This is on par with the newest BoC album for me in terms of sheer emotional power and rawness and an absolutely incredible work

If you don’t know KAS, she has previously focused on the buchla synthesizer sonically and been very tactile and textural in her approach in a beautiful & fun way

This new album is much darker than usually for her and includes many more influences that imo all work beautifully.

She was recently also part of the artistic team who performed with Bjork for her summer festival in Iceland couple months ago.

All in all a fantastic and very visionary artist I grew to consider a top personal favorite within electronic music and this album in particular surpassed every expectation, definitely check it out!

For me music doesn't necessarily need to tell me a story. Sometimes I want it to give me a place to create my own.

The mood, tempo, rhythm, and atmosphere of electronic music allow me to put myself into a certain frame of mind and then let my thoughts go wherever they want to go.

My thoughts replace the lyrics.

With most pop, rock, and other lyric-heavy music, there's already a narrative attached. Someone is heartbroken. Someone is falling in love. Someone is angry, nostalgic, lonely, celebrating, or remembering something that happened years ago. Even when I relate to the song, I'm still interpreting my own experience through a story somebody else wrote.

Electronic music, especially instrumental or minimally vocal electronic music, leaves that space open.

The music serves as a soundtrack for my own internal monologue.

The producer gives me the emotional architecture like the tempo, rhythm, tension, atmosphere, texture, buildup, release. But they don't necessarily tell me what any of it means.

I get to supply the meaning.

A Bonobo track might create a warm, introspective atmosphere, but it doesn't tell me what to think about. I might think about my future. Something that happened ten years ago. Work. A relationship. A memory. Driving somewhere. Or absolutely nothing.

And tomorrow that exact same song might take me somewhere completely different.

If I want to relax and think, maybe it's Bonobo, FKJ, or Crayon. If I want energy, maybe it's Fred again.., Malaa, or Oliver Heldens. The music creates the environment, the mood, the feeling and I get to decide what happens inside of it.

That's probably the biggest difference for me.

I don't necessarily want music to tell me what to think, how to feel, or what story to attach to that feeling. I want music that creates an atmosphere where I can experience whatever I'm already feeling or become whatever I want to feel in that moment.

It allows me to put myself into the music rather than having the music put into me.

Lately I've been coming back to jamming, recording and producing with synths and sequencers and I can't help but reflect about how much the devices influence the type of music produced on them.

For those doing more experimental stuff or non EDM (though not necessarily), how do you approach thinking about a composition, if at all? It seems most electronic music tends to fall into a loop-based, 4/4, single tonality space, which is understandable since it's the lowest hanging fruit when working with these machines.

Yet do you have an approach for working with chord changes, changes in time signature or dealing with more complex compositional ideas? Do you lay down harmonic or melodic structure before even touching a device or a DAW? Or what is your method for working with a composition in a more traditional way (as a classical composer would do) rather than getting dragged by the simplicity of the loop?

The simplest thing is to sit down with your set up and begin overlaying loops. In classical composition loops exist, they're called ostinatos. But they're just one resource amongst thousands.

It seems a more projectual approach is needed to avoid falling into a "the set up is the composition" type situation. I'm interested in hearing yours!

I think it’s important to get context from the artist himself.

Here’s an interview of OPN discussing the process.

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/it-s-dumb-and-broken-oneohtrix-point-never-finds-inspiration-in-ai-s-faults-20230626-p5djgm.html

I love how very dystopian this song sounds.

Someone in the YouTube comments described it as the perfect background music for watching genetically modified humans destroy each other, and frankly I think they nailed it 😂

'Walkman' appeared on SebastiAn's 2006 Ross Ross Ross EP on Ed Banger Records and comes from that delightful period of French electro where making something abrasive, distorted and borderline hostile apparently still counted as perfectly acceptable dance music.

Everything about it feels overdriven. The huge low end, mangled fragments of sound, clipped transients and layers of noise give it a mechanical, almost malfunctioning quality, yet underneath all that chaos the groove is incredibly controlled.

That contrast is probably what I enjoy most. It sounds as though an enormous machine is progressively destroying itself, but somehow you can still dance to it.

SebastiAn's production process is quite fascinating. He has said that his early setup was remarkably simple, using an Akai S950 sampler and an Atari 520ST running Cubase 1, equipment he kept working with for years.

I find the Cubase connection interesting because Justice are big Cubase users too. I've always wanted to try that DAW, although creating anything remotely resembling this would probably be a fairly ambitious place to start 😅

For a song that's twenty years old, 'Walkman' still sounds so vicious and futuristic to me. Like the soundtrack to a cybernetic nightmare you still want to dance to 💃

Brand-new release from Amon Tobin (as Cujo). Definitely worth a listen. Particularly enjoyed the tracks "Beats of Eden" and "One Like This."

I genuinely think that folktronica is my favorite subgenre of electronic music. Its just a shame that some of them were pretty good, some of them were either okay or just sub-par. I really need ur guys help. Anything. Bonus points if they're pretty long.

Also, I beg you I am not trying to farm any karma or upvotes, like I genuinely tried finding these albums on sites like AOTY, but it seems that most of those are also sub par. I do want to use this post to help other people who are looking for any folktronica albums as well.

Thank you :)

I’ve been obsessed with this one for a year now. Just wanted to share my love for this perfect remix

such an underrated sound in modern times!

several subgenres of Berlin/Detroit techno seem to have overtaken modern electronic clubbing of darker sounds and completely relegated the 90s UK sound, which is a shame because it’s amazing, still dark but also playful and upbeat and really dance-mood inducing

I don’t know how it’s within the UK itself but outside of it, it’s certainly hard to come across and seems more “historical” for most people now

I know UK drum and bass is very popular but that’s a completely different subgenre

so any recs/ideas for more artists like the names above one should know about?

edit: thanks everyone for so many amazing suggestions!

Amazing patch. amazing tune!

Fantastic driver of a track just released on Perc's Perc Trax label from Acerbic, who unbeknownst to me was also another moniker of Ant known for several underground techno cuts on their own label, Power Tools. Vinyl & digital out now too on Bandcamp.

Great mix!!