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
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Universal Consciousness", Alice Coltrane
Last week I saw a bumper sticker saying: "Keep Honking! I'm Listening to Alice Coltranes 1971 Meteoric Sensation 'Universal Consciousness'". So I went to look that up—
When you listen to this, one of two things will happen: Either you'll go "uh…okay?", or your consciousness will physically leave your body. When I first listened, for six minutes I was unable to move or think. Free jazz psychic attack
mcc
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.
mcc
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
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "20231231 145", sv1
Max/MSP is a open-ended music tool, a commercial fork of PureData. It lets you fine-control every element of making a song, from sound design to mixing, using a visual programming language or by building your own UIs.
For this artist's last album, he YouTubed himself making the tracks in Max, so you can see the bespoke-UI instrument he built for himself. Skittery beats & seductive alien echo sounds. Kinda Ryoji Ikeda ish
mcc
What I'm listening to today: "Destiny+ Entanglement Space 4xDSP with Czochralski Cells and Prism Circuits panels", James Plotkin
An exercise in bizarre sound design on two of Destiny+'s strange, extremely large (Plotkin can't fit them both in frame) synth units, this is made of big swoopy kick drum sounds that fall so slowly they cross the border and become bass notes. I'm… not sure if you're going to love how this sounds or it will just really annoy you. One of the two
mcc
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.
mcc
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.
mcc
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.
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