mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Sike", Armani Caesar
Allow me to set for you a scene. Ms. Caesar has come to a private club to partake in the art of Dance. Her dance is skillful and alluring, which causes many men to believe that they will have sex with her this night. But inwardly, she is laughing. For she knows that they will not
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Star Cry", Foxy Brown
The Foxy Brown/Lil Kim archetype (confident, sexually liberated, sharp-edged) kinda disappeared from rap around 2000. But then there's the 2008 album Foxy Brown released after she got out of prison, with this "Remember me?" track.
It's got this fascinating sequence where she sort of de-rapper-ifies, takes all her jewelry off and platinum records off the wall and ends by introducing herself with "Hi, my name's Inga".
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Swing My Way", K.P. & Envyi
This song, a procedural-drama narrative of a woman picking up a hot guy at a bar, is a one-off collaboration between two Atlanta-area R&B singers who were between girl-group gigs in 1998. It was *huge* on Houston-area radio.
This song stands out for its production being an amazing 50% blend of 1998 electronic dance music and 1998 R&B, in a way I've never heard another song attempt much less succeed at this hard.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "AA XXX", Peaches
I think Peaches is supposed to be a big deal but I only know this one electropop song in which she sing-raps about being small-chested and incredibly horny, with frankly hilarious lyrics about how she is going to obliterate these twinks. I like the innocent type. Deer in the headlights. Rocking me all night
Contains explicit lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVNhAG7Xzm4
Flat rights!
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Silent Assassin", Tkay Maidza & Flume
Tkay Maidza is a Zimbabwean-Australian singer/songwriter/producer/rapper with consistently next-level production. This collaboration is somewhere in a gray area between trap and dubstep, and more than anything sounds like a sound some sort of industrial machinery would make to signal a fault requiring operator intervention. Atop this Tkay's vocals are an absolute onslaught. Brutalist music
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "What Have You Done For Me Lately", Janet Jackson
"Control", a 1986 artifact of back when musicians first tried to combine hip-hop with pop but hadn't figured out the most marketable way to do it yet, is a fascinating, still-unique experiment of an album. It's basically industrial music— stark, cold, isolated drums that the warmth of the vocals burn intensely against. Take this smoldering track, in which Janet chews out a no-good boyfriend:
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "45 minutes with Jomox Alpha Base", Mati
This is a 44-minute minimalist electronica live set in ye olde "Dub" style of the "aughts", made entirely on the Jomox Alpha Base groovebox (analog drum machine plus FM synth). The whole thing runs in one continuous slowly-evolving groove that I'm pretty sure the musician composed on the fly (during each song/loop you can watch him programming the next). Chill but with a relentless determined energy.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "41 - Distorted sounds from Instruo",
Dj Datch
Demonstrating how powerful a single held note can be if you filter it appropriately, this is a 7-minute minimal electronica jam that builds enormous atmosphere and some slowly-evolving structure out of one booming low noise, one fluttering high one and the distant thumping heartbeat of a kick drum.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Blue Skies", maleficent hardware
A "modular study" wherein cross-wired modules self-generate an ambient composition made of distant howls and shimmers and occasional interruptions from a corrupt harpsicord. A hand occasionally snakes in to nudge the machine's momentum in whatever mysterious direction, but less often than I'd have expected given the complexity of the piece. Uses that one pedal that makes everything sound like old cassettes.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "200528 Quick FM Jomox Alpha Base", Calvin Cardioid
A short indie-game-soundtrack-ambient piece (my roommate actually came in and asked what game I was playing) with a funky, bumping beat. Makes you want to dance in ways the human skeleton doesn't move.
When I heard this I was convinced I'd found the device 90% of all circa-2000 dub electronica was made on, but in fact it's from 2017 (tho apparently based on earlier Jomox standalone boxes).
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Drone Noise Performance 043", Stereo Pig
This is a weird NES dirge with lots of strange background noises in the background, performed by knob twiddling on a small Eurorack.
