mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Bushmills", Yppah
From 2015, this is a banging, echoey jam by psychedelic electronica musician Yppah, mixing drums from the DJ Shadow school of hip hop with rock guitars. It's got a really good clean feeling to it and a flowing structure that slips away from you when your mind tries to get a grip on it. The feeling is not so much nostalgic as just remembering what it was to live in a time when it still seemed like there was a future
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "The Porpoise Song", The Monkees
It's 1968. The actors who play the Monkees are tired of being actors. They want to record their own music, be taken seriously. So they make "Head", a surreal movie with songs by Carole King (!) a script by Jack Nicholson (‽) and a plot about the fictional Monkees struggling to become real. The movie doesn't… seem very good, but the songs are lush and gorgeous. An overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Distances", Fontaine Burnett
Mr. Burnett is a session musician; he's performed with Chaka Khan, the Temptations, the Weather Girls and a dozen other artists, meaning millions have heard him play without ever learning his name. During early COVID he started uploading home performances to YouTube, among them this absolutely lovely jazz piano solo on Roger Linn's "isomorphic" MIDI controller (a piano splattered onto a grid). Watch the fingers.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Ventlaris", Ceephax Acid Crew
Ceephax is (in real life) Squarepusher's little brother. Last night he posted on YouTube this 26-minute live techno performance that apparently shows up in edited form on one of his albums. The jam is accompanied by a lovely video that appears to have been created on an Amiga Video Toaster. He's making basically the same music he's been making since the 90s, but now it's retro which means it sounds futuristic.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Minimoog and Rhodes Chillout Track", Kurti
In this charmingly guileless video a dude smiles at the camera and then proceeds to perform a song which is pure distilled 1985. Simultaneous solos on a minimoog and a gorgeous-sounding Rhodes electric piano (not a synth), with rhythm provided by an actual one-piece Macintosh Plus DAW hooked up to some MIDI modules. It's at times like this I understand why people liked "smooth jazz".
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Mixtur Trautonium (exercise #4)" LudoWic
The Trautonium is an early electronic instrument from the 1930s. Instead of a "keyboard" like a post-1965 synthesizer would use players make contact between a resistive wire and a metal plate, allowing fine control more akin to a violin than a piano. In this piece, the musician works the plate (and the pedals?) for a complex and stunning tremolo effect, like a guitar pedal under direct human control.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Anemone", The Brian Jonestown Massacre
This is a slow jam from the BJM's second album in 1996 and probably the closest thing the band has to a breakout hit. Lovely chill feelings, tambourines and bongos and one single held sustained organ note.
Anthony Bourdain once said in an interview that this was his favorite song; there's an episode of "Parts Unknown" that is just Anton Newcombe, BJM's front guy, doing home cooking for Bourdain.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Aluminum or Glass (The Memo)", Negativland
Negativland is most known for discursive sample collages with "Adbusters"-flavor politics. But in 1997 for once they just sat down and recorded a rock song (intercut with a dramatic reading, by the Weatherman, of what appears to be an internal memo from Pepsi's advertising department) and it is transcendent, it is everything. Video treatment by Tim Maloney as part of the "Our Favorite Things" DVD.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Gumball Machine Weekend", Yppah
This is another Yppah song, this one from 2009, with sugary tv-commercial xylophones and grooving rock guitars. I really "dig" the bassline here (I would describe it as "hip").
I cannot actually identify what element of the presentation here causes me to mentally classify this as "electronica" or "hip-hop" instead of just being an instrumental rock song, but it's there somehow.
https://yppahmusic.bandcamp.com/track/gumball-machine-weekend-1
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Pish", The Brian Jonestown Massacre
The Brian Jonestown Massacre can probably be described as the less commercial Dandy Warhols, and are one of a few modern-ish bands, along with the Warhols and I guess the Beta Band, who decided there was something worth resurrecting in that pre-prog rock era I'd call "psychadelic" for lack of a better word. They released this dreamy, echo-drenched song in 2015 and I think it just feels great to swim in.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix's 1968 masterpiece Electric Ladyland has two meandering 14-minute epics on it; "1983", which I love, and "Voodoo Chile", which I'm not so sure about. But I *love* the album's closer, the "Slight Return", which reworks Voodoo Chile as a six-minute rock onslaught that showcases both Hendrix and the Experience's rhythm section (amazing musicians in their own right) all at their absolute best.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Get Your Snack On", Amon Tobin
Consider pre-"ISAM" Amon Tobin, who was on something incredibly unique. No one else has ever thought about drums the way Tobin did during those years. Back then we lumped him in with "drum & bass", but he didn't follow any of D&B's rules. He built something new from sampling the already frenetic energy of jazz drumming and somehow doubling it.
