Would you like to hear some noises

1. "Prague", David Prescott

This was recorded in Boston in 1987 and distributed exclusively on cassette tape (by an experimental music label in Germany named "Prion Tapes"). A symphony of noise, too loud to really be "ambient", this is an hour* of feedback and mysterious unknown electronics. Coil fans take note

* What I'm really trying to call your attention to here is "Side A" (the first 28 minutes) but side B does have its own nice prog vibe

2. "Cristal Baschet- Bass Euphone Song", yatsoosh

This dude built, from raw metal, an all-acoustic unamplified instrument based on the "Cristal Baschet" designed by the Baschet brothers in the 50s. The idea is you glide wet fingers on glass rods, and the vibrations are amplified by those giant metal plates. Having built the instrument the guy composed a song for it, which he also sings accompanying lyrics to, in Latin.

It's… incredible.

3. "Upside- Down VHS III", A Beautiful Burning World ft. FERRIFET

So if I understand this correctly, this is VHS footage where the tape's been removed from the cassette & re-inserted upside down, causing it to play back backward and all messed up. The artist sets this video to some noise ambiance from a previous collaboration and it hits the tone perfectly and even kind of syncs up, a little.

I think I might describe a lot of music as "ominous" but oh my god, this is super ominous.

4. "LYRA-8 + Modular Synth // Experimental Drone", Sakai Meno

I've featured the SOMA LYRA-8 so many times in these mixtapes that I had to kind of introduce a moratorium on it for a while, but this track makes the LYRA exciting to me again by using it as a kind of base oscillator and processing its boomy sounds through several (out-of-focus in the video) racks of modular synth, adding texture and structure. Imagine a sunrise being eaten by happy robot alligators

5. "4-23-24A Bastl Generative Patch", Edwin Perry Manchester

Gosh, I love Bastl. Bastl makes DIY-flavored sound machines with quirky behavior. Here five of their boxes (four of them from their cheap "Kastle" line, each device powered by two AA batteries and two ATTiny microcontrollers) are cross-wired to create an indescribable madness, new waves of noise cresting every few seconds.

AI is not necessary for a machine to have unknowable complexity, or for that matter personality

⬇️ Click below for shoegaze and some kind of tree ritual ⬇️

I originally compiled two weeks worth of mixtapes at once here, filtering out one mix of only conventionally listenable songs (to be posted last week) and one mix of only experimental electronica/idm (to be posted this week). And then… something happened, and they got sorta mixed together. If you want the "all IDM" version of this mix, swap tracks 1 and 3 of this week's mixtape with tracks 1 and three of last week's.

1. "CHOMPI Ambient #1", Syncopator One

The CHOMPI is a digital sampler inspired by tape-music workflows and basically custom targeted to appeal to Kickstarter, with buttons made of keyboard keycaps, a toylike/"play"-oriented UX and a pink variant (yesss…).

This track shows the device off making highly effective infinite-reverb ambient. I've never thought "Music for Airports" felt like an airport but this feels like an airport. Like early in the morning, when it's mostly empty and the dawn light is giving everything a kind of unreal air.

2. "Soyut", DJ Strawberry

Very good, driving electronic music with frenetic, skittering beats, moving so fast by the time you understand what they're doing they're already past you. (Is this "Footwork"?) Has this emotionally ambiguous mood I can't quite describe except it's really intense. Someone on Mastodon named Eric Stein described this as "sense of unease (asmr jam)".

The musician recorded this album while processing his personal experiences of the devastating February 2023 earthquakes in Turkey; the title appears to be Turkish for "Abstract".

3. "I'd Chill For Your Sins", WINFIELD

Yamaha's 1983 DX7 synth was the sound of the 80s, the basis of Michael Jackson and so much else. The Yamaha PSR-11, meanwhile, is an almost-entirely-forgotten budget keyboard from 1986, discontinued after a year and based on a cut-down variant of the DX7's chip that was later used in AdLib and Soundblaster PC cards in the US. The PSR-11 has only two FM operators (compare six in the DX7, or even four in the Sega Genesis), and so while it vaguely suggests that classic FM sound it's just too primitive to deliver it. Its voices sound uncanny, like a demake of the 1980s.

This musician uses this primitive, demake-y feel to amazing effect, making every sound in this song on a PSR-11 (even the drums) as you watch. Result: The most evocative song that 1986 forgot to record.

4. "untitled", The Bleeple Syndicate

As far as I can tell from their YouTube, the "Syndicate" are 2 or 3 dudes who periodically meet in a basement and film themselves noodling with musical instruments. They don't seem to care who's listening.

Here, a big messy pile of electronics bumps out a chill vibey pattern while the Dudes play electric guitar and flute (regular flute) into echo pedals. This video has 42 views on YouTube and I really like it.

5. "Ghost Obelisks", Space Town

This musician uses two Dirtywave M8 handheld trackers laid out like DJ turntables, and controls the mixing on the tracks from a 16-knob MIDI controller in the center. There is a picture of a Chihuahua. This setup guides us through ambient shining sounds into effective 90s dark electronica with thumping beats and acid groans and yelps. Makes me think of Prodigy or Juno Reactor or MTV at 2 AM after midnight on a Sunday in 1999.

A 40-minute, continuously-changing live set with good "production values".

⬇️ Click below for some dub/ambient ⬇️

I have no idea what I'm doing with it, but I recorded a sample of me saying "worm" and that was fun!

I might need to get an amp cause my attempts to record it on my computer just end up being super quiet. When I figure that out, then I can inflict my music (or whatever you call what I'd make) on other people. >:3

Also, it needs a name! 🤔

still figuring things out (like the speed dial and when to properly hit the looper button) but gosh this is cool:

I have no idea what I'm doing with it, but I recorded a sample of me saying "worm" and that was fun!

I might need to get an amp cause my attempts to record it on my computer just end up being super quiet. When I figure that out, then I can inflict my music (or whatever you call what I'd make) on other people. >:3

Also, it needs a name! 🤔