What I'm listening to today: "If You Knew", Le Solitaire
This is a simply charming desktop synth duet from 2016 (which for Synth Jam YouTube is basically the paleolithic era). One musician drives the bass and drums while the other one sings into the looper function of an OP-1, constantly tweaking until she's singing in harmony with an entire choir of her own voice.
What I'm listening to today: "Mini Jam Monday #8", littleBIGsynths / Mod Maquina
A jam from 2016 that does absolutely the most with the absolute least. This sets up a killer hook on one Volca Keys and one Pocket Operator drum machine and then explores it as completely as the sequencing capabilities of the devices allow, and then some, as the musician proceeds to hand-animate what seems like every single knob the Volca has. You could dance to this.
What I'm listening to today: "PO-33 & NTS-1 | LoFi | Synthwave jam", Stefan Torto
A lo-fi hip hop beats track with a sort of Earthbound feeling to it. The entire complicated track is produced from the PO-33 (the little calculator looking thing on the left, it's a sampler) with Korg's DIY-kit microsynth used to add reverb.
What I'm listening to today: "Qu-Bit Aurora getting angry", synthe sizer83
I listen to a lot of extremely varied electronic music and this one is still very mysterious to me. I guess this is "drone". Six minutes of enigmatic hums and distant flutters and clanks. There seems to be a melody, but it's too large and slow to see the entire thing at once. This all appears to be the result of using a reverb filter for something entirely other than reverb.
What I'm listening to today: "[D]RONIN + Soma COSMOS + Eventide PITCH FACTOR", Giovanni B
A looper with automated chaotic phasing, an octave doubler, and a… "horror playground live rig"? This person appears to have built a kind of prepared piano without the piano part, a random chunk of wood with guitar pickups and vibratey bits of metal stuck into it at random, ostensibly so they can make horror movie soundtracks?, in practice for making Einsturzende Neubauten grooves.
What I'm listening to today: "Three Views Of A Secret", Daisuke Kawai & Hidenobu "KALTA" Otsuki
So I'm watching this video of a synth trade show, and one of the comments mentions that a guy walking by in the background is "the best organ player in Japan". Huh.
So I look the guy up and find him doing this intense and moody live cover of an old Jaco Pastorius jazz piece, in collaboration with a drummer who seems to be picking up psychic transmissions from another galaxy:
What I'm listening to today: Unused song, Maniac Mansion
If you dump the ROM of the NES version of Maniac Mansion, there's an entire completed song on the cart the game never uses. According to game composer George Sanger, it was originally supposed to be the theme for Dr. Fred (I'm not sure it really fits him). I'm really captivated by this song, it's weird and rocking and it has a really particular emotion to it I'm not sure I can identify in any other piece of music.
What I'm listening to today: "Volca Sample meets Eventide H9", ShurSoma
This is a lovely performance on a cheap sampling drum machine drowned in reverb, centered on a gong-like bell sample that swirls hypnotically close and away. A good track to just lay back and float in.
What I'm listening to today: "SOMA Pulsar-23 (a brief sequence to try things out)", TÆT
I think I've posted a few tracks before based on SOMA's idiosyncratic instruments; the Pulsar is their take on a drum machine, based around heavy rewirability, chaos injection and a *lot* of distortion. This is a fun robot dance number showing off what the Pulsar can do.
What I'm listening to today: "Mørkeredd" (Analog Four)
This is in some ways a very gentle track, the only thing that resembles a beat is a shaped bass, but it's got this enormous cinematic feeling to it. Basically this is good music for listening to as you awake at the bottom of a dying space station, barely feeling your bruises. You have been betrayed. You climb the levels in low-g slow motion, knowing who awaits you at the top. Your destiny is above you, or your doom
What I'm listening to today: "defenestrate (live ambient improv)", TRDRT
This is a 15-minute ambient-plucking-noises-and-bass groove that builds in a really good way. Another one of those tracks that's good background sound when you're doing something else.