Here's my favorite track from that era. It plays like a manifesto.
Eaton
@mcc GOD, it's so good
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Pharaoh's Dance", Miles Davis
I don't really know that much about jazz. What I know is the standard sequence: Charlie Parker begat John Coltrane who begat Miles Davis.
"Bitches Brew" is probably Davis' most infamous album, as he was settling into his "weird stuff" period. My favorite part is the opening track, this experimental but approachable 20-minute journey with a nervous, constantly escalating wild energy. Chick Corea on keyboard BTW
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Cosmos", John Coltrane with Pharoah Sanders
So. John Coltrane. Husband of Alice Coltrane, teacher to Miles Davis. This track is Coltrane at his Most, with him and Sanders simultaneously playing in what doesn't really feel like a "duet" because the two saxophone lines seem to be ignoring each other totally. Maybe "duel". Note Coltrane's use of "overblowing", which basically means he played the sax wrong on purpose cuz he liked how it sounded
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Universal Consciousness", Alice Coltrane
Last week I saw a bumper sticker saying: "Keep Honking! I'm Listening to Alice Coltranes 1971 Meteoric Sensation 'Universal Consciousness'". So I went to look that up—
When you listen to this, one of two things will happen: Either you'll go "uh…okay?", or your consciousness will physically leave your body. When I first listened, for six minutes I was unable to move or think. Free jazz psychic attack
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Jung-Ak", Soojin Suh Quartet
This is a Korean jazz trio (?) I randomly saw live following a flier, and they were super good. If you listen to exactly one song by them I recommend the version of "Stream of Consciousness" they played in Toronto on Nov. 19, 2023. But I assume you do not have a time machine, so instead try this mysterious, meticulously-sculpted piece from the same album. Cold waters lap gently above a deep, unexplained sadness
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Iceplanet", Funkstörung
The visionary Skam Records was the original home of some of the 90s' most influential electronic artists, like a feeder team for Warp. They did a hyper-limited series named "MASK" where well-known artists anonymously dumped tracks that were out-of-character, "going too far" or literally illegal, and some of the 90s' best tracks accumulated there. From MASK 200 (200 copies printed), here's a chill space journey I love
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Zularic Repetitor's best friend Befaco Percall Modular Techno Jam featuring Kickall & Noise Plethora", tiimoik
This is a 20 minute industrial techno performance with a really good chilled (distinct from chill) feeling to it. The rhythm is alive and constantly evolving throughout— the "repetitor" applies an algorithmic form of African music theory.
(The video confuses me—it appears to be a 4-second loop of just one part of the performance.)
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Lofi tech beats PCBcore", Arman Bohn
This is a Selected Ambient Work with bitcrushed beats by the Picocore and semi-random tones by the Nunomo Qun (so with the Teenage Instruments TX-6 on mixing duty, that's two cheap idiosyncratic miniature synths and one very expensive idiosyncratic miniature synth). Slippery and indistinct in a way I find abstrusely compelling, this leads you down a twisty techno labyrinth then strands you at a dead end.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Movement (Hurdslenk remix)", TWR72
This song was released last month, but is that kind of timeless techno that sounds like it could have been recorded anytime since 1985. What genre is this? Berlin? "Schranz"? Is Shranz a real techno genre? That sounds fake. Anyway this an absorbing, driving drum torrent anchored by a hectic bongo rhythm. There is nothing wrong with making the entire song out of drums. This track is good proof of that.
