What I'm listening to today: "Main Menu" (Mario Artist: Communication Kit), Hideaki Shimizu (Nintendo)

"Mario Artist" for the N64DD consisted of 4 separately-sold "games", of which this is the slightest and most utilitarian (a piece of modem software that let you upload and download creations from the other 3 games). It has possibly the most interesting soundtrack; it seemed to want to be unobtrusive, so it's minimal and ambient. This is a wonderful sparse techno track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmREOQxh0rU&list=PLWgMiwPdlU0WEnBTjEeCIRnf15uuvydJo&index=2

What I'm listening to today: "Hand of Doom", Black Sabbath

Have you ever listened to Sabbath's early stuff? They're still nailing down their sound (ie "metal") and so it's got this wild raw nature to it with currents in strange directions. I hear people describe parts of it as "blues". "Paranoid" is worth a listen in full; this track's a twisty, dynamic, genre-spanning little rock opera about drug addiction with Ozzy Osbourne (1948-2025) using his entire emotional range

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNIgt6yKgDM

What I'm listening to today: "Ambassadors of All that is Good" ➜ "40 Rods to the Hog's Head" ➜ "Guy vs DC Sniper", Tera Melos

The magnum opus of Tera Melos's early instrumental-only days is this 3-track sequence. "40 Rods" is the highlight but it needs the windup and cooldown of the other two tracks. Incoherent noise slowly coalesces into gorgeous melody then dissolves back into noise. Ordo ab chao, order out of chaos—

https://teramelos.bandcamp.com/track/ambassadors-of-all-that-is-good
https://teramelos.bandcamp.com/track/40-rods-to-the-hogs-head
https://teramelos.bandcamp.com/track/guy-vs-d-c-sniper

What I'm listening to today: "Breathe", Azkyll

This is a deeply strange album consisting almost entirely of indefinable "weird noises" (mostly, I think, coming from a granular synthesizer)? This particular track is all punchy, staticky percussion with the "music" part only present as a hint or aftertaste, sounds with implied colors, étude for violent coughing fit and string quartet

https://azkyll.bandcamp.com/track/breathe

What I'm listening to today: "Make It All Better", Neuro No Neuro

T!!_ a_no!!!!__ !_e _i!!t _e__s !!ur !t!en!i_!, _!y !i_!o _mpro!i!!_io!, p_a!e__! __!k t!r!u__ ! !!_!_y sh_!!_ _a!k, _!__ _il!u_, !_! th_!_!t !!!p_ __!!!!u!t!_! it_el_. ! s!_g!! !!ar! __ !an!!!. Do! !cr!!c!!!_ !_ _!! _!_r try_n_ __ _e! !n

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBT7VkH6ekM

I enjoyed the video; this one's really nice to just stare into and try to reverse engineer the pattern (I ultimately couldn't).

What I'm listening to today: "severe brain damage by dominator"

This is a 1996 "octamed" modfile/tracker tune for the Amiga soundchip that simply goes as hard as it possibly can, dialing in some sort of acid sound and then slowly turning one of the knobs more and more until it actually breaks. Simultaneously a audience-pranking brainfuck and a thoughtful mix of dance genres; the drum line feels like it might be one of the "classic" breaks but I can't identify which one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsro5DpnWNA

What I'm listening to today: "Close your Eyes (Autechre Corporation Street rmx)", Anodyne

One time Autechre dropped a whole ass Funky Drummer loop on a track and it ruled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nl4GaPMcx0

What I'm listening to today: "Jackin for beats", Ice Cube

On this track Ice Cube states an intent to steal every other rapper's beats, then follows through. Despite the claim of "jacking" Cube actually did pay for sample clearance on every beat used here, leading to a situation where 112% of this track's revenue is owed on sample royalties. If you buy this track on Apple Music, Ice Cube loses money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Vn12rvPfM

What I'm listening to today: "メトロノーム同期 (32個)", Ikeguchi Laboratory, Tokyo University of Science

This is an entirely physical effect. Place two or more metronomes on a table and start them at different times. The metronomes will acoustically couple through the table and gradually interfere with each other until their oscillations move into perfect alignment.