What I'm listening to today: "Chudraga", porfiry
Another piece with the Pulsar, SOMA's drum machine. This time it's paired with the Ornament, SOMA's oblique "sequencer": a controlled chaos generator used in this case to trigger congo patterns and distorted industrial drums while something (also the Ornament?) pushes semirandom notes into a 90s-IDM-reminiscent synth lead (which the musician seems to have jury-rigged from nowhere by hijacking one of the drum oscillators).
What I'm listening to today: "Poology Jungle with Pulsar-23 and Digitakt", raphito_
So if I'd made this I'd probably have named it "poolcore", but… whatever. This is a spaced-out clicks-and-cuts percussive blend with the Pulsar, controlled via MIDI from the Digitakt, supplying glitchy sounding analog drums while the Digitakt overdubs the standard Amen break samples. The tension between the two modes of techno keeps the mood a fascinating split between chill and anxious.
What I'm listening to today: "Lyra 8 + Strega", afxtr
What if I just did an entire week of these posting only SOMA synth pieces?
So the Lyra-8 is all about reverb; its oscillators maximize harmonics so the reverb can smear those out. This musician decided that *wasn't enough reverb*, so he added the Strega for maximum possible ominous howling drone.
Note the 0-CTRL isn't sequencing anything; it's wired so the harder he presses the keyboard the more the reverb expands.
What I'm listening to today: "Industrial Raga 1", Vadjuse
The Ornament is a machine for algorithmically sequencing triggers. One of its trigger output modes is "connect to ground", and wiring those outputs to the touch plates on the Lyra simulates the touch of a human finger. So in this one a PO-32 drum machine plays highly distorted beats while the ornament is picking out a note sequence on the Lyra's finger keys, producing something intense and unsettlingly alien.
What I'm listening to today: "Soma Lyra 8 Pulsar 23 2X Ornament 8 Patch", NodiWolf
A long, slow dirge with a beat so chill it's frigid and a sinister hissing hum, like you're being serenaded by a bank of air conditioners or a swarm of wasps. I absolutely love this.
This one has the full SOMA complement of a Lyra, a Pulsar, and two Ornaments, with each Ornament controlling one device and the Lyra controller on a much slower timescale to differentiate drums and "melody".
What I'm listening to today: "I'm Out", Tom Ehrlich
Four minutes of lovely blasting industrial noise, evolving from the drone of evil bagpipes to drunkenly stagging almost-melodic cinematic synthwave.
What I'm listening to today: "Off The Wall", Kurena Ishikawa
Live jazz performance of a woman playing a standup bass and singing to her own accompaniment. A really compelling piece with a good groove.
What I'm listening to today: "Volcano", The Swans
This album is mostly spacy shoegaze until suddenly this track hits in a blast of desynced dance beats, electronic buzzing and ghostly singing; what I didn't know until this week is the reason it's so different is it's the album's one track produced entirely by Jarboe, the woman singing on it. I always assumed this was a sample collage and that the singing was some folk song they'd dug up.
IMO should be experienced loud.
What I'm listening to today: "G-Spot Tornado", Frank Zappa
I didn't know this existed until last week, but Zappa's final album ("Jazz from Hell") was created entirely on the Synclavier, a late-70s DAW predating microcomputers and shipping on several large cabinets. It's impossible to comprehend what this felt like in 1986 as at the time it must have felt impossibly futuristic but to me (and probably you) it indelibly sounds like general MIDI on cheap 90s PC sound cards.
What I'm listening to today: "Modular Jam#1 - Verbos Electronics", Maarten Vandamme
Incredibly quiet and gentle, this one is a few minutes of soft hissing hums with sharper melodic synths bubbling under the surface. The piece is performed on a Buchla-style modular suitcase; the "Verbos" is the touch keyboard, which is screwed into the suitcase along with the synth modules.
What I'm listening to today: "ORNAMENT-8 self developing composition"
SOMA demo by SOMA's founder, using a Pulsar, Lyra and two Ornaments (this time crosswired to make one giant 16-operator Ornament).
This one is *incredibly* challenging, with every element controlled by analog generative circuits; all the elements of a "song" are present but arranged in an alien way, with cryptic harmonic leaps and no consistent tempo. The structure here has nothing to do with humans.