"Om" is understood to be the primordial noise, the still-resonating sound of the universe's creation. The contemplation or chanting of Om is understood to be putting oneself in alignment with that resonance, so reaching a higher, simplified mindstate, closer to Godhead
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Live on KEXP", Squid
Squid is a British post-rock group that broke out around 2020. I tend to prefer their second album ("O Monolith"), but I highly recommend this live set, wherein they really make their first album come alive. They've got enough overlapping guitarists I lose count, and the drummer sings, and there's a five-minute drone freakout segment with a trumpet. That's why I don't go outside
Video switches to an interview at 35:40.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Pianophonic Module Extended Demo", Knobula
This device makes realistic piano sounds using wavetable synthesis, where a sampled sound is cut up into individual microsounds. This video demonstrates what happens if you mess with the parameters to make hyper-un-realistic piano sounds, creating awe-inspiring drone. Imagine you're in a David Lynch movie and someone is playing the piano while simultaneously the concept of "a piano" is degrading.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "7", Luke Stewart
Some algorithm burped this up for me (YouTube or Tidal, I forget) and it gripped my heart. I'd never heard of Luke Stewart but apparently he's in like 6 bands and Wikipedia assures me he's a big deal in contemporary jazz. This is from "Works for upright bass and amplifier, Vol 2", one of two solo drone albums in which Stewart makes unearthly, impossible sounds with a cello and amp feedback. It's cinematic and super intense.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "CZ-3000.mpeg", Grégoire Blanc
For a period in the 80s Casio produced a high-end "CZ" line, which used a unique synthesis method called "phase distortion"; it's like FM, but way cooler.
Grégoire Blanc is a professional concert thereminist. The video desc explains he found his old CZ-3000 in the attic and the wave of memories inspired him to compose this.
This is… beautiful, actually, and deeply enigmatic. What is the emotion of this piece?
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Violence", Andy Stott
Back in the 10s during whatever "Vaporwave" was, Andy Stott released a couple albums that either helped create the genre or elevated it to something else. "Faith in Strangers" is 54 minutes of darkness interrupted by half-glimpsed forms; "Violence", the high point, is a calm/terrifying blast of anti-pop, sharp blurry distorted objects, too close to see and too loud to hear. I can only describe it using visual metaphors
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Melodic Techno Live Looping Roland Juno 106 analog syntheziser at Mauerpark Berlin", TribalNeed
A man lays down a rug, a looper, a vintage Juno 106 synthesizer, and various toy instruments in a public park in Berlin, and as a crowd gathers he begins playing first chill techno and then dance rave music. Dancing ensues. Every person in this video is beautiful and it makes me happy just to know that this moment in space and time existed
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Live on KEXP", Black MIDI
Black MIDI is a British post-rock group that broke out around 2020. I tend to prefer their first album ("Of Schlagenheim"), but I highly recommend this live set, wherein they get an entire horn section on deck and really make their second album come alive. There's frenetic drumming and an upright piano and the lead vocalist is wearing a weird white suit. In all the world there's no escape from this infernal din
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Melody Oracle + Wave Expander + B2600", A Magic Pulsewave
This is a short sound trip wherein chiptune tones are devoured by and re-emerge from clouds of echo fog. The track is created on, apparently, some sort of triangle, or multiple triangles possibly, festooned with lights and fractalline, possibly-occult designs. I don't actually know what's happening here and I have made a conscious decision to not find out.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "SynTesla IX DIY Synthesizer DEMO", Pj Tardiveau
This YouTuber designed and handbuilt(?) a 7-voice polysynth on the design principle of "it should look like a submarine control panel". I'm reasonably certain the unit in the video is the only one that exists. The track is a single looping chord sequence but Pierre continuously retunes the knobs to, apparently, every sound the synth can produce so there's a song structure. Also breakbeats.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "nebulosity", BrokenSines
This is a complex virtual/rack modular electronic piece (same musician I linked last week, with the VCV/physical hybrid setup) with slow, thumping beats and enormous, dirty sounds. It feels muggy, like swimming through molasses, or a sleep paralysis dream. Lights twinkle in the distance, but your eyelids are heavy and you cannot lift your head to see them properly.
