What I'm listening to today: "Adder (version)", Blackbird Raum

The original of this song is slow and wrenching and sung by a woman who sounds on the verge of tears. This version is just screaming, bagpipes and screaming. It is very much The Mood.

Were I a bird a bull would step on me
Were I a bull a butcher I would see
And if I were a butcher, my apron would be clean
Were I a bird a bull would step on me

https://blackbirdraum.bandcamp.com/track/adder-version

What I'm listening to today: "The Scene is Dead", Dubmood

Sandblast-your-brain FastTracker2 chiptune electronica track. Just refuses to stop moving for seven minutes. There are so many ideas in this one! The author says they began this track in 2012 and completed it in 2024, so apparently the scene was dying for a very long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVcHrL2ZwCM

What I'm listening to today: "Space Fall" (part 3.5), r beny

Most of my musical diet the last 5 years has been YouTube live bedroom synth sets and if anyone got me on this kick, it was r beny, who did it early and, tbh!, best.

This r beny live set is from a 2021 group concert at the Colorado Modular Synth Society. Opens with clockworky electronica, ends with an intense rework of the song on his YouTube channel as "Waldorf Iridium Ambient". In between: fog-haze ambient

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD5obUv52xQ&t=1579s

What I'm listening to today: "Wabi-sabi", a-symmetric

This is an "electro-acoustic" ensemble featuring @pangrus , a Merveilles user who makes his own instruments, from an album that mostly sounds like an argument between a digeridoo and a violin at the far end of a train station. This one track is a lovely, evocative melange of what I think of as "shine noises" punctuated by electronic-sounding warbles that feel like jazz music being crushed in a pneumatic press

https://a-symmetric.bandcamp.com/track/wabi-sabi

What I'm listening to today: "Pikopiko", neu neu neu

This is a really nice Japanese post-rock album I hit at random on YouTube. This one track (begins at 3:40 in video) is game boy chiptune noises beautifully integrated into layered guitar and drums carefully tuned to clip but just a *little*. Consider the symmetry between violins and the game boy sound chip. Consider that you wouldn't be able to make out the lyrics even if you spoke Japanese. Ponder the shoes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIT1rb_tXfg&t=220s

What I'm listening to today: "List of Demands (Reparations)", Saul Williams

Position paper read through a megaphone. Terrifying, breezy industrial beats and laughing children.

I was originally gonna post "Grippo" today and make a joke about people reading this feed getting directly called out by the lyrics. But then I just started listening to the album and was like… no. List of Demands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDMtaIcrfQ0

What I'm listening to today: "Great Day (Four Tet Remix)", Madvillain [MF DOOM]

There's this amazing EP where Four Tet remixes MF DOOM's breakout album, and swaps Madlib's grubby funk smoothly out for his own headphones electronica. This one takes what was one of the original album's best tracks to start with and distills something truly transcendental out of it, built on garbled Spanish guitar and almost no beats

https://madvillain.bandcamp.com/track/great-day-four-tet-remix

What I'm listening to today: "Brothers Feel Fly", Dr. Dooom [Kool Keith]

Kool Keith built his own around fluidly shifting identities with elaborate cover stories, dense wordplay, and sci fi references. So you can maybe understand how he'd feel a LITTLE miffed at Daniel Dumile.

This is from a run of late 90s albums where Keith was basically constantly going "hey, has anyone else noticed analog synthesizers make incredible noises?!". Always ten years ahead of every trend

https://koolkeith.bandcamp.com/track/brothers-feel-fly

What I'm listening to today: "Crumb Snatchers", MF Grimm

This *incredibly* hardcore 2005 album is an attempt to reconstruct a 1994 debut rap album that got shelved after a shooting left Grimm temporarily unable to see or speak, and permanently in a wheelchair. From there Grimm's career threads erratically through underground rap and comics; notably he was a very early collaborator/booster/roommate of MF DOOM but apparently that artistic relationship ended kinda badly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPkSPQ4TCDY

What I'm listening to today: "Hush the Crowd", J-LIVE

This 2003 track was, I think?, recorded while the artist was trying to balance a rap career with working as a public school English teacher, and is basically an anthem for the frustrated artist, or maybe a lovesong to their fans. I am currently in the process of winding down a game studio and the bit here beginning with "Besides, what's your options?" haunts me.

https://realjlive.bandcamp.com/track/hush-the-crowd

What I'm listening to today: "Raedawn", Victor Vaughn [MF DOOM]

So I think the idea with DOOM was that his various recording names aren't personae, but are supposed to be aliases for the same shadowy supervillain, popping up in different places. Or maybe he was just trying to evade record label contracts. Anyway! Here DOOM goes so hard on the progressive production he breaks through all the way into the genre I keep trying not to describe as "IDM"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GXOD1I6iY