What I'm listening to today: "Wall of Sleep", Daniel Avery + HAAi
This came up on Tidal's new releases stream and I just really liked it. A voice floating in a sea of shimmer pedals. If people had never stopped making trip-hop maybe it would sound like this by now.
There's an official upload of this on YouTube with cool analog video accompaniment, but the sound quality (mastering?!) on that version's real bad. Maybe pull that up and watch it simultaneously but muted.
from the album Ultra Truth
What I'm listening to today: "Non-Entity", Nine Inch Nails
This song was recorded, and rejected, for With Teeth, and unheard until September 2005 when MTV held a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina and Trent Reznor (a longtime New Orleans resident) showed up and played this version solo on piano accompanied only by a drum machine.
The chorus chord progression was later used in "34 Ghosts IV", so this is technically the original version of Old Town Road.
What I'm listening to today: "Cymbal Rush (live)", Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke's solo stuff tends to a stripped-down style, seemingly limited to whatever electronic gear Yorke can program himself. This is often stark and haunting, but in the case of the album version of "Cymbal Rush" it's just undercooked.
But then there's this incredible one-off live version, which, given inclusion of Johnny Greenwood and Nigel Godrich (watch at 2:50) I guess is more like a Radiohead cover.
What I'm listening to today: "New Jazz Underground Live! #2", New Jazz Underground
These are some dudes who crowdfund recording their jazz band performances and posting them on YouTube and they just happen to be super good. I found them through a track they called "Sad Boy Anthem" but they've got a bunch of these full-length 50-minute-ish "Live!" performances up and that's the real gold. I listened to a few of their livestream sets and this one was my favorite.
What I'm listening to today: "random techno 172(118bpm) Polyend Tracker, Moog Grandmother, Bastl Softpop SP2, Thyme, Korg NTS-1", glenn clyatt
Does anyone remember "dub"? For a while in the early 00s we had this techno genre we called "dub", which was an annoying name because it was inspired by but not the same as dub reggae. Anyway this guy posts daily-ish synth doodles on YouTube and this particular one has strong dub vibes. Good energy here, starts chill and builds.
What I'm listening to today: "Cruel", Tori Amos
"Songs from the Choir Girl Hotel" had a markedly different style from basically every other Tori Amos release (she got a backup band, basically) in a way that Tori Amos herself did not actually seem to like, but wow, what a unique album. Each of the first 9 tracks is a standout in some way but "Cruel", a song which has no piano at all but anchors itself around *incredibly* dirty electric bass, has always been my favorite.
What I'm listening to today: "random noise 076 SOMA RoAT, NTS-1"
This is the same guy from Monday I guess? Whatever. This is a good ominous ambient piece with the "Rumble of Ancient Times", SOMA's toy 8-bit synth, combined with Korg's DIY reverb filter. It's made from two improvised takes spliced together so it has a really good movement structure to it ("it's like listening to a real song!"). If you can listen to this on speakers with bass that's an amazing experience.
What I'm listening to today: "22 Minutes of Live Modular Techno \\ Verbos, Make Noise Easel, Pulsar 23"
This is a live set of that hardkore classic 90s style four on the floor techno. It's somewhat of note that it's being made with a collection of modern synths (like the Pulsar and Strega, to say nothing of the modular synth rack) that I associate more with noise/ambient, but rather than grabbing your attention the sculpted noises just integrate cleanly into the groove.
What I'm listening to today: "SUMMER COMES EARLY TONIGHT", thofabyq
This is a super chill lo-fi hip hop beats track on the PO-12 and PO-33 toy synthesizers (a drum machine and a sampler). Soul singing chopped up into vaguely pleasant but entirely asemic syllabic soup.
What I'm listening to today: "Shebang II", Oren Ambarchi
I found "Shebang", a lovely little EP thing, on Tidal and was immediately enraptured by the second track, a dark and atmospheric cauldron of unpredictably roiling bass and jazz noises. Like a band all simultaneously woke up from a nap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbO4Z3hqlk0
The whole album (a playlist is linked on YouTube, or https://orenambarchi.bandcamp.com/album/shebang on Bandcamp) is honestly really worth a listen, it flows well and "II" extends into a 3-song suite.
