Discussion
What I'm listening to today: "Distant Wilderness", Goodie Mob
To close this notional "mixtape", and for historical significance, I probably *should* link "Dirty South", the Goodie Mob song that coined the phrase. (It's a pretty good song! It even has Big Boi on it!) However, instead I am going to indulge myself and just link a track I really like, even though it's on the same album as "Black Ice".
Here: A beautiful slow acoustic-folk call to revolution
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What I'm listening to today: "Dracula Flow 6", YoungArts 2026 winners' jazz ensemble
I had to do it to them, snipe. I went Judge Judy on that pussy, snipe. Blacked out on the Percocet, ordered a Desert Eagle off Amazon. I really did this. I'm really him. I keep my glock at the Vatican, I have the blueprint to the catacombs. My diamonds come from the most horrific situations possible. Movin like Dracula, we get it back in blood. This shit ain't nothin to me, man
What I'm listening to today: "Johnny Dang", That Mexican OT
Đặng Anh Tuấn, better known as Johnny Dang, is a Houston-area jeweler who various sources assure me locked *down* the client base of providing jewelry to professional rappers in the 00s and 10s through savvy networking and innovation in "grills". I did not know this. When I arrived in Houston a couple weeks ago this was the song The Box was playing at 1 AM as I left the airport. Absolutely phenomenal rap flow.
https://thatmexicanot.bandcamp.com/track/johnny-dang-feat-paul-wall-drodi
That Mexican OT
What I'm listening to today: "Coastline #82 (Vom Melos zur Pauke) - Sonata in three movements", Karlheinz Essl
When I first discovered modular synths I'd just search directly for videos of self-playing patches on the 0-Coast: a small dense self-contained unit that can do a ton of stuff simultaneously if you understand it, and makes no sound at all if you don't. Here, a carefully composed journey into a sentient storm of madness hand-guided by an Austrian music professor
What I'm listening to today: "Phil Cirocco demonstrating the ARP 2003 synthesizer"
Alan R. Pearlman's company produced some historically good-sounding synthesizers; their first few, up to the ARP 2600 (best known as the voice of R2D2), were decadently knob-ridden and customizable. This one's so early it's branded "Tonus" and it has some *bizarre* capabilities, here shown off as a shakedown test immediately following a restoration with some improvised space-western jazz
What I'm listening to today: "Phil Cirocco demonstrating the ARP 2003 synthesizer"
Alan R. Pearlman's company produced some historically good-sounding synthesizers; their first few, up to the ARP 2600 (best known as the voice of R2D2), were decadently knob-ridden and customizable. This one's so early it's branded "Tonus" and it has some *bizarre* capabilities, here shown off as a shakedown test immediately following a restoration with some improvised space-western jazz
What I'm listening to today: "Alien Virus", The Bug
The Bug is a mysterious artist to me, they mostly make fuzzy abstract ambient dub but also one time I saw Earth in concert and it was just Dylan Carlson playing one guitar and The Bug playing another.
This is from an album that alternates live Bug tracks with someone named Ghost Dubs (apparently from the label The Bug started?). Thousands of insects are doing the Charleston while in the background, civilization burns
https://thebugvsghostdubs.bandcamp.com/track/the-bug-alien-virus-west-indian-centre-leeds
The Bug vs Ghost Dubs
What I'm listening to today: "0:00", Li Yilei
https://liyilei.bandcamp.com/track/0-00-2
The opener to a mysterious 4-track cassette which I thiiink (per the mini-doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9vDOiRUUyA that introduced me to Li) was Li Yilei's first release as a musician. Yilei self-describes as instrument-agnostic but this is one of their few tracks to center on guitar, a kinda pre-dusk 60s-psychadelic bootup sequence, Death in Vegas or something. Chill ambient spaceout music, a nice compact little feeling
LI YILEI
What I'm listening to today: "First Light", Elucid ft. Sebb Bash and Mattie
From the new album by the Armand Hammer member that isn't Billy Woods. Downtempo hip hop, laid-back spoken word over laid-back jam rock, Allen Ginsberg would recognize this as "rapping". It's got this indescribable feeling.
In some way I can't explain I feel like this track, and the songs "Street Magic" and "Laraaji" from the same rap clique, are all groping toward the same idea
E L U C I D
What I'm listening to today: "Boomhauer w/ dang ol' drums", David Dockery featuring voice of Mike Judge
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What I'm listening to today: "An Microtonal Jam (31 TET)", The Creepy Silence
Anarchic audio soup. In western music notes are assigned to 12 equally spaced points along the octave. What if it were 31? According to this guy, you unlock a bunch of new and forbidden scales, like the "C subminor", which he uses to make 90s style acid techno stuffed with ideas so strange I can't tell what's 31-TET and what's just odd decisions (⚠️ loud beep at 1:10). Baffling but never boring
What I'm listening to today: "sininärhitarina"
Via @leona this is a slightly mysterious* DOS tracker tune with a wildly unique vibe, starting with a rhythm made of DC offset error clicks, falling into the most Super Nintendo bassline and then bursting out into full breakbeats. The cheesy and transcendent all mashed up
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_player&query=168403
* Based on the Finnish title and filename "floppi-!joo.xm" I believe to probably be written by Floppi (previously in this thread) and probably in the 90s
What I'm listening to today: "Snake Man" (Mega Man 3), Yasuaki Fujita (Capcom)
Somewhere between 1 and 3 the music in the Mega Man series matured from "wait did you just transcribe a Journey song" to "this music justifies the existence and uniqueness of chiptune as an artistic medium, all by itself".
