mcc

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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

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

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np-h6oLJOJ4

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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

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

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flE6i98WLD8

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JWNggMB58

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPt82-cNORQ

mcc OP , 11 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXLd63i6TzY

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON5_5fm9RPk

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyPSxZwIoi4

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm8zjChHHkY

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ0gqIbKtYo

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3Vz1wB1Bsk

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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

https://soundcloud.com/tkaymaidza/tkay-maidza-flume-silent

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biL_or8C5Ac

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opv45Aevuds

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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 OP , 10 months ago

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

https://daupe.bandcamp.com/track/sike-ft-queendom-come

mcc OP , 10 months ago

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".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYEkF8ykVs

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Suck My Dick", Lil Kim

Lil Kim is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJS8Uk0twE

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Feng Shui Schematics", Radix

This is a serene, surprisingly quiet DOS mod/tracker tune with some meaty underlying bass and progressive, glitchy beats. A revival track by Radix— Radix was one of the tracker legends in the 90s, but this particular track dates from 2010.

Just a good feeling here. Beep beep, beep beep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WffRtoUAs0

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "It will never come back.", EAMFOS

A synth-solo-y 5-minute ambient track consisting of chime-y tones with deceptively complex timbres. Really emotionally evocative. Video shows fixed shots of empty fields and flowers.

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

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "One Channel Music", Aleksi Eeben

This piece is a sort of parlor trick. The C64 has three sound channels, but each is reprogrammable— each can play any sound the SID is capable of. So composing for C64 it's good practice to learn to cram "two channels into one", rapidly switching timbres to alternate instruments. This track goes all the way to fitting the whole song in 1 channel. It's complex and interesting sounding, and shockingly funky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsXCnND1SiI

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Elektrical Activity", Mind over MIDI

When this track initially popped up for me in a playlist I initially assumed it was a new song, and was like, wow! What a nostalgiac 90s feel this has! Then I looked up Mind Over MIDI and discovered this song was actually released in 1995, and the feeling changed to, wow! What a futuristic post-90s feel this has! Anyway this is a driving techno track with a sick groove and some aphexy sounding synths.

https://mindovermidi.bandcamp.com/track/elektrical-aktivity

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Transforming", EAMFOS

This starts off as a nice hypnotic synth drone and electric-piano jam. Then at some point there's a sort of strange shift, like two bones settling against each other in a way it doesn't feel like they're supposed to, and suddenly it feels more like something adjacent to epic heavy metal, the kind made in Scandinavia circa 2001. I have absolutely no idea what is happening in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C86BWMMgtrw

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Modification (Acid Jam 6.0)", INKOЯREꓘT

This is some hardkore, four-on-the-floor 90s techno, interestingly made entirely of newer reproductions of classic 90s gear: A tracker to drive the thing, but a Polyend Tracker instead of an old Atari; a 303, but a modern Behringer analog remake; a 606, but a modern Roland digital desktop remake; and an Access Virus, just an Access Virus (though I think the build they introduced in 2008). It's fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rjMxZ5vG8w

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "MELANCHOLIA", roxxx303

Made on Roland's new budget desktop remakes of the 303/808 and Jupiter-8, this is a slow, gradually-developing, low-bpm acid techno jam with a good chill vibe. There's something nicely unique about this one I can't quite describe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URgJ18mKE74

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "07", Scoth

Yamaha's QY line, first released in 1990 (three years before the Apple Newton!) and awkwardly branded as a "Walkstation", was an attempt to make something totally new— a fully portable, handheld MIDI music production station, run off AA batteries. This modern track was made entirely on a 1997 QY70 and it sounds great. Peppy fusion funk grooves and some gorgeous pad sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_g3MFWFJZ0

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "SOMA Pulsar-23 + Piano // Dreamy Ambient Machine", Dexba

This is a gorgeous piano piece, played on an electric piano overlooking a window somewhere in Ho Chi Minh City (and accompanied by a few beastly glitch machines— but↓ reverb-squashed down until all you hear is the quiet rush of a river and the strange distant chirping of robot birds). Is the music I link sometimes… uh, a bit much for you? Well, here's something a bit gentler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUIIt_qD3M

mcc OP , 10 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "You Didn't Break Me", Pedestrian Deposit