What I'm listening to today: "It's Gonna Rain, Pt. II", Steve Reich
"It's Gonna Rain" is based on a recording of a San Francisco street preacher and "phasing" (multiple copies of a tape playing at different speeds, drifting in and out of sync).
The first part, which sounds oddly like trance music, Reich exhibited in 1965; he initially withheld this, the more-complex second part, fearing it was imbued with so much chaos its release would be dangerous for the world.
What I'm listening to today: "1/2", Brian Eno
This is the start of side 2 of "Ambient I: Music for Airports", Eno's infamous album that coined "ambient music" and made his experimental music forever overshadow his pop work (w/ Roxy Music, David Bowie etc). The songs all utilize Reich-style phasing of long loops; this track is the most complex, and my favorite.
Although MFA is great ambient for many contexts, in my opinion it is not appropriate for airports. Wrong mood.
What I'm listening to today: "Call Me Maybe Acapella 147 Times Exponentially Layered", Dan Deacon
This is the acapella version of "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, layered on itself 147 times exponentially increasing. In other words, self-explanatory.
https://mabsonenterprises.bandcamp.com/track/call-me-maybe-acapella-147-times-exponentially-layered
(There is a clear line running through Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Negativland, Plunderphonics, Martin Arnold, "It's Over 9000!"/YTP/YTMND and Neil Cicierega/meme mashups. It's all one artistic tradition.)
from the album Call Me Maybe
What I'm listening to today: "Modular Techno Performance// Verbos + SOMA Pulsar 23 + Digitakt", Raucous Studio
Some classic industrial-flavored dark-trance dance music with a lot of juicy clipping. I would describe it as "hype". It is very easy to imagine this being played in a warehouse or some other very large room full of people so if you have not been able to visit a large room full of people in the last couple years maybe this will be a good simulacrum.
What I'm listening to today: "AepoK feat. Pit&Gore 〓 Visa 96 ☰ Korg EMX - Electro Set live Electribe", CycLoop
More 90s-style hard rave music: a 10-minute flowing set of various songs played on the EMX-1 groovebox, a precursor to the Volca (but aimed at professional DJs rather than hobbyists). In 2004 when this device was released these sounds would have probably sounded five years out of date, but listening now in 2022 sounding like it's from 1999 only sounds charming.
What I'm listening to today: "Open Your Mind // First Jam with the MAKENOISE XPO", Jon Gee
So the concept here is real simple: This guy got a new synthesizer and he's trying it out, by feeding in a single semi-randomized sequence (bottom left) and turning knobs. The result is like watching something go in and out of focus, as different knob configs make more or less sonic sense (peaking in hypeness around 2:00).
The XPO is based around stereo so headphones recommended.
Never quite know how to begin with a new module. Might as well see what it can do. I love XPO. Also included in this little numba is Deckard’s Voice & Rachae...
What I'm listening to today: "Unstability", Hidenobu Ito
One of the best ever songs from the early 00s "Glitch" genre was this track by this mostly-forgotten artist from the soundtrack of Boogiepop Phantom, a mostly-forgotten anime. Several cut-up synth lines (or maybe just a Reaktor script?) collide together and spill ruptured tonal organs all over the floor.
The bass in this YouTube rip is unfortunately a little de-emphasized, so subwoofer or headphones recommended.
What I'm listening to today: "Mutable Marbles experiment., eastern drone swedgling.", Jonny Riddles
"Marbles" is a randomness generator for modular racks, but for structured randomness, it's designed to make values cluster. Here it's being used to pilot timbres of hypnotic clanging noises—like gongs swinging in the wind somewhere distant at the edge of your hearing, but made of metal not of this world, gritty and distorted.
Warning, the mix is biased a bit to left ear.
What I'm listening to today: "Tribute", Guano Apes
The Guano Apes were a nu-metal one-hit-wonder on German radio in the late 90s. This isn't their hit; it's their album's final track, where they cut loose and made something really *weird*, starting with funky metal then… devolving? I can't describe it. There's a sense of dread, the vocalist is trying to communicate something she seems to think is very important but doesn't quite have the English skills to get across.
