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.
What I'm listening to today: "Saigon Window // Crunchy Ambient [Live Performance]", Dexba
A flowing 20-minute live set featuring a slightly unusual setup (multiple Meng Qi synths) and, as advertised, a window on a Vietnamese street. Starts with some basically okay distorted chimes and echoing howls but around the seven to ten minute mark it finds an atmospheric groove and from there to the end is a transcendent cosmic journey.
What I'm listening to today: "Twelfth", Daniel M. Karlsson
Karlsson (@t36s) is a composer I've been following for years who constantly produces lovely and intense noise/ambient. This was his Nov 12 entry for the "#Noisevember" event (he's now moved on to Dronecember).
Karlsson explains this track is based on a string physical model (https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]rdinal.garden/109333185610168206); the model seems to be pushed to (past?) its limit, producing unearthly, sorrowful noise.
Source code included:
from the album Noisevember
What I'm listening to today: "POCKET OPERATOR ACID RAVE", L҉̵͘P̴̶͘
I've mentioned the Pocket Operator in this thread before, but I don't think I've mentioned how much I love it. It's designed with the aesthetics and sense of play of a toy but you can do serious music production with it. This is demonstrated here via, as the title promises, some absolutely MASSIVE acid rave techno performed live from a PO-33 sampler unit on a tiny calculator-like PCB in the musician's hands.
What I'm listening to today: "Discovering Ambient with the Verbos Multi-Delay", Raucous Studio
This piece is based on a very simple feedback patch; a signal is amplified into itself, piped first through a delay echo and a bandpass with oscillating boundaries to sculpt the frequencies. It's extremely sparse and mostly quiet and almost nothing in it is intentional— just a man turning knobs to see what happens— but the echoing, moaning chirps are very evocative to me.
What I'm listening to today: "Soma RoAT Exploration N°2", HELL F.O
This is based on the Soma "Rumble of Ancient Times", an opinionated/toy synth. The normal problem of noise synths is they sound cool but wind up just making one undifferentiated drone; the ROAT solves this by making *four* drones (pad-triggered).
Here the ROAT's combined with Korg's desktop drum-modeling synth to make a cool and nicely structured glitch hop jam. "It's just like listening to real music!"
What I'm listening to today: "Soma ROAT Jam - Mélodie d'automne", Sidney Cote Nadon
This one uses *two* Rumble of Ancient Times units plus an Akai sampler to make dance techno with the ROATs' various noise generators providing the sirens, swells and background beepy noises you expect to be drifting in and out in the background of such music. It jams. If you liked whatever "Electro" was in 2008 ("Electroclash"? Was that the same thing?) you'll probably like this.
What I'm listening to today: "random noise 079", glenn clyatt
A bizarre journey back and forth across the border between music and noise, this uses a Bastl Kastle and a chiptune synth to pile together bizarre noises until suddenly the noise coalesces into some pretty cool sounding dance techno!… before just as suddenly slowing down 800% and becoming one of, depending on your mindset,
1. A blissful, psychadelic trip
2. The sound of something crying out in pain
What I'm listening to today: "Koma Krell | 0-Coast | Field Kit | Part Two | Extended Cut", Bottle Makes Music
The "Krell Patch" is a setup various synthesizers make possible to construct, where the closing envelope at the end of one note triggers the start of the next note. The name is a reference to the movie "Forbidden Planet". This Krell is augmented with a synth-controlled radio and a church fellowship hall used for natural echo.
TLDR: This is 12 minutes of beeps.
What I'm listening to today: "live stream #1 … subroom signals", substan
substan posts a lot of chill electronic music on YouTube; I've linked him in this thread before. This is an absolutely lovely two-hour (!) flowing set of chill-beats ambient songs, alternating "music they'd play in a yoga class" and "music to program to" with flavors of acid and dubby clicks-and-cuts floating in and out. Every song in this set individually is a song I'd recommend by itself. Massive
What I'm listening to today: "Messed up", KUČKA
KUČKA is a singer-songwriter who produces her own tracks and makes lush, grimy* hyperpop. This track is a single off what I think is an upcoming album and it's super intense, it's got a good driving beat and works as both pop and avant-garde sound design.
* in the sense of "reminiscent of Grimes"
What I'm listening to today: "Limited Access", GOLDEN BOY
At some point last week this tab got opened on my browser and I d… I honestly don't remember where it came from. The song in the tab is from an album named "I NEVER MEANT FOR THIS TO HAPPEN" and is frankly pretty hype. As is the wont of Bandcamp electronic musicians, GOLDEN BOY (she/her) seems to be trying to fit as many different club genres into one song as possible. Kinda reminds me of early Prodigy.
from the album I NEVER MEANT FOR THIS TO HAPPEN
What I'm listening to today: "◯" (Vision Creation Newsun part 1), The Boredoms
The Boredoms started off making entire EPs of just screaming, but evolved into a mindblowing mix of psychadelia, surf rock, and Taiko drumming. And screaming. This is their masterpiece, a joyous explosion like the sound of a world being created, cf "Victory over the Sun".