https://floatrecords.bandcamp.com/track/movement-hurdslenk-remix
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "CB03.wav" (27Mhz series mix), Magic Window
This is some acidic, futuristic-sounding drum & bass I found on YouTube (the link goes to the full 3-track "Zerotime" EP, which you can also find on Bandcamp). I don't know anything about this group but they seem to really like Windows 95 and are very good at constructing fussed-over vaporwave timbres. Jamming rhythm on CB03 and lots of enormous sounds with wonderful tastes. I think this is "IDM".
mcc
What I listened to today: "The industries of the unused mind.", Soaring Tortoise Orchestra
In this video a man in a basement appears to be mastering an ambient track on tape, tweaking the mixing board. But if you watch carefully he's actually just picking up various objects on his desk and staring at them as if he does not recognize them. What is happening here? The music is cryptic, striding a line between epic and creepy, like a guitar solo is being haunted by ghosts.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Mixtur Trautonium (exercise #6)", LudoWic
One last Trautonium piece, this one run through two (!) Space Echos and demonstrating one of the most interesting things to me about the device, that it's capable of Theremin-like trembles and slides but unlike Theremins can do hard edges and discrete jumps. Again, like an electronic violin.
Short and low and has a captivating, melancholy emotion, this just really grabs your heartstrings and yanks.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Concept 1 96:01 01:00", Richie Hawtin
Under the name "Plastikman", Hawtin achieved fame as a "minimalist composer" who repurposed dance-techno techniques to sculpt stark sound landscapes. This bumping downtempo is from a previously *very* rare, self-published one-track-a-month limited-vinyl series he did while developing the sound of the Plastikman "trilogy"; now it's on Bandcamp.
Hawtin says he recorded this track on January 1, 1996.
https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/track/richie-hawtin-concept-1-96-01-01-00
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Mixtur Trautonium (exercise #11)", LudoWic
I linked one of LudoWic's Trautonium pieces on Wednesday; here's a more complex one, probably the most complex of these "exercises" he's uploaded, with a soothing, rhythmic clicking (which I can't even figure out where it's coming from) providing percussion. Watch during the little violin-like pitch vibratos throughout; that's not an instrument "effect", he's wiggling his finger on the touch plate.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Thursday", Morphine
There's this genre that only existed for a moment in the 90s, I can point out dozens of examples but I cannot give it a name. It borders on lounge, jazz, blues, rock, swing, hip-hop and trip-hop but isn't any of these. Somehow Morphine is at the center of it. Nothing has ever sounded like Morphine, they do something totally unique like it were simple and obvious. Also they seem to have somehow detuned their saxophones.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Theme of Broadway", Einosuke Nagao (?)
"Compile" is/was a scrappy Japanese game company that accidentally hit it huge with "Puyo Puyo". For years they ran a "magazine" called "Disc Station", a monthly-published floppy full of demos and small prototype games. This song is from a PC-98 Disc Station cut: "Broadway Legend Ellena", a "PaRappa"-like very early rhythm game about the legend that a girl who wanna get a chance with her DANCE be cool.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Sleepless", Soul Coughing
Gosh, I love Soul Coughing. Nobody before or since has ever quite nailed their particular bizarre formula.
