May 24, 2022, 7:22 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Kaleidoscope"
This is another "substan" track. It's made entirely on the Digitone, Elektron's FM groovebox, and the youtube title claims it is "downbeat psybient". Okay. Anyway lovely little piece of electronic pop, I really like the progression on this one.
May 25, 2022, 10:40 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Farsleben", Martin Lorenz
This is a weird, wild ambient soundscape, with multiple independent movements; I imagine being in some kind of dimly lit warehouse or abandoned factory, with something inscrutable and maybe slightly terrifying happening at the distant end, the buzzing of electrical transformers and the straining of machines of cryptic purpose echoing off the walls.
(In fact, it's all generated from a small box in Martin's lap.)
May 26, 2022, 7:25 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "rew(1)"
I'm interested in music that works by varying timbre rather than pitch, so Autechre has grown into my favorite band in the world. This one is from Move of Ten, the album-length "bonus EP" from their album Oversteps; except Oversteps is inscrutable atonal experiments and Move of Ten is like… danceable, mostly. This is straight up slap-bass funk, except it's by a band that once described their genre as "digital signal processing".
May 27, 2022, 7:00 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "A Synthesist's Drum Solo // Drum & Synth / Moog DFAM / Subharmonicon / Mother 32 / Elektron Digitakt", Paul-Aaron Wolf
A structurally complex six minute performance of a man very enthusiastically playing the drums accompanied by a shifting set of semi-generative synth loops. This piece rules but as of this writing only has 367 views on YouTube
May 28, 2022, 8:25 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "jbro 73 // VCV Rack 2 // 180 bpm chopped choir jungle"
This person used VCV Rack to create a machine that eternally generates drum & bass. The human operator then introduces structure by turning different elements up and down in the mixer (the drums and bass, although random, are *uniformly* random, so without intervention one stretch is much like any other). Honestly gets old after about 7 minutes but those first 7 minutes are pretty sick.
May 30, 2022, 8:11 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Scorn"
Portishead is one of my favorite bands ever and probably my fav track of theirs is "Scorn", which I'd describe as "Glory Box" turned inside out. (That description probably won't make sense unless you've listened to Glory Box a lot.)
The track is pretty hard to find; it's on a 10-track Dummy remix/outtake compilation called "Glory Times" and, inexplicably, in the background of one scene in the 1996 Wiccasploitation film "The Craft".
May 31, 2022, 7:05 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Make Noise 0-Ctrl & Roland Boutique TR-06"
This is a 0-Ctrl sequencer and a 606 drum machine in an unusual setup where the 0-Ctrl isn't *sequencing* anything; instead, certain steps gate into the "sync" plug that advances the 606's drum pattern. The 0-Ctrl has fine control over step length so this imposes unusual rhythms on the drum machine, transforming (after some fiddling) a single basic drum pattern into a chaotic percussive symphony.
Jun 1, 2022, 7:03 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Balloons", Malevolent Being
I've linked pieces featuring the Moog Subharmonicon before, but this is more of an archetypical "Subharmonicon Piece". The MS uses polyrhythms and subharmonics to generate music no human would design but that feels weirdly "right".
After taking a minute to come together like a magic eye picture, this one finds an amazing groove. I imagine what the back half would sound like sung by a choir, or with drums added.
Jun 2, 2022, 7:26 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Soma Enner Sound Samples", Matt Lowery
Enner is a tactile electroacoustic instrument where touching the plates and knobs bridges signal-bearing electrical connections, and a contact mic/exposed spring reverb introduce further noise from the vibrations of touching or moving the unit itself.
The creator of this piece claims to have been trying to create a pack of sound effects, but it succeeds as "college radio at 4 PM" experimental music.
Jun 3, 2022, 9:51 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Friday" (slowed down 8x), Rebecca Black
"Slow down this song 5x" was a meme for a while, but this was the one Paulstretch track I feel really, really stands up as a legitimate piece of music. Every element of the track is transformed into something intense and epic and maybe a little spiritual. Back in 2011 I used to listen to this (no joke) every day while I worked, and it still holds up today. I have still never heard the original song.
Jun 6, 2022, 7:56 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "For the Twin", Daisuke Tanabe
YouTube recommendations turned up this mysterious EP it identified only as "Cat Steps", which turns out to be a Japanese musician releasing on an Indian record label. The cover has no English or Japanese writing, just a cat juggling Pocket Operators.
Anyway this first track is really good, an energetic clicks-and-cuts techno beat with glitchy instrumentation.
