andi

1. "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.)

2. "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.

3. "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.

4. "Ambient improvisation 7 (Soma Enner + Cosmos)", Più

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.

5. "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 ⬇️

Here are five songs I liked that are defined by their beats (or by the conspicuous absence of beats).

1. "Hoss featuring the PERKONS HD-01", Generative Jane

This one is a wild ride, starting with a blast of strange FM noises and then immediately dropping hard into a gradually-mutating industrial dance beat. This is the kind of music you'd show opening credits to, probably over establishing shots of a futuristic city, or possibly people riding futuristic motorcycles at great speed to no particular obvious destination.

2. "Puppet Master", ZyeKali

This rocking chaos-&-strings jam was made with the Pocket Operator handheld sampler and a hand-modded "Chaos NAND" (seems to be an Atari Punk Console variant). Instead of using the Pocket Operator's sequencer, the musician plays the PO and Chaos NAND by hand, then samples the sampler, layering eight performances on top of each other. I think the colored Launchpad grid is starting and stopping the other video clips.

3. "Hardware Jam 0006 // Shared System and Friends // 162bpm atmospheric drum n' bass", kaleidasonic

This is a neat mix of a classical 90s Drum & Bass beat with modern modular-synthesizer sound design; it starts with 2 minutes of random-notes ambient, then drops an Amen and a lovely chonky bass and keeps evolving in interesting new directions for the entire 15 minute runtime. (Those without long attention spans may wanna quit around minute 7.)

4. "Ambient improvisation 4 (Soma Enner + Cosmos)", Più

Cosmos is an "asymmetric looper"— a loop pedal whose loops are of varying lengths and so can drift in phase against each other. Here it's fed with tiny sound fragments (with such sources as a small plastic frog, whose shape is sonified by rubbing it against the Enner's case and spring reverb) to build up an all-enveloping ambient soundscape partway between the sound of a rainpipe and a horror movie score.

5. "Lysergenesis", Lauri Paisley

Paisley in the early 80s was VP of the "International Electronic Music Association", which I've never heard of; this was the final song on a cassette album, "Real-to-Reel", she released in 1983. Not so much a soundscape as an ambient ocean you plunge into and possibly drown, this is probably just about the most progressive electronic music you're going to find in 1983; 15 minutes of synths following a weird internal logic.

I'm not completely sure but I think "lysergenesis" in biology is when a thing is created by dissolving another thing and allowing the contents to spill out independently.