Speed this up 180% and you can dance to it.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Emotional Noises 230527", ナカヤマコウジ
This is a short, cryptic noise electronica piece with avant-garde beats, some cool shimmery dubby noises and weird feedback. Made on the Make Noise Trio, though you can see a Korg NTS in the background doing goodness knows what.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Cwejman, Trogotronic, Make Noise - 1st patch in the Needham Woodworks case with Eskatonic power", James Plotkin
An *incredibly* dirty modular synth jam with fast, borderline-IDM beats. Often modular synth music tends to single repeating measures in a way that doesn't lend itself to drum sounds, but this rack's so large it's able to support multiple complex parts and lots of different things going on. What do you call this? Dance industrial?
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "metronom", Duality Micro
Korg, who created a lot of synths including most of the good modern budget gear, once released a DS game. "Game", that is. KORG DS-10 was a little synthesizer/sequencer on a DS cart. (It was later released for Switch and iPhone/iPad as "Korg Gadget".)
This is a 2023 track composed on the DS-10 (with some very subtle bass guitar accompaniment) with a overpowered, Kraftwerky kick drum and a bumping groove. It's fun!
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Music for Body Lockers", Chocolate Weasel
I am in the woods this weekend and this is what we are listening to in the woods.
This is a cool electronic funk track with Parliamentary synths and classic 80s hip hop samples. I do not know anything at all about this band. This just happened to be the best track on an old Ninja Tune compilation album that was on my friend's phone music collection. I would describe this as "a jam".
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "four ( empress effects zoia, moog mother 32, make noise 0-coast )", i saw the SINE wav
Some excellent ambient/drone. Seems at first like it's just going to be unattended wom wom wom zone-out noises for 13 minutes, which would also have been good, but a few minutes in the musician starts more actively guiding things and some DC-offset popping noises that appear at first to be recording errors start to clump together into rhythmic percussion.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Vegas Bound & Down", brokensines
A fun dance techno jam with cool clicky beats, skittering tones and some absolutely enormous sidechains. Good energy level. The video description makes reference to VCV rack, meaning this song was apparently made with a mix of physical modular synths and virtual modular synths on a PC, but the VCV part isn't shown on camera so it's not clear how that works.
The video has a flashing warning due to vfx.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Phase Shift", Hobboth Music
This one requires a bit of patience but it pays off. This is a modular jam based around two acid synth lines running at slightly different tempos so they run in and out of sync with each other. The introduction, like the first couple minutes, just lets this run unadorned. But then the musician starts adding complications and the piece transforms into complex, multilayered ambient. It's good music to zone out to.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Dream Sequence", Stefan Torto
When Roland started making Volca-likes it seemed like they'd be watered-down versions of their super-expensive "boutique" virtual analog synths. But then the S-1 ($200) turned out to be *better* than the $600 SH-01A (unique features). Go figure.
Anyway this beatless but surprisingly intense track makes me think of: 80s production bumpers, sunrises with VHS tracking errors, a past when the future still existed.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Shock Therapy 23", Cromag
This is a cool DOS-tracker proto-trance sort of thing. Really satisfying synths and beats.
Trying to look up when this was made, I find it is named "Shock Therapy 23" because Cromag made 23 of these, between (apparently) 1994 and 1999. More than anything, this sounds like a song made on a computer in 1999 (by the last person still using DOS in 1999).
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "notwotwo", Autechre
"Quaristice" is Autechre's most accessible post-EP7 album— probably a good First Autechre Album. Part of how they restrained themselves was releasing, like, *three* albums worth of limited-edition bonus material, mostly much longer versions of nearly every song. The standout is this extended "notwo", adding an entire gorgeous additional movement to what was already one of Autechre's best ambient tracks.