Jun 7, 2022, 7:18 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Meeting in the Aisle"
Radiohead has a lot of odd, interesting corners in their discography, and some of their best tracks are hiding as B-sides. My sometimes-favorite song of theirs is an OK Computer b-side, "Meeting in the Aisle", which in the US was released on the "Airbag / How Am I Driving?" EP. This is one of Radiohead's very few instrumentals and it nails a dreamy, layered vibe. I recommend listening on something with bass.
Jun 8, 2022, 8:53 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Sanxion" loader music, Rob Hubbard
The Commodore 64 had an unusually featureful, musician-friendly and *weird* sound chip. It also had a problem: Games took a *long* time to load off tape. The solution was epic and very long (often 10+ minutes) "loader" songs that played while the game code loaded. The loader for "Sanxion", by C64 master Rob Hubbard, suggests an alternate universe where 00s IDM musicians had a knack for perfect pop hooks.
Jun 9, 2022, 7:05 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "You're No Good"
Terry Riley is a giant of 60s experimental music, but IMO his true legacy is this long-lost artifact, created in 1967 for a nightclub opening and largely buried until 2000. This feels like it *should not have been possible* with pre-digital 1967 tech; it's all tape splicing, one Moog, and a soul song recorded off the radio. You'll think you know where this is going, but you don't.
This is a journey. Headphones recommended.
Jun 10, 2022, 7:57 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Moog System 55, Ben Crook on drums, Peak and Eurorack afternoon teatime"
This is an epic and extremely fun little synth-rock song performed live by a drummer and a man frantically using every device in a 270° battle station of synths, two-thirds of which is taken up by an incredibly rare Moog Modular 55 (either that hardware dates from the late seventies, or else it's one of exactly 55 units Moog manufactured for the 2015 reissue).
Jun 11, 2022, 7:00 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "ACID Drone Patch in VCV Rack with eclectic help of WhatTheRack"
The creator of this video claims to have accidentally invented a genre called "Acid Drone" (or rather, algorithmically uncovered it by running a plugin that randomizes all the connections in your VCV Rack patch, which applied to this particular patch happened to result in the world's first Acid Drone track). I… can't really disagree. If "Acid Drone" is anything, this is it.
Jun 13, 2022, 7:40 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "TL066F04A11097 Eurorack Modular Synth Live Jam dawless", Ty Lumnus
In this video a dude with an absolutely enormous beard slowly lays down a series of loops on a modular synth, feeling his way forward without any particular plan. The track thus evolves from two repeating tones, to what sounds like unusually evocative save point music from an early 80s video game, to a sort of IDM-flavored dance techno with a chill yet slightly anxious vibe.
Jun 14, 2022, 7:00 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Rocco" ("dub"/album mix)
Death in Vegas is a consistently inconsistent band; almost every release has a completely different lineup and their debut album "Dead Elvis", though amazing, seems to be two EPs and a single ("Dirt") jammed together. That second implied EP tho, starting with "Rocco", perfects a blend of 90s techno & 60s psychedelic rock that no one, except occasionally Death in Vegas, has nailed quite so precisely before or since.
Jun 15, 2022, 7:24 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Moog Subharmonicon Jump and Run Jam"
So as I've mentioned the normal way to use the Subharmonicon is to let it free-run with some echo to generate ambient music. In this track tho the musician continuously switches settings and modes to actually play it like an instrument, and the result is not just fun to watch but incredibly catchy.
In some Synth Youtube stunt casting, drums are handled by Yamaha's now-forgotten 1990 MIDI PDA, the QY10.
Jun 16, 2022, 7:05 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Coming to Get You Nowhere", This Is The Kit
So a couple weekends ago I was listening to the radio on scan (an interesting novelty; I hadn't been in a car for like a year at that point). We stopped for a while on one of those stations that play jazz music for old people, and this strange little track from 2020 popped up in the mix. What even… is this? Jazz? Indie rock? Beat poetry? It's definitely got a memorable off-kilter vibe to it.
https://thisisthekit.bandcamp.com/track/coming-to-get-you-nowhere
Jun 17, 2022, 7:02 PMWhat I'm listening to today: "Stefan Torto - Chilling Queen [analog live]"
This is a full techno track performed on a wooden box containing almost every one of Korg's cheap desktop synths (although since there are about eight devices here, it's overall probably no longer cheap). The real attraction here though is the guy's cat, which writhes on the carpet next to him unable to understand why he is not petting her. Why do you not pet the cat!! She is right there!!