distant clanking, sounds that could be wailing or maybe just wind. The YouTube thumbnail actually summarizes this track better than I could. As a connoisseur of structured humming noises, the 23 minutes I spent listening to this were very high-quality ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zkoprENdAo
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "DarkMatter by Lefty’sSoundLab+Eventide BlackHole drone improvisation", Arkady Marto
This is a sorrowful audio inkblot made by a handmade drone synth covered in mysterious knobs. Hypnotic but constantly changing, saws like low horns over a foggy Thames at the start of a spy movie. About 12 minutes in I realized I was convinced I had been hearing a sequence of 3 bass notes for many minutes continuously, but when I concentrated they evaporated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ51UBKksuc
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Wail of a Decomposed Star", Hobboth Music
In this beautifully atmospheric piece the musician rigged up a modular system and then, they claim, "left this patch to record while taking [a] shower". This is surprising since the piece really does feel like it follows an arc to an energetic climax & decline over its 18 minutes, so either something acted as a very long LFO or we got lucky.
(The fittingly H.R. Geiger-y video is an autovisualizer.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xynNKdA8_Qs
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "'Convection' | Cassette Tape Generative Ambient", Not_A_Creative
The YouTube summary for this tells a story: The musician recorded a modular synthesizer piece, but they weren't really vibing with it. So they recorded it onto a cassette tape and played it back at half speed. Suddenly they loved it. This *is* good, actually. Peaceful with occasional passing tremors of creepy feeling, like glimpsing something you shouldn't through the fog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3vbiemDvsM
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "morning drone", SERi
Here is the secret to drone ambient: Get some sort of oscillator with either phase or FM effects that cause transient crackling/squeaky noises, then run it through a massive reverb until you can't hear any individual element. This *always works*.
This track means being repeatedly hit by uniform walls of sound, like vertical ocean waves. It's pretty good for total mind-emptying. No emotions. No consciousness. Just sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXw3KeRRjyQ
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Empty" (YMF288 Cover), jaezu (original by 4-mat)
Yamaha FM was the sound of pop in the 80s, with the DX7 used in more hits than I can name, and then the sound of high-end computers in the 90s, with budget versions of the DX7's chip showing up in the Genesis, Neo Geo, Soundblaster etc.
This is a chiptune cover of another chiptune (originally a 512byte demo), remade on the Sharp PC-98 Yamaha chip as laid-back, vaporwavey electric-piano funk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glfHkltN4-M
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "TD-3 // RD-6 + volca FM = f u n k", Ricardo Schnidrig
Here cheap Behringer reproductions of the Roland 303 and 606, both running at maybe half the tempo those machines are usually run at, combine with an entire garage workbench worth of guitar pedals to make some *unbelievably* laid back acid atop a foamy wall of phased FM. Cool and dreamy and a little bit hypnotic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS9LvdcLhPY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Scarlet Skies", CorvusScribe
This is a chiptune piece on the 4-channel POKEY chip that handled sound and random number generation on the Atari 400 and 800 computers, plus most of Atari's 80s arcade games (Missile Command, Centipede etc).
This one's all big crashing chords, epic and dramatic. Sometimes you just want to listen to some PWMed square waves. The visualization in the video looks pretty cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQqZhPlcxU
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Oh Sheila", Ready for the World
This is from that period in the 80s I've talked about before, when hip hop, new tech and Prince were causing pop music to change quicker than musicians could keep up with. It's a beautifully rocking R&B track, with borderline-experimental staccato everything. Morse code synths.
BTW—go find the music video for this, or GIS "Ready for the World band", if you want to see an *incredible* moment in men's fashion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=excjFCPOS7Y
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Beyond your mind", Reinos
This is a eurodance DOS tracker tune from 2004, with sampled (?) acid synth noises and some fun stuttery violin sounds. Take this into a club in mid-1996 and it would have been the hypest thing.
This was posted on YouTube by the artist, and as the artist does not link the .xm file, and the website advertised in the .xm file on screen appears to be dead, this is probably the only copy of this track on the Internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Ls25NaTU8
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "zxy", Kiyomi Tadagumi
A 60-second chiptune onslaught made by virtually overclocking the NES's 2A03 sound chip to unlock new powers. Every six seconds appears to show off a different "impossible" synthesis technique. Super cool, but frustrating!— it's incredible as flexing, but since no musical phrase repeats it can do little as "music", even though the fragments show potential to be great. I wish for a longer version with a "song structure"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hgWYNP5Dmk
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Performance 065", Stereo Pig
This is a short, focused bedroom modular jam with dirty, way-overdriven distorted industrial beats and a good buzzing groove. Made with a couple of my favorite noise machines (the SOMA Pulsar and Lyra) and a light show made of LEDs controlled directly by the modular equipment (so warning, the video does have flashing). A good piece to play in your warehouse hideout when the rival gang shows up on hoverbikes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cufyyLHsrY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Kachina 🦄", Dochness
This would be a "lo-fi beat to study to" except for the incredibly heavy dubstep-esque synthline bearing down on you, so I guess this is a lo-fi beat to be incredibly nervous to. I think the unicorn emoji is part of the song title.