Here's my favorite S.C., from "Irresistible Bliss", the album where they couldn't get their regular producer and M.Doughty talked everyone into a stripped-down sound. It's a quiet lounge song that hits like a truck; if you listen to it on a setup with a real subwoofer it will literally make your walls rattle.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Placelessness" (excerpt), Chris Abrahams with Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim
A beautiful single stretched-out abstract jazz moment, like time itself is made of honey and will not let you go. I remember Spin once described a Boredoms song as "like the opening to an epic rock song that never starts". This is more like a single five seconds between bridge and verse stretched out forever, growing and deepening without progressing. Anti-music.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Torture", The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
For an extended period in the 90s some record company exec was *convinced* Jon Spencer was going to be the next Beck. This misconception blessed us with the gloriously over-budget "Acme", which nobody wanted to listen to in 1998 but today (especially if you can find the 43-track deluxe version, on Apple and Tidal but not Bandcamp) is a sprawling laid-back masterpiece, the stuff lo-fi hip hop samples
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Red Bats with Teeth", Angelo Badalamenti
Angelo here, as you probably know, is a frequent collaborator of David Lynch, transmuting Lynch's abstract emotions into music, usually dark jazz. In this track from the Lost Highway soundtrack, which I think has Badalamenti's best work (or at least the most accessible to non-jazz heads), he attempts to portray a saxophone player who is channeling a personal psychosexual breakdown into a sax solo.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Soul Suckin' Jerk" (reject version), Beck
Beck's formula is so well-defined it's easy to forget he stumbled into making commercial pop music sort of by accident. So I really love his very early label work, before that formula solidified and the folk and rap components got separated. Like, the "Loser" EP's got some deliriously weird stuff, like this track where he apocalyptically fantasizes about quitting his job at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "dawless jam at balcony. BalcoWave.", epow6oow
In this video this person makes a fun, confident vaporwave jam on their back porch surrounded by laundry paraphernalia. An unusual collection of equipment; the Pocket Operator they're using for the drums is, if you look carefully, "Street Fighter" branded, and the innocuous pocket calculator looking thing (the RK-008— it's a full MIDI workstation) is, I think, actually driving the entire thing.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Dried Up Roots", Rachel Eckroth
This is some dark lounge music. *Really* dark, grabbing your heartstrings and not letting go, haunting and dread-soaked. Trip-hop being performed by a regular jazz band.
Eckroth tends to alternate solo work with serving as backing pianist for artists like KT Tunstall and Rufus Wainwright. This is from a 2021 solo album, which I've just learned actually got a grammy nomination? Even the normies love Morphine
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Yuki Satellites", Radix
This is a classic tracker tune made in (apparently— the YouTube poster is the original composer) FastTracker II for DOS. One of my favorite pieces of tracker music— lots of vocal samples and cool-sounding crunchy beats, just really fun.
Made in 1999 (post-BBS era) this track was actually originally distributed as mp3, *not* as tracker files— the .XM only got released when tracker tech got a revival in the late 00s.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Elektron Octatrack + Make Noise 0-Coast Electro / IDM Jam", cnstruct
A quirky, funky techno jam with a really distinctive fresh feeling. (Lovely sampled 808 drums.) Has really strange sound design that it kind of slips past you, it took until my second listen to notice how weird the drum patterns and 0-coast sounds are. Second half kicks up the energy level in a nice way. The soundtrack to a space program based entirely on astral projection
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "1976", Nicholas Lem
Some dark, murky IDM funk. Gummy organ and bass noises, makes me think of pre-Warp Autechre (like, Lego Feet/Incunabula era). Lots of sounds you are like "ah yes, I know what instrument this is" and then you listen a little more carefully and realize you have no idea. I don't know if you could dance to this but I think you *could* film yourself dancing and then slow down the tape, and it would match.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "ambient house / YAMAHA QY70", hi-channel!
Man, the QY70 is a *beast*! This is the 1997 music workstation/PDA/ur-groovebox I've linked works on before, used to make polished downtempo house music (bordering on hip hop beats to study to). The groove is super compelling and suggests a whole studio of gear.
This piece has kind of three movements, and I really like the first & third but find the second a bit cheesy. Maybe that's your thing tho.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Lithium Drift", Eric Archer
This is synth designer Eric Archer, doing a product demonstration of his new (as of 2019 when the piece was recorded) modular unit the Rare Waves Hydronium. He uses four of these configured for different musical roles plus one distortion pedal and some minimal drums to make a downtempo acid journey that's a really compelling piece of music entirely apart from whether you're buying the synth. Feels crisp and clear
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Sequencing with Pamela's New Workout and a Precision Adder", Electrum Modular
What's coolest to me about modular synths is when you use waveform generators not just as sounds but also to generate pitch control voltages. This peppy techno track does that by "adding" voltages of two slow waves, one for root note and the other for variation. The video shows an explosion of wires then walks you (in text captions) through each step in the chain.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Crysalis", Purity Filter
This was the song that introduced me to Purity Filter and probs my favorite track by them still. How do I describe this when it's more defined by an emotion than a genre? This is rave music for the people at the back not dancing (maybe a little sleepy because it's 3 AM), the warehouse ceiling echo already built into the song. There is light and sound and joy but they are somewhere else and happening to someone else
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Riverrun Humbling Allegory", Lauren Bousfield
I posted that other song so now I have to post this one. Bousfield was part of the original Soundcloud flowering in 2009 as "Nero's Day at Disneyland" and in my head sorta bridges vaporwave and net breakcore, while having this wild, unique style apart from any genre. I want to play you entire albums of hers but if I have space for one song here's a manic wound of d&b breaks and distorted synths:
https://laurenbousfieldanyev3r.bandcamp.com/track/riverrun-humbling-allegory
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Compliant Confuse" (Tetrisphere), Neil Voss
One time I made a serious go at playing "Tetrisphere" for the Nintendo 64. What I found was:
1. Although I was legitimately having fun and seemed to be getting better over time, I never really understood what I was doing.