I couldn't find a good single-track rip on YouTube, so this is the whole album. "Oops." Press stop whereever feels right.
What I'm listening to today: "Asozan", OOIOO
OOIOO is the side band organized by Yoshimi P-We, the drummer from the Boredoms. (If you are a millennial hipster: Yes, this is the Yoshimi who allegedly battled the pink robots.) OOIOO usually offer a slightly more structured take on the Boredoms formula, mixing P-We's drumming with funk stylings. This particular track is a longtime frequent re-listen to me; it has a feeling like a dream, something drifting close and away.
What I'm listening to today: "Super Are", The Boredoms
This is from an album on which every song name begins with "Super".
If I were going to give someone exactly one Boredoms track to listen to it would probably be this one. I mentioned before the Boredoms combine a few different musical styles; this one basically splits them apart and showcases each of them one by one, taking time to savor each flavor, starting with Eno-ish 60s organs and ending with Taiko surf rock.
What I'm listening to today: July 22, 2009 total solar eclipse, BOADRUM
In the 00s the Boredoms spent a while organizing increasingly complex performance art pieces involving very many drum kits, with the largest being 88 drummers in a giant spiral in a Brooklyn park. In my favorite, they took a boat into the pacific ocean to perform this ecstatic noise music ritual in the umbra of a solar eclipse. The dude next to Yoshimi P-We is Zach Hill of Hella and the Death Grips.
What I'm listening to today: "kawasemi Ah", OOIOO
OOIOO released a new album in 2020 that was mostly alternate-version rerecordings of older songs, but one of the new tracks is this song called "kawasemi Ah" with a really good groove. My summary of this song is: kawasemi Ah
from the album nijimusi
What I'm listening to today: "Mixed Emotions", Bebe Barron
In 1956, experimental electronic musicians (and married couple) Bebe and Louis Barron composed the score for Forbidden Planet, inspiring a generation.
In 2000, Bebe visited the music lab at UCSB and recorded a new piece. It is *sick*. It seems to be inventing entirely new emotions. It sounds exactly like the music 60s electronic artists would have made if not held back by the friction of contemporary recording.
What I'm listening to today: "La Jetée", Sines of Exquisite Pleasure
I somehow, happily, managed to wedge YouTube in a state this weekend where it recommended me nothing but albums from the early 80s artists self-published on cassette tape. S.O.E.P. was a particularly exciting find from this; their 1981 album "Modular Systems" is *amazing*, but this one serene track from their 1984 tape stands out to me for its retro-invocations of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Air.
from the album Music for Hospitals
What I'm listening to today: "pulsar 23 volca fm jam", clyv
This jam gets some *wonderfully* bizarre noises out of Volca's cheap modern DX-7 clone box, combined with some wonderful grungy noises from using the Pulsar-23 (a drum machine) as a synth voice. Once the (chugging, dirty) beat comes in the overall feeling is pleasantly disorienting, like listening from afar to a rock concert, or perhaps an alien invasion, happening on the far other side of an echoey valley.
What I'm listening to today: "Spirals & Orbits", Benge
This was recorded this year but is going *hard* in both audio and visuals for the aesthetics of a 60s-70s educational filmreel, all baffling diagrams and radiophonic-workshop abstract noises, video feedback, quiet glimmering echoes on slow oscillator sweeps. As a piece of ambient music it's entrancing.
What I'm listening to today: "Elysium State", Stardust
The "demoscene" if you're not familiar makes tiny audiovisual programs that push the limits of computer hardware. The community started on 80s hardware, and since wowing on modern GPUs is less challenging they to a large extent stayed on 80s hardware, making them a good chiptune source. Here's a new 2022 demo by Stardust (not to be confused with the 1998 Thomas Bangalter side project).
TLDR Dubstep on a ZX Spectrum
What I'm listening to today: "I Am A Recording", m 10538
The poster of this song claims it's a cassette tape they recorded in 1981, when they were a child, on a toy organ in their parents basement. It definitely sounds like a child hitting random notes, but after a bit something clicks and they hit this powerful, spooky groove. Daniel-Johnston-esque in more ways than the conceptual.
The YouTube summary ends with a strange rant about digital preservation, worth reading.
What I'm listening to today: "Almost in tune live play pulsar 23 buchla easel", Amon Tobin
I spend a lot of time listening to bedroom synth jams by YouTube randos and I've gotten *very* used to incredibly hype stuff posted by accounts with 23 subscribers, so when I got to the end of this driving, buzzing techno jam I was shocked to realize THIS rando was Amon Tobin, a Ninja Tune-signed musician I've seen live three times. Apparently he also has synths in his bedroom.
