Violet Noise: 01
Welcome to Violet Noise!
“Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.” ― John Cage
Hi everyone. My name is Sam Tornow. Welcome to the first edition of Violet Noise, a bi-weekly newsletter for all things experimental music. Violet Noise is dedicated to curation over criticism and putting the artist first. Here you’ll find links to releases by artists who may otherwise be forgotten by algorithms, a selection of music that didn’t come out just this week, and videos/other media that may prove interesting to any fans of left-field music.
Violet Noise won’t aim for grandiose statements about the industry or music, it’s more casual, like a conversation or book club. Maybe grand ideas will bubble up into your head from the subject matter, but I won’t be providing them. Think of Violet Noise like the cup of coffee you drink before starting work on Monday with an added dash of distortion.
Along with music, this newsletter will also include news and videos about gear. I am endlessly fascinated by the relationships between musicians and their equipment, and I don’t think that topic gets touched enough. It won’t be overwhelming, there won’t be any jargon and maybe you’ll find it interesting.
Lastly, feel free to invite any friends to subscribe. I’m happy to do this with a small audience, however, part of the reason I’m doing this is to shine one more light, no matter how small, on the artists who are often snubbed by Spotify and YouTube algorithms.
Let’s get into it.
The Media Lab
Miscellaneous Moving Pictures
“What happens if we…wait a minute..”
Escape from the stresses of everyday life with this hour-long “Joy of Painting”-inspired video of Lightbath live patching and explaining his process on a massive home modular system. It’s simple and pretty enough that even listeners who aren’t interested in modular should skip around through it.
“That’s definitely not a Lucha libre mask.”
Here’s a wholesome video of a baffled drum teacher reacting to a video of Brian Chippendale performing as Black Pus. He also calls The Money Store by Death Grips this generation’s Okay Computer for some reason. The reaction starts at 2:15.
“This is how new music is made …”
YouTube content creator Hainbach records hateful comments he and other YouTubers have received, makes them into tape loops, and records them while slowly chipping away at the sound with knives, pencils, and fire. The actual performance takes place at 13:45.
CW: Racism, Homophobia, Xenophobia.
“New” Music
“New” doesn’t end on the next #NewMusicFriday
Ultrasonic by Field Works
The most recent Field Works’ record focuses on the echolocation of the Indiana Bat, an endangered species. The record also acts as a who’s who of experimental artists, with artists such as Sarah Davachi, Kelly Moran, Mary Lattimore, and many others composing pieces around field recordings of the animal.
Shameless plug: Here’s a piece I wrote up for Bandcamp about the album. If the premise sounds at all interesting, this is a good place to get more insight from the artist, including a description of how he managed to make the inaudible sounds of the animal audible.
FFO: Any of the Featured Artists, Dracula, Listening to Frogs, Looking at National Geographic’s Instagram Page
Yet Another SoundCloud Dump by Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin has uploaded more tracks to SoundCloud via his “secret” user18081971 account. Most of the tracks have a heavy Selected Ambient Works 85-92 feel to them, and if that sounds at all interesting, be sure to take a listen. It’s also worth noting that the MP3 for “qu -1” came with a now-deleted message that read, “See you on the other side, dad.”
All the best to you, Richard.
Three New DJ Healer Mixes
DJ Healer has dropped three new mixes onto SoundCloud, each of which is a 35-minute, grainy dive into ambient techno original material. Healer’s mixes always sound impermanent, like a radio show that might phase out at any time, leaving you to question what the tracks you heard were.
FFO: Grouper, Basic Channel, Drifting into the void, Circuit-bent Bibles, Closing Your Eyes, Fog
Home Diaries Series - V/A
whitelabelrecs is an ambient label, named after the oftentimes obscurity of test pressings and anonymous records. With a nearly world-wide quarantine in swing, they announced a project called Home Diaries, which is now up to 10 entries, each stylistically different than the last.
Here’s a description of the project from the label: “whilst at home (like many others I imagine), I had been recording downstairs in my house, as my 18 month-year-old daughter Isla played. I’d bring down some acoustic instruments and hit record – sometimes she’d join in. I found myself doing this for between 5 and 20 minutes every day and then processing and developing the tracks in the evening. I found it was really helpful in the current circumstances and sort of documented our time indoors, like a diary. And so Home Diaries was born – an album I am making, and an invitation to other artists to make one too!”
FFO: Electro-Acoustic Music, 12k Records, Microsound, Finding Purpose in Little Moments, Deep Breaths
Secret Sky Acoustic EDM Set by A.G. Cook
It’s always a treat to get something directly from A.G. Cook. The mastermind behind PC Music has already proven his particular production mastery, and now he’s just showing off. For Porter Robinson’s Secret Sky Festival, Cook came out from behind the glitter-soaked curtains for a surprisingly touching acoustic guitar performance, before launching into the kind of cavity-inducing, warped pop music we’ve come to love.
