This week's mixtape is for everybody.
- "One for the haters", Modular Beat
This video has a fascinating rant in the YT description, where the poster complains about context collapse and people expecting him to post finished pieces when his channel is a personal project log, then describes this piece that failed and got totally remade last-second.
It's beautiful. There's a catchy hook but it's presented skeletally, like ambient music, on a simulated guitar that keeps glitching out
- "Waves", Kendall :3
Dream pop that feels like suddenly waking up, with tendrils of sleep still clinging to your brain. Really feels like less a song as just an emotion there's no word for, packaged into an mp3 file, something you swim in as Barroo croons to you over cool abstract synth noises. I really like this album overall but this track really stands out. A loud quiet thing
Baroo is on Cohost, and also makes short films.
- "Lougie", Nappy Nina
Chill and quiet and incredibly driven. This is some bumping hip hop with unique, off-kilter production and unique, off-kilter flow. I've was listening to this artist all last week and her and her collaborators have built their own particular unique concept of how hip-hop works and how it sounds, self-contained and self-confident. I couldn't decide which track from this album to post so I just went for the first.
- "the last time i met u", ykort
This is another of those anonymous anime-girl-avatar zoomer breakcore artists I've been liking so much lately. This track is not breakcore as such, though it does have breakbeats. If I say this reminds me of Arovane will that mean anything to you? Crisp, thoughtfully-arranged beats and pleasantly artificial-sounding guitar samples. I was listening to this album and this track stood out like a signal flare.
- "One for the lovers", Modular Beat
A thing I mentioned about Modular Beat once before is few of his posts contain beats. In this followup to the song I linked Monday—and apparently buoyed by the kind comments he got in response to his complaints about YouTube—in this one MB goes all out. Thudding saw-wave bance in shuffling dance music, but not at the tempo of dance music, unless you're dancing the Charleston. Actually, this would be perfect to dance the Charleston to.
⬇️ Click below for generative piano and more tmod ⬇️
- "haunted days", Luna SC
I've really been enjoying this person's "tmod" series of modular jams. (So far linked in these posts: 3, 4, 21.) In this one a buzzing air-raid drone serves as anchor for an evolving series of glitchy, unpredictable beats, meandering synthesized Guqin plucks and I Care Because You Do noises. Wanders from point to point but by the time you reach the end it feels like it was leading you somewhere specific all along
- 2024-07-01 Mastodon post, Daniel M. Karlsson
I've followed Karlsson on "social" a long time, and it's been cool because he's very open about his process, often sharing tracks-in-progress or long improvised jams, and even often posting the source code to the generative Supercollider apps he used to make his music.
This is a piano recording he posted last week saying he found it "inside" another piece in progress. That could mean a lot of different things actually (one track in a louder mix? a note sequence that stands alone when played on a piano?) and they're all interesting to me for different reasons. In itself the sketch is breathtaking, hyper-minimal but with such strong emotion. This feeling of incredible isolation