What I'm listening to today: "Ondes Sonores", Jean François Lavielle
Some good focused modular ambient. Chaotic windchime sounds, skittering against a quiet but driving beat that gives the piece a good backbone.
What I'm listening to today: "Shell Fish", Cool Breeze Rack
This is a low-tempo, slightly unsettling VCV rack patch with some interesting dynamics shifts, but what's interesting about it is all of the multiple melody lines appear to be sequenced by random generators. Despite this the brain does a startlingly convincing job of seeing patterns in the chaos even if it knows there is no pattern. This is the true power of randomly selected notes.
Video image is a still.
What I'm listening to today: "Soma DVINA / Make Noise Strega / 0-CTRL", Jon Gee
Chill, dreamy and atmospheric. Here Jon combines my favorite echo/feedback/hiss device (the Strega) with a new device from SOMA which is actually not a synthesizer but is sort of a two-stringed duxianqin [Vietnamese monochord]. (SOMA say they were inspired by Persian and Hindustani instruments.) Jon uses all this to create bowed-string and synth-tone sounds drifting in and out of aural fog.
What I'm listening to today: "Guess The Picture", DSP Kills
A fun, peppy jam that seems to be trying to hit as many different electronic music genres within three minutes as possible, but especially seems to love timbres from IDM and jungle. Created on an absolute nuclear control panel of a modular setup, but it's orchestrated from a PC running some sort of tracker so it's structured more like a complex mixed/prerecorded piece than typical live modular. I like the bass.
What I'm listening to today: "3x NYMPHES and 1 spare hour to shoot a video", Dimitra Manthou
As the title says, a synth designer/cofounder at Dreadbox had a slow afternoon one day, so she grabbed a Nymphes and over an hour dubbed it on itself 3 times to make this strange little song. It's short but it turned out really compelling, there's a fascinating mood to it. It tastes to me like aluminum.
What I'm listening to today: "SynthCone VISMUTH with Universe Zen Audio VOSKHOD-2 -=|=- DRONE DARK AMBIENT", GIPNOZER
If you've been following this thread you'll notice I keep returning to tracks that consist entirely of ominous howling, and this is for a simple reason, which is that I *really like* ominous howling. This is a great 10-minute track depicting the constant approach of an enormous swarm of invisible insects, punctuated by periodic electric squealing.
What I'm listening to today: "Finding Beauty in Distortion", Raucous Studio
Six minutes of meditative "weird noises" based around using an analog implementation of an OR gate as a distortion filter. Mostly very quiet actually, but full of lovely subtle moments. A good demonstration of how one can perceive rhythm in otherwise ambient works through simple things like a repeating click or a phaser pedal.
Headphones recommended.
What I'm listening to today: "L.E.S. Artistes", Santigold
The late 00s had a wealth of excellent female producer/songwriter/singers (Janelle Monae, Robyn etc) and among that group Santigold never quite got the attention she deserved, I thought. She's still releasing albums but her first album still stands out to me for its unusual synth accents and the first track, "L.E.S. Artistes", a basically perfect pop song that delivers unforgettably catchy funk from moment one.
What I'm listening to today: "Les Artisans", Theoreme
This album's from 2021 but what it makes me think of more than anything else is like old Einstürzende Neubauten or Swans songs with industrial-sounding (in the sense of "like a factory") bass sounds and clanging beats and prose being intoned in a low voice, except that in this one woman intoning the prose is speaking French instead of German. Anyway, I liked it. The first track on here is the best:
from the album Les Artisans
What I'm listening to today: "Les Artistes", Rachid Taha
So if you have Spotify or Tidal or one of those other big unethical streaming sites, a weird thing you can do is search for a song by name, click "play" from the search page and it will *play all the search results alphabetically*, which sounds like it should not work but is sometimes startlingly effective.
