Seven songs for you, in order of gradually increasing chaos.
Some hard rave music, 90s-style (but recorded this year): a 10-minute flowing set of various songs played on the EMX-1 groovebox— a precursor to the Volca, but aimed at professional DJs rather than hobbyists¹. In 2004 when this device was released these sounds would have probably sounded five years out of date, but listening now in 2022 sounding like it's from 1999 only makes it sound charming.
(Eggbug will claim to you that this URL is incorrect, but Eggbug LIES!!! The video loads fine if you click the link.) (EDIT 2023-APR-02: At some point this video was removed from YouTube, so the preview is now retroactively correct.)
So the concept here is real simple: This guy got a new synthesizer and he's trying it out, by feeding in a single semi-randomized sequence (bottom left) and turning knobs. The result is like watching something go in and out of focus, as different knob configs make more or less musical sense (with the coherence peaking around 2:00, where it reaches a state I would describe as "danceable" and "hype").
The XPO is based around stereo so headphones recommended.
- "Unstability", Hidenobu Ito
One of the best ever songs ever to emerge from the early 00s "Glitch" genre was this track from the soundtrack of Boogiepop Phantom, a mostly-forgotten anime, by a mostly-forgotten artist named Hidenobu Ito (checking Google finds various reviews from circa 2000 highly praising noise-music albums he released around that time, and... a bandcamp still being updated today, where he appears to exclusively post lo-fi beats for porn soundtracks?). Several cut-up synth lines (or maybe just a Reaktor script?) collide together and spill ruptured tonal organs all over the floor.
The bass in this YouTube rip is unfortunately a little de-emphasized, so subwoofer or headphones recommended.
- "Mutable Marbles experiment., eastern drone swedgling.", Jonny Riddles
"Marbles" is a randomness generator for modular racks, but for structured randomness, it's designed to make values cluster. Here it's being used to pilot timbres of hypnotic clanging noises—like gongs swinging in the wind somewhere distant at the edge of your hearing, but made of metal not of this world, gritty and distorted.
Warning, the mix is biased a bit to right ear.
- "Tribute", Guano Apes
The Guano Apes were a nu-metal one-hit-wonder² on German radio in the late 90s. (This isn't their hit, that was "Open your Eyes.") I wound up owning their album by coincidence, and it's neither bad nor exceptionally good, except for the final track³, where they cut loose and made something unforgettable and weird. "Tribute" starts as funky metal then… devolves? I can't quite describe it. There's a sense of dread throughout, the vocalist is trying to communicate something she seems to think is very important but is struggling to communicate in English.
I really like the cover of this album, by the way.
- "Ondes Sonores.", Jean François Lavielle
Some good focused modular ambient. Chaotic windchime sounds, skittering against a quiet but driving beat that gives the piece a good backbone.
- "Shell Fish", Cool Breeze Rack
This is a low-tempo, slightly unsettling VCV rack patch with some interesting hand-guided dynamics shifts (mixer changes etc), but what's interesting about it is all of the multiple melody lines appear to be sequenced by random generators. Despite this one's brain does a startlingly convincing job of seeing patterns in the chaos, even once it rationally realizes there is no pattern. This is the true power of randomly selected notes!
Video image is a still, so don't bother watching it to see what changes.
¹ This device is fascinating? Also surprisingly obscure for a Korg device, I'm having trouble finding information on it. One decision that seems amazing today is all the synth voices are digital modeling (analog synthesis simulated in software), but then the overdrive is done with actual real analog vacuum tubes. These decisions make perfect sense for the early 00s— the vacuum tube shortage hadn't set in (LCDs hadn't replaced CRTs fully yet), and nobody important was yet snooty about analog vs digital synthesis. But these days it would be totally different, a working vacuum tube is basically there to be salvaged for another device and "analog" voices are just expected even for cheap hobbyist devices (even though, as the EMX-1 recording there demonstrates, you really can't tell the difference when the simulation is done well).
² When I posted this on Mastodon, several German users (of which Mastodon had many) objected strenuously to me describing the Guano Apes as a one hit wonder, noting several of their albums after this one had charting singles.
³ Except not the final final track, there's a hidden track named "Move a Little Closer", that I always assumed (if for no other reason than it tending to disappear on international and streaming releases) was an irony-free cover of a 60s pop song, but looking it up today no it turns out to be an original composition. This ray of unexplained sunlight only increases the disorientation of "Tribute"'s end.
⁴ It's as if they decided to take the "song is ending now" noises that you'd kind of expect a 90s rock song to end with ten seconds of and stretch it out to nearly half the song's runtime, somehow without losing your (or at least, my) attention.
