mcc
What I'm listening to today: "I Don't Give A Fuck", DJ Rashad
DJ Rashad was a wildly inventive instrumental hip-hop producer working in a Chicago-local microgenre ("Footwork") he himself co-created; his stuff sounds kind of like trap music from another universe (the universe is Chicago). This song, from an album released one year before Rashad died, is an unpredictable, unsettling, avant-garde descent into darkness. It goes real hard.
This recording contains Cuss Words
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Havoc" title screen theme
"Havoc" was a 3D "tank game" (anyone whose parents wouldn't let them play FPSes will recognize this phrase) from the 90s that history has entirely forgotten. There were two things of note about it: One, it was one of *very* few games to ever support Apple's "QuickDraw 3D" hardware acceleration API; two, its title screen theme was a techno banger entirely beyond all reason. This song is a secret treasure, to me.
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: "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: "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: "Sommarhack 2024 Invitro", 505 & mOdmate
"Sommarhack" is an Atari demoscene party happening next year in Sweden. The event announcement came itself in the form of a short Atari ST demo, which you can find on YouTube under the name "300 Days to Go". The demo incorporated this original track, made in maxYMiser music (that's the tracker made by gwEm). It's effortlessly funky, and has absolutely the filthiest chiptune bassline I have ever heard.
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: "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: "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: "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: "ZIQAL DIMENSION + bionic lestar + Zadar", Plugman
"Plugman" is an active performing musician, but his YouTube account is used exclusively for short sound tests and module demonstrations; I've been watching the account for months waiting for him to post an actual *song*. Here he finally has, sort of, a short but extremely sick 2-minute jam with cool swoothy synths. This makes me think of whatever "dub" meant in the early 00s techno scene.
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "10 minutes of DUB TECHNO on the korg VOLCA bass/FM/Sample"
"Dub" emerged in the early 70s as a minimal, bass-focused, echo-drenched variant of reggae.
Then "Dub" emerged in the late 90s as a techno genre aping dub reggae style, generally with no lyrics and often with minimal/microhouse beats.
This YouTube dub techno set was made on Korg's quartet of cheap desktop synths, and it's good. Actually, it's *very* good. Cocooned in floaty vibes
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Taxi", Pole
In 1996, a DJ named Stefan Betke dropped his Waldorf "4-Pole" filter and broke it. The "broken" filter turned out to make strange, unique crackly noises that Betke loved so much he recorded 3 entire albums of minimalist, borderline-ambient "dub" techno based around the filter's new sounds. This is my favorite track from the set, a tense, hypnotic descent into a single hissing loop disrupted by sketchy reggae instrumentation.
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: "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: "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: "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'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: "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: "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
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