NOISE TIME. This is some kinda strange post-rock/metal… song? EP? I'm not sure. There's no separations, just one 20-minute track, but it has multiple distinct movements within it that feel like different songs but also like part of one whole. Big shifts, violins falling into harsh noise and such, like a harder Godspeed You Black Emperor. Definitely hits the feels hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0U7PA2teMs

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "War Photographer"

Jason Forrest. Sample artist. Originally used the recording alias "Donna Summer" just to see how long it would take him to get sued. Creator of songs such as "My 36 Favorite Punk Songs" (it samples them all). His one brush with popular appeal was this absolutely incredible music video, which presents some kind of baffling narrative about a Viking mecha powered by rock music. You want to watch the video while you listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtYEz4OKCn8

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Joyous", 12 Rounds

I was one of 12 Rounds [ft Atticus Ross]'s very few devoted fans in the 90s, but I didn't even know until recently about their first, pre-Nothing album, which apparently got so buried CDNow never listed it. "Jitter Juice" is 1/3 tripe, 1/3 tracks that later appeared on My Big Hero, and 1/3 solid gold, ending with this lovely little, fully-orchestrated, goth/trip-hop kiss-off. The lyrics have deep personal resonance to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwaVP9BYQo

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Testing stereo field", Fantastic Dan

I was watching through this musician's videos on YouTube and my favorite wound up being their very first. It's clearly a test video (it cuts off suddenly at the end), and it's got unusual binaural audio that pans as the cellphone moves. But I really just love the groove!

This video is 4 years old, and in all this time it's only got 18 views. The Internet is full of beautiful and secret things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UhK33bjBO8

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Buchla 200 at the Evergreen State College.", Giselle Garcia

Some drums-not-needed analog synth music on a vintage unit at a college in Olympia, Washington. Chill but with a distinctly sharp energy. What I used to think of as "Space Mountain Music".

There's a gap of about two minutes halfway through this video as the musician configures the unit for her second song so you may want to stop the video at 2:40, but I do like the closeout track.

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

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Estuary", nk

This week I've been posting tracks in which a modular synthesizer makes many short, fast notes in a random-feeling way. This is… that again, to start, but it quickly changes, dropping in a skittering, jazzy-erratic beat and droning bassline. Once it gets going the mood of the piece is really interesting, very determined, like something large and heavy in dogged motion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyCtqyyX5ts

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Cottonwool", Lamb

In the golden age of trip-hop, Lamb was known for two things: A really good Kruder & Dorfmeister remix; and an undignified incident where one of their albums got widely distributed on Napster/Gnutella after someone relabeled it as an "unreleased" Portishead album. Unfortunate: Lamb deserves to stand alone. I like this track for its layers of lounge jazz and breakbeats, satisfyingly distinct and unmixing like oil and water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvHMHOGrG8E

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Morning Practice", Todd Barton

Made on a modern reissue of one of Buchla's "Easel" style suitcase units, this is an improvised performance of strange, quietly unnerving alien sounds. You may not recognize this as "music". It's basically the noises you'd hear in the background in some sort of science lab or alien spacecraft in a 60s movie (probably because those sounds, in those movies, were in fact made on Buchlas). It's definitely intense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrvpTaMl6nw

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "AMBIVALENT", Human Motives

Humming buzzing noises and bright chords like sunlight glinting off metal, this is six minutes of ambient music made on a modular pipeline that features not one but two granular sound-stretchers chained end to end. Something relaxed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLw59F34y_Q

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Neutral Labs Elmyra DIY drone synthesizer & friends", nyppy

The Elmyra was a DIY/"Open Hardware" clone of the SOMA LYRA-8, with 3 operators instead of 8. A drone box, basically. In this video the box's designer demos the Elmyra with a variety of other equipment (including, in some clips, a LYRA-8). A buffet of atmospheric booming sounds.