2. The soundtrack was *incredibly* hype. Oh my god. Why is this soundtrack so hype
This is some hardcore 1997 tracker jungle, with a nice crispy taste from the N64 sound chip.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "BEATS OF THE JUNGLE THAT ARE ANTIFUNGAL!!", Max Sansalone
So like, "Drum & Bass", or "Breakcore", or "Jungle". (I'd be lying if I said I truly understood the difference.) By stereotype this is computer music, ie Cubase or trackers. There's drum samples but mostly only like, the one drum sample, the Amen. Maybe Think. No *new* breaks, canonically.
Max here just decided to sit down and drum some drum and bass. On some drums. It sounds *good*
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "beg4life", Dr. Mario
What if I told you possibly the greatest Drum & Bass song ever, and possibly the origin of modern breakcore, was recorded by a guy named "Dr. Mario" and uploaded on "mp3.com", then MySpace? What if I told you you've already heard this song, in the Gnutella era, but it was mislabeled as being by Amon Tobin, possibly named "Kill You Now" and misattributed to a Splinter Cell soundtrack? What if I asked you to listen to it?
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Cyberia Lyr1", sewerslvt
Enigmatic, prolific, JVNE blessed us with an incredible amount of amazing music and an internet mythology casting them as the DJ at Club Cyberia from "Serial Experiments Lain", then disappeared in a puff of internet harassment. (The new artist "AgonyOST" might be them, no one's sure.) This track gives us some retro and (if you're listening to it right) very loud chaotic drum & bass. Music for a Dreamcast time attack
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Abraxas", Purity Filter ft. Catastrophi
Consider the Zoomer breakcore artists, who spill out in JVNE's wake like dismembered cartoon body parts. All incredibly hardcore, extremely traumatized and probably trans, hiding behind indistinguishable names that look like net handles and baffling joke song titles like "assadist pussy got me actin strange" (?). Here's a noise wall archetypical of the genre. It needs to go so hard you cannot think
https://dismissyourself.bandcamp.com/track/abraxas-feat-catastrophi
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "LYRA8+T Resonator improvisation", Arkady Marto
Some things this song makes me think of: Street construction; industrial dishwashers; inscrutable machines at unidentified factories filmed by David Lynch in the 1970s; a sump pulling sewage out of a hole in the street; distant alarms going off. If it is not clear, these are all things I love. Created on SOMA's drone synth and Jomox's desktop filter box. Note, contains some high-pitched sounds.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Herr Mannelig (with personal variations)", Ebanisteria C.M. Ferrari
This is the goth "musical cabinetmaking" lady from Wednesday, doing a complete multiinstrumental performance on handmade folk instruments in which she performs (and possibly built?) each part. Really compelling stuff, makes me think of Dead Can Dance or Loreena McKennitt, a folksong with the energy of rock.