Performed live on two cheapish desktop synths (Korg's sample-based drum machine, and Roland's SH-1 emulation). It's always nice to me to see enormous sounds coming from budget gear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHBmPtFoTGM
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Simple Stuff", Loraine James
So as far as I can tell the deal with Loraine James is that while I was in college listening to IDM music, she was a teen listening to the same music and thinking "there should be music that sounds like this, but it's laid back R&B". Then she grew up and made it.
This track… isn't IDM exactly, or R&B, it's a forest of dense, unpredictable, looming beats with Loraine cooing on top through increasing distortion.
https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/track/simple-stuff
Simple Stuff, by Loraine James
Loraine Jamesmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "I Cannot See Them", Hitchcock Guillotine
A mix of drums and feedbacky synths through an overdrive filter, one for anyone who believes there is a venn diagram intersection between "harsh noise" and "ambient". Quiet tribal-style drums and a big wet plodding heartbeat of a kick, like the song is keeping time for a march into a sinister Zdzisław Beksiński landscape. One of those loud things that sounds better if you turn it down slightly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1CUc-yEeW0
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Devil's Advocate", DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow's pre-Endtroducing period was covered very well in major-label rereleases, but this one 🔥 track (an alternate, massively superior version of "High Noon") is actually really hard to get get hold of, I assume because of clearance problems. Alongside ultradense beats, this track weaves a pair of dueling vocal samples designed to appear indistinguishable. Pure music must give birth to orgasm and revolution
https://soundcloud.com/kayschaefer/dj-shadow-devils-advocate
Dj Shadow - Devil's Advocate (Heaven Vs. Hell)
SoundCloudmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "DUSG Harmonies", Bleep Bloop
A little abstract synth piece made of an ocean of detuned sawtooths. It's about two minutes long, beatless, and joyfully intense. One of those quiet things that sounds better if you turn it up very loud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5U_l8-QMBw
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Tired of me", Loraine James
So I mentioned a few days ago I've been listening to Loraine James and her stuff is like IDM music as laid-back R&B? Right, so this was what I was thinking of. Dreamy swarm of distorted clicky stutter beats and echoey nonsense keys. I'm not even totally sure I understand what's happening here but I like it
https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/track/tired-of-me
Tired Of Me, by Loraine James
Loraine Jamesmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "ELOQUENCER // MEDITATIONAL APPROACH 2 // Cwejman QMMF-4 + 4 VCOs", LESINDES
This is a slow, wonderfully minimal aleatoric piece in which a sequencer controlling four synth voices starts off playing all four at once in a repeating chord then, on interference from the musician, starts allowing the four channels to desynchronize from each other, phasing the chord into lovely little chaotic arpeggio patterns. "Ambient" or maybe just Krautrock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabjWronWGY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Petrified Wood"
Eyvind Kang is a violist and composer who has recorded with artists as diverse as John Zorn, Animal Collective and Sunn O)). This is a minimalist piece from Kang's own compositions in which he lays violas and reverb atop themselves over and over until any ability to identify what "note" is being played is lost, nothing left but a nameless emotion constantly growing in intensity until you feel you will burst
https://airtexture.bandcamp.com/track/petrified-wood
Petrified Wood, by Evynid Kang
Air Texturemcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Dawless 025 - Stuck in a loop", Stöfbug
This is some SPACE MUSIC recorded live on a grid of entry-level Roland & Korg desktop synths. Synth musicians in the 70s-80s made almost this exact music but would have needed an incredibly highend studio to make it sound this clean. Beatless but not quite ambient, intent music for scoring a craft flying silently through space, a childrens' documentary about the water cycle, a sunrise over a racetrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbpi4kNlzHY
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype", Keith Fullerton Whitman
KFW is a composer and former drum&bass jockey with a lot of really amazing work. I've always been captivated by this piece for the Disklavier, which is Yamaha's trademark for a kind of player piano controlled via MIDI. Through some unclear computer-side technique (phasing?) a single chord is broken apart into noisy note clusters and reconstructed into heart-tugging music
https://keithfullertonwhitman.bandcamp.com/track/stereo-music-for-yamaha-disklavier-prototype-electric-guitar-and-computer
Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar and Computer, by Keith Fullerton Whitman
Keith Fullerton Whitmanmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "White Window", Stefan Torto
I've featured Stefan in this thread a couple times already. The constant attributes of his videos are (1) making complex music on unusually simple hardware setups and (2) cat.
