Listening Notes

Sync24 — Hope, and Bluetech — Spacehop Chronicles 2

2026-07-25T00:00:00Z

These two are excellent examples of the same type of thing: down-tempo-ish, chill-outy, kind of jazzy, and a little improvisational. Hope is the new Sync24 album; Spacehop Chronicles 2 is the new Bluetech album.

They're both continuous recordings rather than completely discrete songs. And they both give off a little bit of a "drinking an exotic cocktail at a bar on Tatooine" feeling. Spacehop Chronicles 2 even has some alien-sounding opera vocals on "Limonchik", like the space-opera singer from The Fifth Element.

They're both pleasantly heavy: thick, substantial, smooth. Great music for a hot day in the backyard, lounging around. Energetic and positive without being corny, something that helps you get into the flow.

Noah Gundersen — Die Young

2026-07-25T00:00:00Z

Die Young is from Noah Gundersen's Rites of Spring (2026). Poppy but so good. It's life-affirming, but the character is legitimately flawed.

My wife made fun of me for liking it lol. I get it: it's giving a bit of Taylor Swift. I don't know.

It's interesting though. Taylor Swift is really good with melodies. Maybe one of the reasons Noah succeeds is that he combines an authentic, hard-edged, more "male energy" thing with some very poppy melody talent.

I think it's one of the reasons I like Noah Gundersen: he feels in public.

Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri — Live at Le Guess Who?

2026-07-25T00:00:00Z

Abul Mogard is very good. This is Live at Le Guess Who?, a live set with Rafael Anton Irisarri from 2025.

The monastic feel. The progressive build-up. The soundscape is delicate but saturated, and almost overwhelming.

The Crystal Method — Wide Open

2026-07-13T00:00:00Z

Wide Open, from The Crystal Method's Legion of Boom (2004), captures the feeling of looking out across a vast expanse. Unlimited opportunities. Transcendental.

The nine-dot puzzle. You solved that and realized you'd been looking at everything all wrong. It is totally wide open.

Photos: Lollapalooza Chile 2012 (CC BY-SA 2.0), Orange Warsaw Festival 2009 by Yves6 (CC BY-SA 3.0), live 2006 by Disavian (CC BY 3.0).

Voices From The Lake — II

2026-07-12T00:00:00Z

I knew when I heard the first track on Voices From The Lake's II that I was gonna love it.

When I listen to this music, I feel like I'm sitting in some futuristic jungle paradise. I look around and there are emerald sculptures, little waterfalls, solarpunk technology. It's sunny and bright. There are monkeys in the trees, flowing water.

One of the first things you notice as you listen is that it's one long continuous track. And, per the usual for this kind of project, the last track is the one continuous uninterrupted version. I love it when an artist is able to pull something like this off.

Just as I was about to write this post, I noticed this is a project from Donato Dozzy. He's kind of a legend. Neel as well is very good; I saw him live at an incredible show at Public Works.

File this under lush, immersive, richly textured, mid-tempo soundscapes. One of the songs this immediately reminds me of is Young American Primitive. It's got that same kind of futuristic, almost alien feel to it.

Elis Regina — Águas de Março

2026-07-11T00:00:00Z

Águas de Março is an all-time favorite. This is Elis Regina's solo version, from Elis (1972).

The lyrics are warm, prodding, bubbly: gently, playfully pushing you forward. Tumbling, weightless. Happy, delightful, excited. And the Portuguese is so nice to listen to: round, elastic, bouncing.

The structure of the song is special and unusual. It's basically one long list, no real chorus: image after image, and the melody keeps stepping down.

I understood this to be broadly bossa nova. ChatGPT tells me it's more narrowly 1968–1975 MPB and samba rock.

All Them Witches — House of Mirrors

2026-06-26T00:00:00Z

This is classic All Them Witches: House of Mirrors is unselfconsciously sinister, heavy riffs and desert rock, a little deranged.

Some of their recent albums had good stuff on them but weren't consistently incredible. Here they hit the theme end to end. The hard stuff is gritty and rough, exactly what I want to hear. The less hard stuff blends in seamlessly. It doesn't feel like filler, it feels of a kind, with perfect segues.

One of my favorites, "Starting Line", keeps popping into my head. Something perfectly desperate about this track. Maybe a reflection of the feeling of an intensifying and increasingly hopeless rat race that a lot of people experience these days. It could just as easily be a Depression-era ballad, the soundtrack to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, that sort of thing.

This album is a masterpiece. It's evidently very hard to accomplish an album that says something with this degree of consistency. Especially impressive that these guys are still doing it.

Chris SSG — Deep Breakfast Series 344

2026-06-19T00:00:00Z

Every Chris SSG mix is a banger, and this one is fantastic.

Strange way to describe these sets, since they're not loud or energetic. There's a lot of beautiful, intricate material being put out in this DJ-set form, broadly the minimal, ambient, atmospheric, quiet-instrumental category. Chris SSG, honestly, produces the most exquisitely constructed sets in this category. The way it all ties together, the consistency of the theme: absolutely beautiful.

The Deep Breakfast Series account and podcast looks like really high-quality stuff too. I'll be returning to this one.

llwll — ALEA IACTA EST

2026-06-18T00:00:00Z

I'm loving llwll's ALEA IACTA EST. I can't even pronounce the artist's name. I got to it through tokyona, one of their albums.

It's firmly in that breakcore, drum and bass category, rooted in that tradition. Like tokyona, it has a chaotic, frantic energy. There's something simultaneously hopeless about it, but it also feels like music you'd listen to while ascending to the supercomputer in the cloud during the singularity.

It evokes Neuromancer, the way the book keeps moving: it starts in a cyberpunk slum, then they're flying around the globe, then they're in space, and it ends up at Villa Straylight, where the Tessier-Ashpool family keep their AIs, Wintermute and Neuromancer. It all moves so quickly that it's like they're ascending.

What's a little different here is that it's darker. The heavy bass lines take it somewhere less whimsical than the tokyona album. Which is a weird thing to say, because that album is already pretty dark and a bit more serious.