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Top-level
 What I'm listening to today: "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.) 54 comments
What I'm listening to today: "Ambient Improvisation Elektron digitone and Moog Mother 32", Surgeons Girl This track gets a lot of mileage out of fairly minimal elements, synth stabs fighting to rise above the water of a ocean of sorrowful foghorn hums. Sometimes I feel like attempting to describe these pieces makes them lesser and that's definitely something I'd worry about here, this is something meant just to be felt rather than intellectualized. What I'm listening to today: "Verbos + Mimeophon Jam", Deaftone Audio This video is essentially a single held note and some rhythmic clicking for eight minutes, but the musician, hand-driving a complicated modular feedback machine, thoroughly explores every point in the configuration space of that constrained premise, taking you on a journey through a small universe of minimal ambient destinations. It's all very hypnotic and maybe a little sinister. What I'm listening to today: "Modular jam with Volca Modular, Korg NTS-1 and Playtronica Touch Me", ITSME This is a short, peaceful synth piece performed on a tree. Like, uh. This person got hold of a device that converts current (capacitance?) changes from human touch into MIDI, and then they wired it to a small tree. So the harder they squeeze the tree the higher the note on the Volca Modular goes. Anyway, it's a real nice song. What I'm listening today: "7:10", Plug Luke Vibert is a man of many names and many styles. This is the first track on Plug EP 1, which was released as "Visible Crater Funk" in Europe or mashed into CD 2 of "Drum & Bass for Papa" in the US. This is D&B (Jungle?) by the basics but the basics are pushed to a point of total chaos. Amen break in a blender to create a maelstrom of drums, and discomfiting, minimal synth tones. It grabs you really well. What I'm listening to today: "Viewpoint", LTJ Bukem [CONTINUING] —and then this lovely track, which blows past D&B's occasional aspirations to being an intellectual descendent of jazz by just, like… making some jazz. "Viewpoint" is a refreshing, bouncy showcase of jazz bass, electric piano riffs and, at one point, threaded in sneakily, the violin sample that "Point of View" (the previous track on the album) deconstructs. Just such a good feeling to it. @mcc didn't the ST ship with MIDI I/O and the ability to play digital samples? those were both add-ons you had to pay hundreds of dollars for on PCs @BDA Oh my gosh, MIDI *built into the case*. I had no idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#/media/File:Atari520ST_Interface.jpg |
Gregory's Server
What I'm listening to today: "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 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 a rainpipe and a horror movie score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpY9hW_My90
What I'm listening to today: "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 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 a rainpipe and a horror movie score.