All sets from the virtual festival can be found here.
FFO: PC Music, 100 Gecs, GFOTY, Alex G, Tweeting, Minecraft Festivals, Going Through the Trouble of Reactivating Your Neopets Account Only to Post About it and Then Never Play it Again
Rainbow Bridge by Fire-Toolz
There’s already so much written about how Angel Marcloid, aka Fire-Toolz, packs a million different musical styles into a single verse. And I truly don’t know of any other album that can be rightfully tagged with “jazz fusion,” “prog,” “avant-garde,” “post-vaporwave,” “metalcore,” and “new age." It’s too original to be insincere. Rainbow Bridge is a sparkling, guttural tribute to Angel’s late cat, Breakfast. Look into the funhouse mirror, figure out what’s true. RIP Breakfast.
FFO: ???
Time Makes Nothing Happen by M. Geddes Gengras
As not to overcomplicate things, in the words of Gengras, “ten rhythmic synthesizer pieces recorded at home."
FFO: Pulse Emitter, Beaunoise, Post-Y2K Autechre, The Sound of the Town Powerplant, Having Multiple YouTube Videos Playing at the Same Time
THE BLUE STALLION by dj lostboi
FFO: Heurco S, Mark Templeton, Night Swimming, Blender’s Water Physics
Music By William Eaton by William Eaton
FFO: Sunlight, Walking in the Grass with Your Shoes Off, Quiet Mornings, Canyons, Breathing
Harbor Darkness by PINKCOURTESYPHONE
FFO: William Basinski, David Lynch, Dream Scenes in Horror Films, The Heavy Feeling You Get After Taking Too Long of a Nap
“Old” Music
There’s Always More
Emeralds Backcatalog
The influential electronic music trio Emeralds started uploading some of its back catalog on the most recent Bandcamp Day. According to an Instagram post, they’ll eventually release other live recordings and other unreleased material, in digital and physical formats, shortly. Emeralds helped spear-head the kraut-rock revival and early vaporwave scenes with albums like Just to Feel Anything and Does It Look Like I'm Here? Unlike most back catalogs and demo recordings, It’s tough to go wrong here.
Twenty Systems by Benge (2008)
Twenty Systems is the album for synthesizer/gear nerds. Here, Benge documents the history of early commercial synthesizers with twenty short tracks, each named after the system they were performed on (1968 Moog Modular, 1971 ARP 2600, 1983 Fairlight CMI, etc.). Brian Eno even called it, "A brilliant contribution to the archaeology of electronic music.” High praise from the big man. The record also recently received a reissue, which is linked above.
Collected Echoes (2004-2008) by Chuck Person (leaked 2020, recorded 2004-2008)
A couple of weeks ago, a video of collected demos from Daniel Lopatin’s Eccojams project appeared online. Lopatin acknowledged the leak as legit shortly after, claiming that he was saving the tracks for an upcoming anniversary of the album. For Eccofans, this is a real treat, an alternative perspective on a record that inspired so many.
y o u k n o w i t ' s j u s t t o o l i t t l e t o o l a t e
A loss of self by Daniel M Karlsson (2018)
XKatedral is a Stockholm-based label that features Kali Malone, Maria W. Horn, and other members of the STHLM Drone Society. For fans of Kali Malone’s recent record, The Sacrificial Code, XKatedral is a gritty dream. Daniel M Karlsson’s A Loss of Self is the record I come back to the most. It’s one of those drone albums that barely moves, slowly taking the listener further from the starting point, until they suddenly realize that they don’t know how they got there.
Gear and Gizmos
Make Noise released the esoteric 0-CTRL this past week, a controller/step sequencer counterpart to its successful 0-COAST semi-modular synthesizer. The 0-CTRL looks incredibly deep, and we’ll surely be seeing it used on stages, videos, and live streams in the coming months, especially given how well it seems to work with other systems. Here’s an overview of the small but mighty mutant.
Chatting with Inanimate Objects
The Hausu Mountain horoscope is my current favorite thing populating my inbox. Time to go listen to some Pulse Emitter.
Did you know?
Apparently taking Tim Hecker’s course at McGill University is an easy “A”
https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1535767
Music Journalism
Finally, here’s a selection of somewhat recent music journalism from fantastic writers, all of whom deserve your attention.
Jordan Reyes dives into the surprisingly deep world of Fargo’s noise scene for Bandcamp.
Tone Glow Founder Joshua Minsoon Kim posted a mammoth interview with Jim O’Rourke, complete with plenty of listening recommendations.
Andrew Ryce writes about the work of the recently passed Florian Schnieder, co-founder of Kraftwerk, for Resident Advisor.