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

What I'm listening to today: "Pause Tape", JJ Doom

These sessions by MF DOOM and Jneiro Jarel were recorded during (what was at the time believed to be) a temporary stay in Britain after DOOM got ejected from the US. Jarel's an interesting guy and this deliriously weird B-side I think has the most of his own personality of anything from the collaboration. Is this literally a pause tape? I don't have space to explain what this means but I think this might be a pause tape

https://mfdoom.bandcamp.com/track/pause-tape

What I'm listening to today: "Ambient Machine Live 17", Takeo Watanabe

Can I convince you to take a risk?

This is a 17 minute set from a series recorded in random remote locations, this one based on a tape machine and pedal looper. The first few minutes are a bit vague— he seems to just be messing around. But he's feeding the looper. Stop paying attention around minute two, leave it in the background, suddenly around minute seven you'll find yourself in another galaxy.

https://youtu.be/oAPUoFP3yxI?si=4sZ6PZ8s5fnLHCp6

What I'm listening to today: "Four", Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds

Nils Frahm is an artist with whom I am Much Enamored, whose thing mostly is he records albums where all he does is play the piano softly and it's incredibly gripping. Occasionally though Nils dabbles in Electronic Instrumentation and gorgeous ambient music results.

https://erasedtapes.bandcamp.com/track/four

What I'm listening to today: "Rogue Fossil", Virus

This was recommended to me by a Bluesky user after I said I wanted "either metal with jazz drumming or jazz with metal drumming". I'm not sure this is that, but it definitely slaps. This is like if Labradford was satanist, I guess? Or if Tool took pot instead of heroin. Video is like slow hypnosis. Heavy dissonant playing the bass with a pick, close and claustrophic, the entire renaissance faire breathing down your neck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220eDjcDSlM

What I'm listening to today: "All Fours", Void Femmes

This is the solo project of @lexfeathers, bassist of Waxlimbs (and creator of the "prepared typewriter" piece if you remember me linking that). This EP is a series of off-kilter and incredibly sick dance pieces, swinging industrial deritus and bodies falling from the roof of the factory and clattering thudding to the ground and wait why exactly were they storing bodies up there?

https://voidfemmes.bandcamp.com/track/all-fours

What I'm listening to today: "ahvenlampi" (deep house edit), phonex (remixed by xavier)

An ancient tracker scene file named "deep_house_edit.xm" @leona found and showed me. Created January 2000, remixed April 2000. Gorgeous vibes, eurodance dreams, the unique timbral feels of sample trackers used to their utmost, a $50 Casio keyboard reaching for the heavens.

Click "play".

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_player&query=153555

What I'm listening to today: "Canton", Nils Frahm

Did I mention I really like it when Nils Frahm plays the piano? This piece is so gentle it feels, when he finishes, as if he was never there. A whisper, a bubble. You are aware someone spoke but not a word they said. You wake from a dream and find you can't remember what you dreamed of

https://nilsfrahm.bandcamp.com/track/canton

What I'm listening to today: "curtain sequence", Silhouette Synthesizers (Pit Przygodda)

This guy designs and manufactures unusual synthesizers on the concept of converting images into sounds. Sweep a line across part of an image, read brightness data from underneath your line, convert it to waveform or spectral data. He's posted various demos of his synths at work on YouTube, of which this is one of the less flashy but more musically interesting examples. Morning bell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF4aNc96JYQ

What I'm listening to today: "Relaxing Experimental Ambient [Vinyl Studio Session]", Raica

Here a lady who runs a record store in Seattle for experimental music spins some mind-expanding space-journey ambient techno in a kitchen (not her kitchen, just *a* kitchen). A good solid 75-minute block of unnameable emotions.

(There's a second set by the same DJ on the same YouTube account which had some good highs, but I didn't find that other one as consistent.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo9nk7pqcGk

What I'm listening to today: "The Lie That Is Sin", YOB

My friend Ro recommended this when I said I liked doom metal. This live version (0:00-12:18 in the video) takes what was already a pretty great song and slows it down, picks apart each element and leaves it torn open on a dissecting table, luxuriates in each little sound, floating in isolation, icebergs on a dark ocean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnPu9RU28HE

What I'm listening to today: "7 string IR test", Daniel M Karlsson

Posted by @t36s as part of a series of computer sound synthesis tests, I'm not sure I understand it exactly but I *think* he used a recording of a string instrument as an echo characteristic and then by agitating it produced super realistic synthesized string plucks. Gorgeous little superresonating classical guitar improvisation with touches at once obviously human-driven and obviously computer-generated

https://social.ordinal.garden/@t36s/114661161710502396

What I'm listening to today: "Push Pull", Mark Thibideau

If you're up on electronic music genres: Imagine 90s French house but strip out the funk and substitute 00 dub techno instrumentation?

If you're not: Chill dance music for sitting in your chair. There are a lot of really cool sounds and I liked how good the sounds were, they were all like swoop swoop chikchikchik

2019 release. Apparently this artist is from Ontario

https://stomping-grounds.bandcamp.com/album/lividus-ep

What I'm listening to today: "only in it for Euro Cash", Doak 16

Been listening to this YouTube synth collector's tracks all morning. This isn't the friendliest ["Remember it"] or the most provocative ["an ewok…"] track in the channel backlog…

But *oh*, I love the drums in this one! I love the way it comes together like a magic eye, nonsense into sense. Dense, dreamy, unique

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfPn5zJXXg8

What I'm listening to today: "Outside In", Linkwood

This track opens the other Raica ambient mix I was talking about Tuesday. It's just a really good frozen moment. Quiet, crackly, passes quickly. The sound of something starting, and then silence. A Feel

https://linkwood.bandcamp.com/track/outside-in

What I'm listening to today: "303 Day", Wizart

YouTube musicians have this tradition of making tributes to the Roland 303 acid bassline machine on March 3. Here's a lovely midtempo live jam made with Behringer's modern 303 reproduction, several modern Roland desktop reproduction units¹, and some guitar pedals. A good groove such as one might blast at the LAN party in 1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxJp4XEU-yA

¹ Including a 303, meaning at a certain point you can catch him actually running TWO 303s AT ONCE

What I'm listening to today: "Rei Ayanami", Brian Altano

This is an EP I love from 2019, which remixes various songs from the "Neon Genesis Evangelion" OST as megastructure trip-hop, and although there's only 7 songs every one is a banger. Here's a "big beat" version of Rei's theme:

https://brianaltano.bandcamp.com/track/rei-ayanami

In my friend group our traditional road trip music is this EP and also that 2Mello album where he complains about people coming up to him in the supermarket and asking him to make beats

What I'm listening to today: "unleashed voices", Black Cookies

What the musician calls a "lo-fi tape loop ambient experiment". Super evocative. Sounds on free-running tape, four tracks on the left deck, one on the right, three separate echo pedals. Watch and you can see each little action the musician does to manipulate the sound, listen and you can hear all these little chunky sounds where the tape has mechanical imperfections. Deeply physical music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paHoNdR9BUE

What I'm listening to today: "Chinurareta Zabi-ke" ("The Bloody Zabi Family"), Takeo Watanabe

We've been watching the original 1979 "Gundam" and the music in it is actually *incredibly sick*? 70s Children's TV would just effortlessly toss off the rawest funk music.

There's this one obscure cue, it isn't even on the regular OST (you have to go to the extended 45th anniversary soundtrack), it plays during quiet moments. I *love* the vibe on this, the bass is so emotive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9jKCgNYwuk