andi

Here is some music people recorded on modular synthesizers in their homes and then uploaded to YouTube where they received between 50 and 150 views. Also: Hatsune Miku

1. "Techno Live Jam 3 || Subharmonicon, Dfam, Eurorack, Ableton", Sorrowless

This is a driving electronic jam I think I'd describe as "industrial" or "dark trance". The sounds are made on a couple modular synth racks so a neat property of this one is far as I can tell all the drums are being generated live from analog circuitry. Intense, exceptionally clean, effective production and it's all done on some evening's whim for uploading to YouTube.

YouTube has a ton of videos like this and it gives me life.

2. "Desmorph", AcidTonic

Made on one of those wall-sized modular synth racks, the artist describes the video with "Loose ended live improv. First take."

A chill but determined groove undergirded by erratic drums, with a sense of low menace starting to creep in in the second half. Good zone-out music.

3. "Battery Driven", quadratschulz

This is a quirky little hiphop jam on a small collection of handheld/toy synthesizer equipment. Featuring 808 tom bips, Chase Bliss pedal mangling, and extended vocals by Miku Hatsune. For serious. That stylophone looking thing is the "Gakken Otona no Kagaku NSX-39 Pocket Miku Singing Keyboard", an officially licensed Vocaloid product. Skranky¹

4. "Sound Check pre serata - 03052024", Michele Giletto

A modular synth jam based around the Make Noise Shared System. It's thumping and intent, Detroit style, with feedback as a musical element. It builds a really cool feel out of minimal elements, I like the way the rhythm seems to kind of catch on itself.

This one's 10 minutes long, if that's too long for you 6:20 would be a okay time to stop as it enters a kind of separate movement then. But I like the second movement too.

5. "Titan", S 57

Dense faux-retro synths and breaks accompanied by psychedelic MPEG-glitch visuals. I'd call this a dark dance track but it actually may be moving a little too fast to dance to. It's intense.

A space probe you sent out in the 1970s has finally after years of silence sent back a signal but now somehow it is evil and corrupted. That's what you're watching here.

⬇️ Click below for zoomer breakcore and bass headaches ⬇️

"Drum & Bass!", I say, confidently.
"Can't accept Drum & Bass, we need Jungle I'm afraid," replies Amol Rajan.
I begin to sweat nervously.

1. "Thunderclap 1995", Remarc

At some point I was trying to figure out exactly when "breakcore" broke off from Jungle and D&B. At least two sources I found (OK, Reddit posters) clamed this (Thunderclap) to be the first breakcore track. Is that true? What differentiates this from "Drum & Bass"? I've decided I don't care, and all I care about is that this track is sick. Sparse, spine-grabbing, this is a complex machinery made entirely of liquid. "Recommend".

Note: This track is mastered for 90s sound systems, so if you're listening on laptop speakers, you may prefer this rip, which sounds a little worse but does compress the bass higher in the mix.

2. "Matter of Fact", Roni Size Reprazent

To those of us who couldn't experience UK dance culture firsthand in the 90s¹, "New Forms" is indelibly associated with drum & bass— it practically defines it. But Reprazent was also doing something bigger than D&B, weirder. Listen to this track, the album's biggest jaunt into outright jungle and a demo of its tendency to atmospherics that suggest spaces so well it could practically be a video game soundtrack.

3. "Precision", Spinscott

I've heard it said that Drum & Bass, as a genre, couldn't have happened without Cubase. (Wait, have I started a track description like this before?) Anyway that's not strictly accurate, but… you do get the sense of D&B/Jungle as something made "offline". A person at a computer pondering a grid. All those sixteenth-note hi hats.

But then this dude just loads an Amen break into an MPC 1000 and fingerdrums some jungle. Triggers each sample live by hand. It's like watching someone fly without an airplane.

4. "FastTracker 2 Jungle Style", Dee-Shaya

Jungle made in 2022 by 1996 methods (if you look at the top you'll see "FastTracker II by Triton Prod 1996" and then next to it a track label saying "2022 Jungle Style"). Short, unpretentious, immaculate, satisfies some primal need (to listen to Jungle). This YouTuber's channel mostly consists of C64 retrocomputing stuff, but here she has chosen to indulge us with some DOS.

5. "Run", Michiel van den Bos

This is from Unreal Tournament (1999), a game I don't think I've played.

One nice thing about sample trackers is the files are small and playing them back has low CPU impact, which makes them ideal for embedding in video games. Apparently UT1999's tracker files can just be extracted and played in Impulse Tracker. Lacking any personal nostalgia, this soundtrack feels tonally all over the map to me, especially compared to my memories of the much-more-focused, single-player-friendly 1998 original (which I did play). But, some of the tracks hold up well; this one in particular is great, with Drum&Bass inflections, an authentically classic feel and emotionally dead-on Vibes.

⬇️ Click below for Zoomer breakcore ⬇️