Let's take a moment to bask in how good this is. When you listen to this, do you hear it in your head in some other set of instruments? Or just the beeps in the recording?
What I'm listening to today: "Tornado Man" (Mega Man 9), Ippo Yamada (Inti Creates)
In 2008 when "Wii Ware" was launching Capcom decided to give the Mega Man Zero team the keys to the main franchise, resulting in this absolutely incredible pseudo-retro game. The soundtrack was made in MML and rendered with NES instruments (but without NES channel limitations— maybe it could have worked on VRC6?). I love the part here that's like doo do doo doo doo do doo doo do doo doo
What I listened to today: "Skull Man" (Mega Man 4), Minae Fujii (Capcom)
4 is the start of the downslope on the NES Mega Men, but 4 and 5 have real peak moments and 6 has its defenders. 4 in particular has a stellar OST.
Here MM's concept of "80s rock so pitch-perfect you don't notice the instruments are wrong" hits apotheosis. I love the thing with like, the drums. That's just the noise channels! I could've sworn they were using DPCM for the drum rolls until just now.
What I listened to today: Mega Man 2 OST, Takashi Tateishi (Capcom)
So I decided to link a Mega Man track every day this week. This created a problem for me: How do I pick a single song from MM2? Do I link Flash Man because it's my favorite? Pick Wily Castle 1 to make my wife happy? Do I just link "Omoide wa Okkusenman" or "Airman ga Taosenai"? Screw it. Here's the whole OST
Soundtrack has assists from Manami Matsumae, with "Intro" sampling the ending theme from MM1.
What I'm listening to today: "Snake Man" (Mega Man X soundfont), Yasuaki Fujita (arrangement by Bulby)
This musician has a thing of demaking modern video game music for the NES sound chip, and on this playlist he kinda does the reverse, remaking classic NES Mega Man tracks on the SNES sound chip and using the sample set from Mega Man X. Here he does my favorite from Mega Man 3. I really love the bass in this arrangement (the 16-bit era was always good for basslines).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMRinAh3cTo&list=PL32stUgXUfSV_OuEU6sBYTYEF0uq1pzdv&index=7
What I listened to today: "Sigma Stage 1" (Mega Man X), Setsuo Yamamoto (Capcom)
The tone on this is so unusual for a video game! Mega Man X wants to make a case it's a serious, realistic story after the googly-eyed cartoon adventures of the NES Mega Mans. The series' writing can't always sell this but the music kinda succeeds. This track noticeably breaks from the stages before, foregrounding the note of sorrow Capcom wants us to believe underlies Mega Man's adventures
What I'm listening to today: "Modular Commune Festival Beijing 2025 (Vol.22)", 王大治DZ and 李静儿JING
Performance for two synth battlestations and human voice (I think that's a SOMA PIPE?!). 普通话歌曲. Feels to me like standing on a pier under half-clouded skies, noise whipping by like wind.
Production is less pure electronic than I expected, more like if you took a 90s Depeche Mode song and stretched it like silly putty until it was 15 minutes long and full of playful asides.
What I'm listening to today: "Overnight Flight", atnr
The artist describes this track as "Click Minimal House". Bouncy, bubbly electronic dance music with a seriously strange production method. There's three separate granular synthesis devices on this table, but they're *not* what's making the synth pads as you'd expect, instead the weird stutter glitch devices are making drums while the musician plays chords on an OP-1. French touch as interpreted by alien ants
What I'm listening to today: "The Phantom (It's In There)", Renegade Soundwave
1989 track with an incredible sound, early 80s Newcleus feeling hip hop but running just a bit hot, like all the instruments are deep fried, and fit atop a techno song structure. I feel like I've heard a couple dozen tracks like this but never one that goes this *hard*. This feels like some kind of lost evolutionary link between 80s rap and what Warp Records would be starting two years later
What I'm listening to today: "Coastline #82 (Vom Melos zur Pauke) - Sonata in three movements", Karlheinz Essl
When I first discovered modular synths I'd just search directly for videos of self-playing patches on the 0-Coast: a small dense self-contained unit that can do a ton of stuff simultaneously if you understand it, and makes no sound at all if you don't. Here, a carefully composed journey into a sentient storm of madness hand-guided by an Austrian music professor
@mcc So many notes it's like I put the grip of a Mac 10 in my mouth and blew. Drum solo sounding like a Crip party on New Year's. We're zooted off that Charlie Parker kush. I flipped him the Bird and he changed time signatures on me, man.
@mcc so, these young folks are playing their asses off, thanks for sharing!
but the YouTube comments are making me feel very old.
(not just bc I said "young folks")
Is there a reference in the title I'm missing that are making folks act up in the comments, or is the internet just internetting?
@NearerAndFarther Hello yes, the title and comments are references to the internet-video spoken word pieces "Dracula Flow 1" through "Dracula Flow 5", whose cadence I assume the jazz composition is somehow intended to mimic
@mcc i sort of wondered if they simply picked the name as a kind of cheeky SEO? I had their music recommended by YouTube, I assume because I’ve watched Dracula Flow often.
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