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: 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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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: "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.
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