I try to limit this thread to single tracks but frankly, all 22 of these pieces are really compelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I5FMplMQOY

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "The Day Of Opening The Tomb", Aural Holograms

This is a 23-minute recording of atmospheric drone ambient, from 2008 and a genre somewhere adjacent to black metal. Metal sounds and distant clanking, sounds that could be wailing or maybe just wind. The YouTube thumbnail actually summarizes this track better than I could. As a connoisseur of structured humming noises, the 23 minutes I spent listening to this were very high-quality ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zkoprENdAo

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "DarkMatter by Lefty’sSoundLab+Eventide BlackHole drone improvisation", Arkady Marto

This is a sorrowful audio inkblot made by a handmade drone synth covered in mysterious knobs. Hypnotic but constantly changing, saws like low horns over a foggy Thames at the start of a spy movie. About 12 minutes in I realized I was convinced I had been hearing a sequence of 3 bass notes for many minutes continuously, but when I concentrated they evaporated

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ51UBKksuc

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Wail of a Decomposed Star", Hobboth Music

In this beautifully atmospheric piece the musician rigged up a modular system and then, they claim, "left this patch to record while taking [a] shower". This is surprising since the piece really does feel like it follows an arc to an energetic climax & decline over its 18 minutes, so either something acted as a very long LFO or we got lucky.

(The fittingly H.R. Geiger-y video is an autovisualizer.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xynNKdA8_Qs

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "'Convection' | Cassette Tape Generative Ambient", Not_A_Creative

The YouTube summary for this tells a story: The musician recorded a modular synthesizer piece, but they weren't really vibing with it. So they recorded it onto a cassette tape and played it back at half speed. Suddenly they loved it. This is good, actually. Peaceful with occasional passing tremors of creepy feeling, like glimpsing something you shouldn't through the fog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3vbiemDvsM

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "morning drone", SERi

Here is the secret to drone ambient: Get some sort of oscillator with either phase or FM effects that cause transient crackling/squeaky noises, then run it through a massive reverb until you can't hear any individual element. This always works.

This track means being repeatedly hit by uniform walls of sound, like vertical ocean waves. It's pretty good for total mind-emptying. No emotions. No consciousness. Just sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXw3KeRRjyQ

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Empty" (YMF288 Cover), jaezu (original by 4-mat)

Yamaha FM was the sound of pop in the 80s, with the DX7 used in more hits than I can name, and then the sound of high-end computers in the 90s, with budget versions of the DX7's chip showing up in the Genesis, Neo Geo, Soundblaster etc.

This is a chiptune cover of another chiptune (originally a 512byte demo), remade on the Sharp PC-98 Yamaha chip as laid-back, vaporwavey electric-piano funk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glfHkltN4-M

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "TD-3 // RD-6 + volca FM = f u n k", Ricardo Schnidrig

Here cheap Behringer reproductions of the Roland 303 and 606, both running at maybe half the tempo those machines are usually run at, combine with an entire garage workbench worth of guitar pedals to make some unbelievably laid back acid atop a foamy wall of phased FM. Cool and dreamy and a little bit hypnotic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS9LvdcLhPY

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Scarlet Skies", CorvusScribe

This is a chiptune piece on the 4-channel POKEY chip that handled sound and random number generation on the Atari 400 and 800 computers, plus most of Atari's 80s arcade games (Missile Command, Centipede etc).

This one's all big crashing chords, epic and dramatic. Sometimes you just want to listen to some PWMed square waves. The visualization in the video looks pretty cool.

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

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Oh Sheila", Ready for the World

This is from that period in the 80s I've talked about before, when hip hop, new tech and Prince were causing pop music to change quicker than musicians could keep up with. It's a beautifully rocking R&B track, with borderline-experimental staccato everything. Morse code synths.

BTW—go find the music video for this, or GIS "Ready for the World band", if you want to see an incredible moment in men's fashion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=excjFCPOS7Y

mcc OP , 9 months ago

What I'm listening to today: "Beyond your mind", Reinos

This is a eurodance DOS tracker tune from 2004, with sampled (?) acid synth noises and some fun stuttery violin sounds. Take this into a club in mid-1996 and it would have been the hypest thing.

This was posted on YouTube by the artist, and as the artist does not link the .xm file, and the website advertised in the .xm file on screen appears to be dead, this is probably the only copy of this track on the Internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Ls25NaTU8