You might have heard of this trick before! But try just listening to it. Like really listen

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

What I'm listening to today: "Weekly Beats #8 - Dustin'", Tristan Baldi

Elektron are giants in modern "DAWless" music production, a path they started on¹ with the pair of idiosyncratic "machine" synthesizers released starting in 2001. Here on a machinedrum with hacked firmware is a chill song for laying on a machine beach sipping coolant, watching a square sun set. Takes off once the beat comes in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8AgGXOi-J4

¹ I intentionally ignore the SIDStation here

What I'm listening to today: "Brutal", HarrytheHat

Core-competency Jungle from an EP¹ made on a restricted set of instruments (2 Pocket Operator samplers, 1 Monotron Delay, 1 Volca Bass dialed into 303-mimic acid mode).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsbwnOX8aQo

Heavy but smooth; Millenials will immediately have flashbacks to late-90s racing games. Of course this isn't the hardware people would have used in the 90s, it just has the same number of bits².

¹ Full EP here https://harrythehat225.bandcamp.com/album/pocket-jungle-v1

² Twelve

What I'm listening to today: "shapely hedgerows of the dying world", Dragon Warrior

Shuffling, comfy instrumental folk / indie pop in the Elephant 6 style. Feelings like Polaroids of early mornings. You might know this musician as Brother Android or Harrison Lemke, depending on what genre you encountered him in.

https://dragonwarrior.bandcamp.com/track/shapely-hedgerows-of-the-dying-world

What I'm listening to today: "Dual Monomachine IDM with new aftermarket +Drives from MachineStore", MIDERA

An enormous emotion. Thinky techno production with a human pop core and a touch of chiptune feel on the drums.

I think we're at the point where this particular type of 00s electronic sound is as old now, as the 70s-80s sounds Boards of Canada was evoking in the 90s were then. Meaning the progressive parts of Boards of Canada now *themselves* qualify for nostalgia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr3idTvkp-A

What I'm listening to today: "OB6 Dub Techno", dc11

The musician says this emerged from setting up a new synthesizer, so what I imagine happened: They were trying to make that "chonkchonkchonk" noise from reggae, stumbled into an amazing-sounding semi-repeating pattern, went "I have to stop everything and find a way to make this a song" and built a life support system around it. Result:

Lovely little ambient meditation over a 128bpm heartbeat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDXeiQ6KdWM

If ur bored stop at ~5:00

What I'm listening to today: "New Instrument, new sound!", Fron Reilly

A short demo of a musical instrument created by this YouTuber/woodworker. It's… kind of a brilliant idea, actually, simultaneously shocking and in-retrospect obvious.

The video is 100 seconds of abstract noises that, if you'd played it for me without the video, I could tell you how to create with FFTs and DSP techniques but would *not* have believed was a recording of a completely acoustic device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGHIcU3g8Ps

What I'm listening to today: "The Terrorist", DJ Vadim & Motion Man

Motion Man is an Oakland rapper so far under the radar he has no Wikipedia page and at least one album of his I've listened to is not on Allmusic. If you know him it's probably from a guest spot he did on someone else's song, probably Kool Keith's, and you *remember* him because he absolutely steals every track he appears on.

Here, for a 1999 DJ Vadim single: Villainous pronouncements over supersaws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rOYGk6TV_o

What I'm listening to today: "Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra" (Overture), Friedrich Gulda

I don't know much about Gulda, but apparently his career was marked by a desire to work in both classical music but also jazz (back in an era when jazz was still cutting edge and/or illegal). This 1980 piece feels like he was asked to compose a concerto but he just really, really wanted to make funk music. This slaps. This cellist is fucking *shredding*

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

⚠️Loud static at 0:41

What I'm listening to today: "Cwejman/Verbos Dub", Lucas Marchal

Last week I linked this guy doing synth unboxing experiments, here's what he sounds like doing a completed track. Dark, intent dub using the full spectrum of electronic production. Slipping silently under abandoned awnings and cloudy skies as your robotic pursuers nip constantly at your heels. Glance up and your gaze is met by the first touches of rain, and a dual-rotor helicopter blotting out the sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTD7iqVjRs

What I'm listening to today: "Carrier",
Brandon McGhee

Extremely satisfying, semi-live electronic jam, feels like early Boards of Canada. Authentic-sounding/non-authentic analog synths on the Microfreak, lo-fi hip hop beats on the SP-404, and enormous Zoia reverb. What you see is what you get. Cool disintegration outro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELUnqz6R00

What I'm listening to today: "Cryptic Flow", ME9AM0N

I was given the prompt "Lo-fi hip hop to have anxiety to". Trap music for blown out speakers and those Japanese crosswalk machines that play the creepy childrens' song. Basically the kind of music you'd find on a cassette tape in a street gutter and when you listen to it it makes your stereo haunted.