Close your eyes.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Lentic Catachresis", Autechre
This is my favorite song from my favorite Autechre album, the long outro to Confield (the "fully armed and operational" point for what I call Late Autechre).
This whole album is like music from another universe and this song particularly, with its weird tempo shifts, is an amazing mix of the human-crafted and algorithmic, like Rob & Sean drew an outline and Max/MSP filled in all the fractal details. DISCOVERY!
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Draun Quarter", Autechre
This is the last track of "Envane", a 4-track EP that samples Kool Keith and might be the most accessible thing in Æ's discography. This song's just really nice feeling. I don't even know what to say, it's just really pleasant. It's got some very Æ timbres but the anchor is ultimately some extremely emotive synth playing. Like if you gave Debussy a DX7.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Coda Maestoso in F♭ Minor", Earth (Autechre Remix)
For a while Autechre did a series of absolutely brain-breaking, material-shredding remixes of indie rock bands (Lamb, Stereolab, Tortoise). And then when they decided to remix Earth, *already* bizarre and otherwordly, they… mastered it as pop. They made the song *less* weird. It sounds like Soundgarden now.
As if… whelp, gone as far as we can in that direction! Gotta stop and turn around??
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Clipper", Autechre
So this is "old Autechre" (1995). Back then their whole thing was composing evocative melodies then fussily giving them the most interesting timbres possible with mid-90s synths. They were kinda heavily dependent on Loops in this period but still delivered some absolute jams, like "Clipper". This track has an epic, almost operatic quality to me. But like, sci fi opera.
Warning: Drums are a bit ear-piercing on headphones.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "recks on", Autechre
This "early autechre/late autechre" model I'm banging on stopped working pretty quickly, as Æ eventually went through a *bunch* of wholly distinct phases. Their most recent phase, starting with "Exai", is just *really long* albums, like, 2 hours, 8 hours, 28 hours(!). Things you aren't even *meant* to listen to in entirety but dip into and out of at random.
This song: Stalked by breakbeats through labyrinthine corridors
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "rpeg", Autechre
We used to split Æ into "early Autechre" and "late Autechre", like the Beatles, and this album (EP7) was the dividing line. It's "experimental", in the sense it's a series of experiments.
The way I think about this album is it's like a series of magic eye images with sounds— each track initially seems to be totally meaningless random noise and then there's always some point where it *shifts*, and suddenly you can See it
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Ceremonial Grade", Jon Gee
Again, the Cosmos.
Jon Gee shows again his skill at ambient soundscapes. This piece, based on layer and layer and layer of chaotically-phasing synth swells, has a good subtle structure to it, starting as chaotic waves of noise but at some point sort of clicking first into musical logic and then a long fadeout. I imagine a movie soundtrack, switching over at some critical moment from establishing shots to action.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Soft", Pulp
I'm breaking my format rules here: This song runs from 1:01:09 to 1:05:30 in the linked video (a cassette tape compilation from 1990). This seems to be the only copy of the song on the Internet. I find no other record of the band ("Pulp") existing.
The song is about four minutes of ambient rumbling. I've spent a lot of my life listening to ambient rumbling and this is some of the best rumbling I've ever heard. It's that good.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Elegy", Kai Saul
This piece gives the strong impression of being one single chord for six minutes. On a relisten today I find there are actual notes in there, but they're so drowned in echo you may or may not actually hear them. I recommend paying no attention whatsoever to this song as you listen to it. Just treat it like a pleasant feeling in a bottle. The feeling of a sudden blast from an air conditioner turning on. Ambient-ass ambient
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Chill granular meditation music w/ Prismatic Spray, monome norns, Phantasmal Force, 1010 lemondrop"
This piece takes four separate cheap tabletop granular synthesis devices and cross-wires them to make a dreamy, melodious noise ocean. The patch is endlessly self-generating so apparently the musician (the developer of the Prismatic Spray) ran it for 40 entire hours one week and just dipped in at some point to clip this six-minute recording.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Somasynth Connection: ENNER + COSMOS + LYRA8", Giovanni B
This is like the fourth time I've posted a "Enner + Cosmos" video, and they all sound so different.