Wikipedia says the song is about a troll queen proposing marriage.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "06-29-2020-Grone", H.R. Terror
Created on the Grone, the previously-mentioned creepy synth module that my friend JZ may have accidentally summoned into being from the Noosphere, this is 35 minutes of hiss and distant barely-heard echoey sounds blending together into a terrifying/soothing ambiance. Good focus music for tasks such as exploring an aeons-abandoned alien spaceship never certain if a fell shadow stalks you through the corridors.
mcc
What I listened to today: "If I Had a Heart", Fever Ray (cover by Ebanisteria C.M. Ferrari)
Are you, or have you ever been, goth? *How* goth? Because unless your answer is "I handbuilt a 14th-century string instrument that looks like a guillotine, then covered Fever Ray on it while dressed in black sitting on a couch decorated in dying leaves" you are/were not as goth as this lady. The dread-soaked original is dragged out even slower and lower, a sleep paralysis dream.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Drone Commander", Eric Archer
E.A. is a synth designer now selling modules under the name "Rare Waves"; in this 2009 video he shows off his first creation, a knobs-only chaotic drone unit built into an ammunition cannister. Here he's running four in parallel, each moaning its own strange song with its own structure; each oscillator interrupts itself with wobbles and clicks, which in the broader choir form complex, cross-interacting rhythms.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Not Tomorrow", Committee Committee
In this video two women (one wearing a tracksuit embroidered "The Boys") sit on a living room carpet with a collection of synthesizers and play a dark, pounding electronic unpop song that makes me think of the style of 90s Underworld with the tone of 90s Depeche Mode. This was recorded in December 2020 as one of a series of videos the pair describe on their YouTube as having been a COVID lockdown activity.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Electro-acoustic Improvisation", Ipek Eglini
In this video a woman in Doc Martens has driven wooden stakes into a piano, turning it into a percussion instrument. She then bangs the keys and (literally, with a hammer) the strings inside, while making bird noises into a headset mic. Then she turns to a bank of electronics she's been ignoring, and DJ-scratches her own bangs and chirps. Then she does both at once. Pure ecstatic sound, no notes
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Ambient Noisebox DIY with Pickup & Piezodisc", Endo Monk
4 minutes of spooky atmosphere from a prepared wooden box the musician handmade by sticking pieces of metal wire directly into a guitar pickup. With a few layers of enormous echo, these simple sounds become coherent, meaningful, dramatic.
This link skips the first 42 seconds of the video, in which the musician explains his setup in German. If you speak German, feel free to rewind.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "XYZ", Boards of Canada
John Peel was a beloved BBC DJ on a mission to call attention to underrated music. "Peel Sessions" were a recurring segment where he'd get bands to record 4-ish songs at the BBC, then play them on his show. When BOC came in they dropped this wild otherwise-unreleased tune pushing at their own genre boundaries. What sounds like Spanish classical guitar and hard IDM beats like they've only used on a few songs. Hypnotic.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "jan 14", Jon Coe
A short, fun track mixing some very cheesy (wait, let's say "retro") synth/drum sounds into an inexplicably hype beat, like uptempo vaporwave.
This was made on— I'm pretty sure, the poster doesn't explain— the Yamaha AW16G, a desktop "hardware DAW" from 2002; this could be used as both a mixer and a sampler, so I don't know if any other equipment is also used. I also cannot explain what is happening in the final minute.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "E370 and Fumana", Martin Rotaveria
This is an immaculate mood on a modular rack, like a dirty metallic sunrise. Generated algorithmically/generatively by a bunch of crosswired synth modules free-running without human intervention. Confession, I think this is a little long— if this had been my track I'd have let it run to about 2:56 then switched off the drums, then stopped the recording at 4:06. You can just hit stop whereever feels right.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Can You Feel", Torchkas (Namco WSG remix by Abstract 64)
The sound chip in the "Pac Man" arcade cabinets turns out to be a really fascinating piece of engineering, a 4-bit wavetable synth like the tiniest, cheapest Korg Wavestation.
Covering a vaporwave chiptune originally for SNES, A64 makes a song using only the "Pac-Man" waveforms and a WSG emulator, and it's *so* evocative. Definitely the best song I've ever heard to sample "Pac-Man".
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "20231231 145", sv1
Max/MSP is a open-ended music tool, a commercial fork of PureData. It lets you fine-control every element of making a song, from sound design to mixing, using a visual programming language or by building your own UIs.