This one's gorgeous, lush semi-ambient electronica. It's got a bit of an epic feel, bestowing a cinematic tone on this video of a cat, bathing in muted morning light, completely convinced the human arm next to her is there for her benefit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kRxnSjQ6Hs
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "VHIKK X sound demo 1", Forge TME
A medley of creepy howling drones as the creator of the VHIKK complex oscillator demonstrates playing it by hand. Most eurorack oscillators output one tone and then you run that through effects; this one has feedbacky delay and modulation built in so it outputs a finished sound. Ignore it's a product demo & you have 20 enjoyable minutes as various cool, menacing industrial noises play, shoggoths shambling by
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsm5RVInFII
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "shape of raw to come", the hatch
I saw "the hatch" live at Toronto's "Next Music from Tokyo" event. NMFT is a really great event and the hatch is *incredible*; mostly they alternate (and blend) dark jazz and death metal, in a way that seems like it shouldn't work but really *really* works. This track is more typical post-rock but still has its surprises, an ominous wailing threat over chugging guitars.
https://jusangatsu.bandcamp.com/track/shape-of-raw-to-come
shape of raw to come, by the hatch
十三月 / 13th recorddsmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "萃点", GEZAN featuring Million Wish Collective
This is from an absolutely wonderful album Christine found. This weird, joyous mix of Taiko-style drumming, electric guitar, a room full of people yelling and chanting, oceans of echo and (not in this song) bagpipes? It makes me think of Polyphonic Spree, or J. A. Seazer's songs for Shūji Terayama and the Utena anime. The track name translates something like "point of origin" or "intersection".
https://jusangatsu.bandcamp.com/track/--69
萃点, by GEZAN with Million Wish Collective
十三月 / 13th recorddsmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "生まれる前のセクシーキング", the hatch
I linked "the hatch" on Monday— this is from their previous album, and is a little closer to that "halfway between jazz and metal" thing I mentioned. Actually it kinda feels like if Last Days of Humanity tried to do a catchy ska kinda thing. All screaming and guitar-shredding noise. But it's catchy!
Google Translate claims this title means "The Sexy King Before Birth". Not sure how to interpret that.
https://jusangatsu.bandcamp.com/track/--6
生まれる前のセクシーキング, by The hatch
十三月 / 13th recorddsmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Melting through Midtown", The Physics House Band
The Physics House Band is a very noisy jazz ensemble. This track is not noisy at all. It is gentle and smooth and autumn-breeze cool. Saxophone and electric piano and drums. Very satisfying.
I previously posted this album in that Bandcamp recommendations thread I had on Another Site. I've been trying not to feature songs from that thread in this one, but maybe soon it won't matter anymore.
https://unearthly-vision.bandcamp.com/track/melting-through-midtown
Melting Through Midtown, by The Physics House Band
Unearthly Visionmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Gateless", Darren Korb
It's been 9 years and I'm prepared to say that "Transistor", by Supergiant Games, has the best video game OST ever. Like, the best video game soundtrack to listen to as an album. I was in indie game circles in 2014 and just every time there was a party in that scene, this album played in full at some point.
My fav track on the OST by far is "Gateless", an intense, epic guitar jam with a slight return to "The Spine".
https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/track/gateless
Gateless, by Darren Korb
Supergiant Gamesmcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Ambient jam w/ Soma Cosmos, Take 5, Polymoon, Marantz cassette tape piano, and guitar", Jay Hosking
In this unimaginatively titled but gorgeous piece, Jay builds in a looper a bed of layers of keyboard sounds (from a 2021 descendent of the Sequential Prophet descendent, and one actual piano), then plays soulful guitar over it. Music for something cinematic to happen over, the protagonist confessing love or saying goodbye for the last time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIGcUGKiGX8
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Analogue Fields", Stefan Torto
This is a stark, moody synthwave piece by Stefan Torto (no cat this time). All sounds are produced on just the budget Volca Keys (the big keyboard is a MIDI sequencer, and the little box on the right is adding the echo). Simple but powerful, music like cold, distant wind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfDTwCR6_X8
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "Radiation day", Ekzil
This is a simple but satisfying desktop synth jam with a kinda club techno feel. I feel like if I'd been played this song without context I'd have dated it to 2003. It's got a nice complex song structure and it's fun to watch the musician manage live-mixing the instruments by hand.
For some reason, this song makes me think of the Baba is You soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csDjfIP0FNM
mcc
in reply to mcc • • •What I'm listening to today: "SNCF Lo-Fi Hip-Hop ▶ YAMAHA SU10 Unquantized Beat", Q_yr Ko
Okay, this one is a *bop*. Made on the SU10, a 1996 portable sampler resembling a much worse version of Yamaha's cult-beloved QY line, most of the appeal here is the contortions the musician had to go through to get the SU10 to do anything at all. Watch their fingers; it can't do sequencing, so they're toggling fixed-length loops made on a PO-33. Fun stuff.
Note: Yes, *that* SNCF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7pv8bZMTWw
Devine Lu Linvega
in reply to mcc • • •