mcc

mcc , 1 year ago to random

For the last year I've been semi-daily posting "What I'm Listening To Today" links in this thread:

https://mastodon.social/@mcc/108199886340178151

The thread is now so long it is increasingly breaking Mastodon, so I am making a new thread, starting here.

To recap, here's the entirety of the year-one thread in the most impractical possible format: A YouTube playlist containing 246 songs and running for just over 47 hours:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLIjft6ja7DP_GwDs3XuTbiFmHYTwJWa7

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtORTuLJw7o

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJwzAcu7lyo

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw8s7nYSylc

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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

https://madlib.bandcamp.com/track/dirtknock

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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

https://madlib.bandcamp.com/track/chino

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs88-Qz84VY

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJa4RobxwU0

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhSssL8JxWw

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9hGfOmffm8

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M6u4dapZ5U

mcc OP , 5 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gde0UMa33w

vampiress , 5 months ago to random

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

mcc , 5 months ago

@vampiress Whenever someone does a poll here that incidentally measures OS usage the percentage of linux users is incredibly high compared to the general population. Like on olde Slashdot everyone talked about Linux but I don't think very many people were actually running it

mcc , 5 months ago to random

Film festival of Christopher Nolan films that have been re-edited to show all scenes in chronological order

mcc OP , 5 months ago

@vampiress This is what has me thinking about it, honestly. Nonlinear editing is not a problem. Dunkirk and, honestly, Oppenheimer both make a case against nonlinear editing. Those movies did not need time travel.

pikesley , 5 months ago to random

Universal Serial Bus

mcc , 5 months ago

@pikesley Prediction: USB will continue to mutate until it can be used to charge an electric car

mcc , 5 months ago to random

Oh wow I thought it was weird that the Oldest House in Control is in New York City as opposed to somewhere like DC but this seems to make it pretty obvious they just based it on this actual real-world building in NYC, a 30-story brutalist skyscraper with no windows whatsoever which was revealed by the Snowden disclosures to contain NSA work sites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF4EUM8CwT4

mcc OP , 5 months ago

Also: The real Long Lines building is at 33 Thomas Street. Per Reddit, all envelopes found within Control show the Oldest House has a mailing address of 34 Thomas Street, and all the architectural diagrams have a number 33 on them. So either they're suggesting the FBC is canonically located in the Long Lines building but has their mailing address adjacent for obfuscation, or the Long Lines building is so creepy it's causing everyone to just not notice the FBC headquarters across the street