Anyway here's some jamming French rockabilly by an Algerian singer / social activist. Guess how I found it
What I'm listening to today: "THE LIZ", Armani Caesar
Armani Caesar is a new rapper from Buffalo NY with a distinct and really satisfying musical aesthetic. Her rap style evokes 90s rappers like Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, her production evokes Dan the Automator and Kool Keith. I'm making comparisons to old stuff but this isn't retro, it feels like she picked up where those artists left off. She has two good albums in the last two years, both of them named "THE LIZ".
What I'm listening to today: "Communiqué: Approach Spiral", Michael Shrieve
Awhile back I posted a music link here and someone said it gave them "Approach Spiral vibes". I didn't know what that was but it turns out in 1984 the drummer for Santana released an album of chill electronic music. This track features what I guess 80s Americans would have called a "world music" beat, 12 minutes long with a slow but increasingly intense build, and the vibes are excellent.
What I'm listening to today: "Celestial Soda Pop", Ray Lynch
This album, "Deep Breakfast" was self-produced/self-released by Ray Lynch in 1984, before "techno" was a word; back then it would have been sold as "New Age". Things were fuzzier then.
I heard this song in the 7th grade. I hadn't awakened into musical consciousness yet, so the only way I knew then to explain the extremely deep impression it left on me was "this is the best Final Fantasy overworld music ever".
What I'm listening to today: "Korg Wavestate relax", Ondřej Štěpánek
This is someone's synth jam with Korg's Minilogue-ized Wavestation equivalent; it's recorded last year, but has a deliciously early-90s vibe to it. The piece feels like it's building toward something, but stays quiet and slow right to the end; I get the sense of a song from a movie soundtrack, an early establishing scene, laying down leitmotifs that will pay off in tense and action-packed scenes later.
What I'm listening to today: "Children", Robert Miles
It wasn't easy to be a techno fan in Texas in 1995. The Chemical Brothers and "electronica" were still a couple years off so the rock station gave me nothing to work with. My only sources were college radio and, occasionally, 104.1, the soft rock station, which targeted moms but because it played pop *occasionally* would allow dance tracks into its lineup. Occasionally this meant true synth bangers, like "Children".
What I'm listening to today: "Full Performance (Live on KEXP)", Hania Rani
About a month ago this lady and her synthesizers did a live set on a Seattle radio station. The first six or so minutes are some basic chill 90s style ambient synths, but then she starts layering in piano and singing and from that point to the end it feels like she's banging on your heart with a hammer.
The final minutes are an interview, so you'll probably want to stop the video around 26:00.
What I'm listening to today: "Triple Kastle", alloutofsync
The Bastl Kastle is a lovely toy-like palmtop instrument that mocks the entire expensive idiom of modular synths by costing like $60, running off 3 AA batteries and yet sounding like it contains an entire universe of glitchy noise.
This piece combines three Kastles crosswired to make otherworldly noises unlike anything you've ever heard, although oddly it does remind me a bit of the Earthbound cave music.
What I'm listening to today: "Strega processing LF radio signals", Tom Zicarelli
"Software Defined Radio" is a technique where an untuned radio receiver shovels the bottom 48 kilohertz of the spectrum into a computer's audio-in "raw", at which point bandpass/demodulation are performed in software. In this video an iPad runs SDR with intentionally incorrect demodulation/frequency settings, so the only output is chaotic squealing that a Strega smears into audio ambience.
What I'm listening to today: "Every song on Björk's album 'Vespertine' at the same time"
This experiment starts off feeling kind of pointless; all the first 30 seconds do for me is reveal 606 drums and the harpsicord from "Pagan Poetry" stand out well amidst noise.
But then there's a shift, like the floor dropping out under you. Once the song intros are past everything blends, and coalesces into a slowly-mutating, gloriously creepy, shockingly emotional uniform howl.
@mcc
Not gonna lie, I was not thinking of the correct Korg when I went to listen to this.
That said, this is REALLY nice
@stilist I imagine there's no way we could *disprove* the idea this is based on Blondie's "Call Me"...
Wait, though. Is "Call Me" just based on "You Were Made For Loving Me" by Kiss?!
@mcc I was at a concert of hers after the first album (right after the name change IIRC).
Was a blast!
mcc
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