This is a 11-minute virtuoso noise performance beginning with raw clicking and slowly coalescing into organ sounds twisting like worms. The start sounds like someone rhythmically changing the station on a radio, later parts feel like distorted dub reggae.
Stereo speakers recommended.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Uses of Zener Noise", Peter B
This unsettlingly quiet piece is a slightly-overlapping arrangement of two performances on unusual/handmade musical instruments, both based on the principle of "Zener Noise". Together it has the feeling of a guided meditation, like being lead blindfolded down a path of hissing noise and burbling whistles. I never know if anyone else will see the emotions I see in music but I find this one actually frightening.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Modular synth, drone, 4MS Ensemble oscillator, Qubit prism", grumpfigrumpf
A series of ambient hums, hisses and coos, sounding alternately like an air conditioning unit heard from the other end of a parking garage or an alien spacecraft taking off. It's long (20 minutes) but continuously satisfying, changing enough it feels like there's a narrative to it. If you listen on good speakers you'll be rewarded.
If you like Coil, listen to this.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Stay Crunchy", Ronald Jenkees
In this video a man in a little hat yells "Hello YouTubes" and slams directly into performing an absolutely mindblowing four-minute solo, on a MIDI electric piano VST over FruityLoops beats. (FLStudio/FruityLoops, is IMO, underrated as a serious production music tool.) Ronald, the musician, was an early vlogger who had a whole thing going on and this was the track of his that went most widely viral. It slaps
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "The Mother of All Funk Chords", Kutiman
This was posted in 2009, at the peak of Internet Optimism, as track 1 of "Thru You", a project mixing unrelated YouTube videos of people playing music into complete songs.
This song summarizes YouTube in the image of every single person on earth simultaneously playing a giant chord on every single instrument. It remains the most powerful document I have ever encountered for the power of the Internet.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: Improv, Tori Amos
Around 2001 I got an mp3 off Gnutella titled "Tori Amos - Improv.mp3", in which Tori launches into a bizarre rant on stage in response to a fan yelling "Take me home with you!". All the while she's doing an absolutely gorgeous improvised organ solo that haunted me for years.
Searching now, I find that this clip is more commonly titled "Foodgasm", and it's taken from a recording of a show from the Dew Drop Inn tour in 1996.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Vallentin Rd", kirkis
While trying to learn more about "Czochralski Cells" I found this artist's baffling YouTube page, which hosts:
- All the official videos for the "Destiny+" handmade synthesizer company
- Several breakcore albums
- A standalone video for this one terrifying moth song, with no information attached except a URL shortener link which currently appears to be redirecting to malware.
The song is a Tiger Electronics onslaught
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Dirge", Tragic Laurel
https://tragiclaurel.bandcamp.com/track/dirge
I get a lot of these synth videos I post from Reddit /r/synthesizers, which went down last week for the Reddit protests. At the start of the strike the community (or part of it) started a treehouse Lemmy instance named https://waveform.social; this was the first piece of music posted there, last Monday. Nice little jam! Spooky drunk-feeling vaporwave with slow quirky beats. I didn't post it then but I'm posting it now.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Black Crow", Namoli Brennet
Trans folksinger Namoli Brennet wrote this song as the title track on one of her albums, but this live version, recorded on an acoustic guitar in the back of a bookstore in New Haven with Brennet's voice ragged from cough medicine, is my favorite. This recording just absolutely wrecks me every time. The song gets to this one part and I just start like ugly crying
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "pikocore", infinitedigits
This is a very short drum & bass / breakcore freakout performed on the most minimal hardware available: a tiny shield/hat for the Raspberry Pi Pico with four buttons and four potentiometer knobs. (The device, an "open hardware" sample mangler apparently created and sold by the musician/YouTuber, is linked in the YouTube description.) Goes hard.
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