These mixtape posts recap a thread I've been doing on Mastodon since I switched over to it in 2022, and since I'd done some semi-organized music posting on Twitter, I've been loosely following a rule of not linking anything I previously linked on Twitter. Silly rule anyway. Here is a mixtape of only songs I was pestering people to listen to before 2022.
- "I see you sometimes", Vegyn ft. Jeshi
This was a song I listened to on repeat through most of 2021; on the day I quit Spotify it was my most-listened song there.
Here British DJ Vegyn mashes up rap and synth prog in a satisfying, playful way. He shapes the music like play-doh. I think the tempo actually changes halfway through.
The thing that got me on my kick of listening to home-recorded techno on YouTube, originally, was the Pocket Operator. It fascinated (fascinates) me the complex music you could get out of a tiny handheld device if you're willing to enter focus mode. From YouTube in 2017, here's two $60 handheld devices together making lovely chill techno while ocean waves roll in.
- "Pants On Fire", Buck 65
Buck 65 is kinda like Sam's Club brand Beck. This is an impromptu live performance of one of his songs, ripped to YouTube in 2006 from a DVD (this is one of the oldest YouTube videos you'll still be able to find).
The ramshackle nature of this video elevates it massively over the original album version. Buck seems to be shooting in some sort of attic. The terrible compression of the ancient YouTube upload adds a sort of actually nice frizz to the drums. Partway through he has to stop the song to let his dog out
- "With Ink", Chance McDaniel
This song Was 2019 for me. The musician uploaded it to the Synthesizers subreddit, mentioning something about sampling directly off AM talk radio during the recording. I got a little obsessed with it. It was in some indescribable-in-words sense the sonic/conceptual moodboard for the VR game I was working on back then. It looped in my head the whole time I was working on that game, like a mantra. M. M. M. (M, M). M
- "Trash Audio at the Apothecary" 1-2, Alessandro Cortini
"Trash Audio at the Apothecary" 2-2, Alessandro Cortini
Breaking my format here's two videos, comprising 2 halves of a single 20-minute performance.
While/after Cortini was serving as Synth Guy for Nine Inch Nails, he was constantly going around to small makerfaires and synth shops and serving as a kind of John the Baptist for the Buchla revival to come. Some lovely phone recordings hit YouTube in this era, usually containing somewhere a performance of "Senza" (the song in 2-2; the song in 1-2 I cannot identify).
This was recorded in 2013 at a small, now-permanently-closed music venue in Asheville, NC; several of the YouTube commenters claim they can see Richard Devine just sorta standing around in the video's background.
⬇️ Click below for vaporwave and modular synths ⬇️
- "About You", XXYYXX
This is a musician I used to follow on "Google+". He was an early master of this amorphous emerging genre that at the time I thought of as "Soundcloud music" but was eventually named "vaporwave". Dude started releasing music when he was 15 (by the time of this 2012 recording, 16) and it was gold from the beginning. Slow dream syrup
- "Reunion", Colin Benders
Colin here was an early pioneer of what eventually became modular synth YouTube; his videos feature exceptionally huge synth walls with terrifying forests of hanging cables and occasional gay pride flags carefully fit in the edge of the camera frame. His 2016 tracks are especially good; this track is a 16-minute abstract dance epic based on jackhammer beats and an ever-ramping-up abstract hook. The machine is screaming
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COHOST BONUS TRACK
- X. "Fooling around on Yamaha Reface CS", Dorian Concept
The "Reface"s are a group of Yamaha "boutique" synths containing digital reproductions of various Yamaha instruments since 1897; each has some or other unique feature making it special, in this one's case a MIDI looper. This is a virtuoso tool-assisted (masking tape) performance from 2018 on the CS by a Ninja Tune artist. I just think it's neat.