- "Make Noise Strega, Korg nu Tekt nts-1", grumpfigrumpf
This is a lovely, brain-stem-grabbing ambient jam I discovered a while back and return to sometimes. It's basically the epitome of drone music, because it consists entirely of an echo filter run into a second echo filter. (The Strega does have a VCO, but it isn't on at the start of the video; instead they initially seed the feedback loop by turning the delay speed down until the bbd resolution is so low it introduces crackling.)
- "Cartographer - Eurorack Drone", Michael Furtak
This is a slow, threatening ambient piece. It's the length and shape of a "song" but it is definitely all about the sounds. Metal-y FM noises, shimmering sweeps, gradually introduced deathmarch beats. And of course the standard drone moan. It feels like standing on a hill and watching something indescribably enormous passing far overhead.
- "Make Noise Shared System Jamuary 11.2023", Lukas Hermann
A minimal synth noodle with some note sequencers and the Shared System (Make Noise's standard eurorack module bundle). Not very complicated but I like it. There's some interesting implicit clicky percussion when the echo gets its teeth into some of the notes' attacks. Goes through an interesting change partway through.
Made on SOMA's touchplate crackly sounds box combined with their irrational-phase looper pedal. I've linked this same artist using this same equipment before but this piece comprises totally different sounds than the last one, starting with gentle buzzy hums and escalating to ominous swarmscapes and rocking thumps (if you pay attention, caused by physically smacking the device). I find this one very emotionally intense; it definitely shows the expressiveness of the Enner as a performance instrument.
- "Bombora || Sequential Prophet Rev2", Pat Carroll
A peaceful low-key keyboard solo. A lot of the synth music I link in these posts the focus is on the technical shock of the instrument capabilities, so I'm not sure how to express the idea a synth piece is just about the synth player's performance. Like, linguistically. You say something is "a piano performance" and everyone understands you're calling attention to the piano playing, but you say "a synth performance" and it's not clear if you're praising the keyboardist or the keyboard. Actually this song possibly could have been performed on a piano, though the Prophet voice's LFO does add some nice subtle rhythmic elements.
Anyway. Feels good
⬇️ Click below for Squarepusher and my favorite CD "hidden track" ever ⬇️
- Outro, God Lives Underwater
I feel like every music fan has that one band that's their White Whale, the band critics don't talk about and everybody else seems to have forgotten. For me that's probably the 90s industrial group God Lives Underwater. My favorite thing by GLU is the "hidden track", not very hidden, from Life in the So Called Space Age, which rather than the traditional silence gap begins with a repetitive humming noise that goes tens of minutes without changing. The best way to listen to this is to put it on reasonably loud on speakers and then forget you had it on, so the thing that happens afterward hits you like a truck. Trust me.
(The link skips YouTube forward to immediately after the end of the final song, which is actually excellent by itself; feel free to backtrack at the start if you want.)
- "Last Ap Roach", Squarepusher
When I was in college I had horrible insomnia. One night, exhausted, I went to McDonalds at 3 AM. When I got up to the window, they had installed a machine that makes your drink and drops it in a carousel. There were no humans visible. The streets were empty, the lights in the McDonalds seemed to all be out. I was alone in the world with a robot and a slowly-rotating coca-cola and, at the precise moment this song reached its climax on my car's stereo, I watched as the unattended coke reached the end of the carousel and the robot smashed my drink against the wall