What I'm listening to today: "Bedroom electro test demo (live electro track feat Elektron Octatrack // Analog Rytm // Slav Squat)", Matt Leagre
Now *this* is a true bedroom synth jam, as in, you can literally see the bed and the dude visibly doesn't have enough space for all the synths he has jammed in the corner there (the unplugged Arp Odyssey reissue! D:). Eight minutes of shifting groove with 90s dance and vaporwave flavors. Really good stuff actually.
What I'm listening to today: "Volca Keys + Beats ambient jam - Volca Dreams", Fortress of Sound
A lovely, gentle electronic groove made on the two most basic Korg Volca units and one guitar pedal. Feels like water level music from a lost Donkey Kong Country game. The basics, they work. This is 13 minutes long and realistically probably could/should have been like seven but you just kind of zone out and you don't notice how long it's been.
What I'm listening to today: "True Love Will Find You In The End (Daniel Johnston cover)", The Mathletes
I went to high school with Joe Mathlete, the lead / occasional only member of this band, so I guess I'm one of their oldest fans. As a home-recording indie musician from Texas Joe's got a deep love for Daniel Johnston and played a version of Johnston in Speeding Motorcycle, a stage musical in Houston and Austin. This cover is super intense to me; best listened loud.
What I'm listening to today: "400 piece 1", Alessandro Cortini
Cortini is a colossally talented synth musician famed for doing all Nine Inch Nails' synths for many years. He also has a YouTube channel where along with his music videos he posts jams, and videos of his cat sitting on rare synthesizers. This video, from 2017, is a spooky, swaying ambient piece; he claims it was the first thing recorded on a "newly restored" Buchla 400. Check out the ancient CRT interface.
What I'm listening to today: "Make Noise | Strega with Pocket Operator PO-33 Session 221119", ナカヤマコウジ
This is a short and simple, kind of ambient / abstract trip-hop piece made with a handheld sampler and the Strega, a synthesizer/effects unit (co-designed by… Alessandro Cortini, again). Not super attention-grabbing or anything and it's over near as soon as it starts, but it sounds really cool and it creates some nice distinct moods before it goes.
What I'm listening to today: "Pulsar 23, THYME, and Generation Loss MKII - Destruction Jam", nealwho
This one uses a Pulsar playing a gritty industrial drum loop, but the centerpiece is a guitar pedal that simulates the sound of degraded magnetic tape on a poorly maintained player. This, and an unusual (sequenceable) bitcrushing delay-echo by Bastl, place the loop on a rack and stretch it into 10 minutes of muffled, unsettling error noises. William Basinski in real time
What I'm listening to today: "Stations of the Tide (annotated)", Dave Seidel
An extremely quiet piece consisting entirely of Schoenberg-y tonal hums rising and falling in possibly-patternless waves. In places it just falls into complete silence. There's a feeling of intense isolation here, maybe something like dread.
The piece is mechanically generated in VCV Rack; the video shows the machine that generated it, and overlay text explains what each functional block does.
What I'm listening to today: "Sixtyniner", Boards of Canada
All those "chill synth jam" videos I link here? You can blame basically all of them on BoC, who perfected a blend of educational-film-score analog synths + hip-hop beats that in 1998 was a revelation.
BoC had tons of early stuff recorded when they signed, so they have multiple rerelease albums. My favorite BoC track ever is still "Sixtyniner" from their 1995 self-published cassette. The mood remains unmatched.
from the album Twoism
What I'm listening to today: "shortbus take1", SunFallsMusic
The "Shortbus" is a literally-named Eurorack module that doesn't connect to the power ribbon; the switches just determine which plugs are electrically "shorted" to the others. This guy rigged up a pleasantly strange repeating beat with a wavetable synth and a shortbus at the center. The same guy has a "take2" video which shows the performance possibilities of the switches better, but I like this strange loop.
What I'm listening to today: "The Ark Of Redemption/Full Circle (Pulsar-23, Strega, 0-CTRL, DBA Rooms)"
This is a half-hour long (improvised?) performance of somewhere between one and three songs. So it's kind of a lot, and some of the sounds are harsh, but I really like the progression on this, going from a constant buzzing drone into epic warehouse ambiance and sinister clicking and, eventually, music. If you can let yourself be hypnotized by sound, this will do it.
What I'm listening to today: "Push for Woogies", tvvt
This is an acid techno jam posted on the synthesizer subreddit this morning based around what I think is a Moog Sub37 and a bunch of Electron boxes. It's messy but very fun; I like how the first 20 seconds or so sound like just random noises until the bass drum drops and suddenly everything snaps into place.
https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/10csghi/push_for_woogies/
What I'm listening to today: "Techno jam / polyend tracker,tr-6s,j-6"
This is a desk jam using some boxes from Roland's recent attempt to approximate the Volca line, specifically the "It's like a TR-606 with sliders? Sort of?" box and the "It's like a Jupiter-08 with a chord sequencer? Sort of?" box.
The opening just-drums part goes on maybe a little longer than I would have let it, but once the j-6 comes in it gets "hype". Overall some enjoyably dirty techno.
mcc
Tom Priore