For this artist's last album, he YouTubed himself making the tracks in Max, so you can see the bespoke-UI instrument he built for himself. Skittery beats & seductive alien echo sounds. Kinda Ryoji Ikeda ish
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Funky Stars", Quazar
This is a poppy eurodance DOS tracker tune from 1997. Feels good, slick production, moody 80s/early 90s feel.
After 2000 the artist behind this .xm went on to have a conventional career as a producer, making club techno remixes for a bunch of hip hop artists plus Madonna under the name "Axwell", then cofounding Swedish House Mafia ("Don't You Worry Child").
This track is listed on some mod archives as "Hybrid Song".
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Odd Numbers", Shiro Fujioka
This one's something really special. This is an extended, mercurial electronic composition in the alien time signature of 7/8, made of haunting glass-harp feedback hums and IDM breakbeats. Nothing going on here is anything you could remotely predict, but in retrospect it feels like the only way it could have gone. Made/performed on Elektron gear.
Warning: The first ten seconds contain a sharp clicking noise.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "I LEARNED THIS BEAT IN CUBA.... THEN ADDED SOME DISTORTION 😊", Max Sansalone
Waveforms do weird things when you clip or distort them. Harmonics burst into being, pitches mysteriously double.
In this track, a drummer performing alone alternates rhythmic sections with sections where he hits the stompbox and suddenly his drumkit bursts into melody as every sound transforms. Cool demonstration, nice drumline, stands well on its own as a song.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Destiny+ Entanglement Space 4xDSP with Czochralski Cells and Prism Circuits panels", James Plotkin
An exercise in bizarre sound design on two of Destiny+'s strange, extremely large (Plotkin can't fit them both in frame) synth units, this is made of big swoopy kick drum sounds that fall so slowly they cross the border and become bass notes. I'm… not sure if you're going to love how this sounds or it will just really annoy you. One of the two
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Do You Miss Boards of Canada Too? I Made This In 15 Minutes.", Dan Chippendale
A peppy mix of analog synth and clicky woodblock beats. Grows into a really nice energy. I do see the comparison to Boards of Canada but it's kinda doing its own thing.
Made on Elektron's digital synth box; Teenage Engineering's new super-Pocket-Operator; and the blur in the background is a Prophet.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Edelleen ja edelleen", Sleepers Tomb
Quiet, insistent drone ambient track. You're asleep, your phone's alarm keeps pushing at the barrier from some other world trying to break through and drag you out, but it's not working. A piece built up slowly on a modular suitcase that splays the track's internal process open to view like something on a dissection table. Good mood. I think the name is Finnish for "On and On"
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Soviet RITM-2 Synth and Loop Pedal", Slightly Nasty
This is a dark, engrossing soundscape made entirely on the РИТМ-2, a synthesizer produced in 1984 in the Soviet Union and often described as Moog-like. This specific unit has been modified for additional sound body, but the musician insists it was done with vintage germanium transistors— in other words, it's a modification that could have plausibly been done by a user in Russia in the 80s.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Scratch and Frazzle", Ivar Tryti
I've featured Ivar the Elektron virtuoso in this thread before. Here he deploys an FM-synth groovebox to make a song with two rules:
1. It should evoke the soundtrack of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal
2. It should be in 5/8 time.
(Watch the sequencer lights; you'll see his measures have 20 steps.)
Result: an industrial banger with beats that hit like bombs and a rhythm that keeps you constantly off balance.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Dirtknock", Madlib
Madlib is the hip-hop instrumentalist who provides the voice of Lord Quasimodo and the beats on MF Doom's MADVILLAIN. His deal is pretty much "he samples jazz, but like, in a different way than other people do it". Here's a lovely snack of a track from 2021, with various lounge vibes jostling against each other, starting and stopping like thoughts in a distracted mind. I think this is what "Jigsaw Jazz" was supposed to be
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Chino", Madlib
This track, also from 2021, is two minutes long and like some sort of platonic form of effortless cool; there's something primal in its funky simplicity. Other than the professional snap on the EQ it feels like literally anytime in the last 80 years you could imagine there's a room in the world you could walk into and there'd be a piano, and people clapping, and you'd hear exactly this sound. There is rhythm, and also blues
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