Apparently they call themselves "Memphis cult".

https://soundcloud.com/memphiscult/cryptic-flow-me9am0n-16

What I'm listening to today: "YOULL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE", hkmori

Sad girl breakcore anthem. This is what it feels like to be queer in 2025. Too loud. Too loud. Everything is too loud

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6GmJC1ic4o

What I'm listening to today: "Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt", DJ Shadow

This album hit electronic music like a meteor. Apparently real heads already knew who DJ Shadow was and Dan the Automator had been working with him for years, but the first I'd heard of DJ Shadow was this song coming on Rice Radio 91.7 FM circa 1997 and I can draw you a diagram of exactly where on San Felipe St I was driving at the time because the moment is seared so clearly into my memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HORLJvUMs08

What I'm listening to today: "Devil Stuff", Evil Nine

The first half of the 2000s saw this explosion of headphones-friendly "instrumental hip hop" whose existence I chalk up to DJ Shadow, if not as a direct inspiration then at least for convincing the record labels this stuff could sell. (Or maybe it was "Praise You".) Here's some fun big beat music made of metal samples. Yeah uh, my mom's boyfriend's kids are into this devil stuff from listening to Black Sabbath—

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKeAt3zdiYk

What I'm listening to today: "Heart's Desire", Awkward McLain

A Bandcamp beatmaker goes in for a bit of lo-fi hip hop and astral projection. Lovely crisp feeling.

The box is SP-404mk2, the most recent of a series of surprisingly incremental updates to J Dilla's favorite sampler, with the main effect AFAICT to add, like, USB and SD card support and the stuff that makes a device actually convenient to use in 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czR2NlmWE2g

What I'm listening to today: "The Mashed Up Mixes - Diplo of Hollertronix Meets RJD2"

During that 10 minutes of mainstream craze for "mashups", lo-fi hip hop virtuoso RJD2 invited a few artists to make DJ mixtapes out of his his back catalog. There's also a good one by "Haul & Mason", but this mix stuck in my head forever for a segment that strings together Cat Power, Slick Rick and Steve Reich, and later on what's still to me the definitive version of Outkast's "Roses"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj5h1o8XRnk

What I'm listening to today: "Jellyfish", Kazumi Totaka (Nintendo)

There is a weird pattern in video games:

- The "water level", in any game, is usually everyone's least favorite, but

- The "water level" often has the coolest, most memorable music of the game.

Upthread I linked some "ocean vibes" music from Mario Artist for N64DD. That game has *three* ocean-themed songs, all bangers; here's my other fav. Charmingly cheesy hold-music jazz transitioning into trip-hop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8DlaLKT3q8&list=PL-pEm4IqI6c_DfCBqt5VBvR-atgwqTlZB&index=95

What I'm listening to today: "What Does Your Soul Look Like?, Pt. 3", DJ Shadow

DJ Shadow followed up his major-label "debut" with an (incomplete) overview of his pre-"debut" indie releases. The information economy of the late 90s was less developed than that of today & getting into DJ Shadow in 1998 was a *little* confusing. Whatever! Here's the most rocking track from "preemptive strike". This *fucking* piano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9VIDrDXJmc

PS: Shadow fans listen to the Mighty Atom Endtroducing mix

What I'm listening to today: "Durationplex", Sevish

This musician describes this track as an exercise in golden-ratio "maxxing"; the (xenharmonic) tuning scale is based on ϕ, the (polyrhythmic, constantly shifting) rhythms are based on ϕ, the FM timbres are based on ϕ. Experientially all you can tell is that the musician was doing something *very specific*, which you can grasp the shape of but not understand

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

( This track is also on Bandcamp: https://sevish.bandcamp.com/track/durationplex )

What I'm listening to today: "Small drops 2025-08-02", atnr

"Minimal Ambient". Giant reverb landscapes. Sitting on a dark hill, your hair mussed by gentle breeze, watching on the horizon the spaceships take off.

Made by combining Yamaha's modern DX7 revival, an original Game Boy, and three guitar pedals, one of which only exists to simulate the sound of cassette tape; someone probably *could* have made this exact music in 1989, in principle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSBqiEHJmH0

What I'm listening to today: "Fly to the Leaden Sky", Manabu Namiki

This is the stage 1 music from "Battle Garegga", an incredibly maximalist top-down shooter made in 1996 by former Compile staff. This is from the 2016 PS4/XBox rerelease, so the original onboard chip synthesis is replaced with slightly different instrumentation including crisper drum samples that really do improve this one track. A giant glowing idol to the 1980s, an exuberant tower of electric guitars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF-ENkufyCY&list=PLguGBzflGahMxYlXtQxX5e4yuqPMWKBAn&index=3

What I'm listening to today: "Speciation", Passepartout Duo

An old technique in ambient music is "phasing", where you play two loops of different lengths and let them go in and out of sync, creating different interesting patterns. It's a truism this requires electronics or tape, because two humans trying to play out-of-sync tempos would confuse each other. These two seem to be actually doing a live phase performance, dueling xylophone and gameboy-style squarewave loops

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

What I'm listening to today: "Souzou Suru", Haru Nemuri

High-energy Japanese rap with seriously weird production. My wife was listening to this and now I'm listening to it.

https://specific.bandcamp.com/track/souzou-suru

Every lyrics site swears up and down she's saying "Touch my Yes", not whatever it is you thought you heard.

( If you're enjoying yourself by the end of this song maybe listen to the next one on the album, which I like for its mid-90s-arcade-shooter-style sampled guitars… https://specific.bandcamp.com/track/bang )

What I'm listening to today: "Finally", a773

This Danish musician uses the modular synth rack— usually the domain of weird noise ambient— for a purpose I've never seen it turned to: incredibly sincere Fusion Jazz. 80s fusion did use simple, early synths— and modular also tends toward the simple, because simple base tones respond best to layering in complications. So there's a lot of plausible 80s feel but with the strangest mystery sounds slipping through the background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MYf2p-0TmQ

What I'm listening to today: "Mood piece from one machine to another", Sonaura

Three minutes of degraded humming, drone piece on two cassette tape machines one of which seems to be having serious problems. The desert in late evening, a wisp of smoke moving in a way smoke shouldn't. A transmission you pick up briefly on the radio and then can't find again. Do you hear it? No, it's gone. As far as recordings of degraded humming sounds go I'd say this is a pretty good one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXA3_VCYc98

What I'm listening to today: "Level 0", Jim Andron

In the 90s there was a thing called "smooth jazz". I think boomers probably understood it, but I was never clear how it was different from "easy listening music".

This opener from 1992's famously odd "CD-I" version of Tetris is easy-listening music transcended to the point you can understand why people like the genre. Hold music pulling at your heartstrings, incredibly cheesy FM piano over shockingly hype bass work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwDWKf-78

What I'm listening to today: "Orange", Tristan Baldi

Chill tabla groove on the Dirtywave M8, a small handheld tracker. Big warm analog-style pads and lots of fun little sound design scribbles low in the mix. Sun shining through some sort of medium, like the fronds of trees or the smog of southern California

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3_AeLUMVQA

What I'm listening to today: "Mocktapus, Rocktapus, Unlocktapus Rex", Prince Charming featuring Philosophy Major

I'm … I'm really not sure what's happening here! A two-minute hip hop hallucination, two or three stations fighting for control of your FM radio, a bunch of musical instruments thrown in a dryer and they turned it on. Sometimes my brain sort of demagnetizes and thoughts swarm in all directions aimlessly like bees. What if that felt pleasant? That's this song

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

What I'm listening to today: "White Paws", Tristan Baldi

This piece hijacks the Subharmonicon, Moog's idiosyncratic semi-generative synth, to a purpose it's not typically used for: Acid, coaxing some surprisingly 303-like sounds out of it. Combine this with an unusually clicky configuration for the DFAM and you have an unusual, unpredictable, quiet but punchy little electronic jam.

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

What I'm listening to today: "While you were gone", a773

This is the fusion-jazz-on-modular-synths guy I linked last Sunday. This track has that "downtempo Sega" feel but leans into the weirdness/jazziness by being in 7/8 time. Most people listening to 5/4 can tell they're listening to "a weird time signature" but 7/8 sounds like "normal music" with a strange pressured feel you can't explain. If you sleep too long the fire goes out you dare to dream and we have no doubt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me-bNxMT7k0

What I'm listening to today: "Biology 101", Dr. Octagon ft. "Chewbacca"

Removed track from Kool Keith's career-redefining "Dr. Octagonecologyst", present on the original indie release but not the Dreamworks version. The point where they apparently went "too far". Too weird, too creative, too surprising, too hard to follow, too "Kool Keith". A Dan the Automator groove slowed down to the breaking point, with a flood of incredibly dense sci-fi rap wordplay running over it.

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