Fifty-Two Doors to Open
A one-year celebratory megapost
“omg I like this music, what is this music”
In celebration of the fifty-second Music and Math and Feelings, I offer you a loosely connected chain of fifty-two musical gateway drugs — individual tracks in possession of that special something that might just open a new door to deeper investigation.
I’ve also included with each a brief cloud of descriptions and associations.1 I hope you will find new things to get excited about, which you will then send to me so I can get excited about them too!2
Let’s do this:
1. Spiral Garden - Shovel
Appalachian Xenharmonic, instrument building, Ben Hjertmann, poly-everything, the Bifur, micro proportionality, macro proportionality, slide shovel guitar, next-gen microtonalists,
2. Jules Reidy - Every Day There’s a Sunset
next-gen microtonalists, transcendental folk, anora[k]araoke, shoegaze, Berlin contemporary music, Mike Kelley’s Ghost and Spirit, microtonal mysticism,
3. Christopher Otto - Rag’sma
mathematical mysticism, JACK Quartet, plainsound music edition artists, math majors, greyfade records, the ratio 4375:4374, scores engraved in lilypond, the Ben Johnston-verse, getting really really really in-tune,
4. Brìghde Chaimbeul - Tha Fonn Gun Bhi Trom (I Am Disposed of Mirth)
getting really, really, really in-tune, Celtic experimentalism, double-note drones, smallpipes, Isle of Skye, beating
5. Anthony Hall - Synesthesia (Oscilloscope Music)
beating, oscilloscope music, osci-render, multi-dimensional visualization, lissajous curves, waveformcore, subscribe buttons,
6. Shawn Edward Hansen - Sines of the Seventh Temple
waveformcore, harmonic drones, Hewlett Packard Oscillators, Kansas, tape delay, piano technologists, these photographs, KJEA-Radio, historical temperaments,
7. Ellen Arkbro - For organ and brass
meantone temperaments, Stockholm, secret blues harmony, the Robin Hayward-verse, plainsound music edition artists, organist-adjacent minimalism,
8. Kara-Lis Coverdale - Grafts
organist-adjacent minimalism, virtual signal processing, Montreal, dreams, the sacredness of mathematics, scrubbing, deep listening,
9. Ellen Fullman - In the Sea
deep listening, the lattice, longitudinal waves, the long string instrument, F=V/2L, instrument building, Berkeley, OG drone music, overtonecore,
10. Max Eilbacher - 7 Runs (in arc mental styling)
overtonecore, graph paper, architecture of sound, the Horse Lords-verse, OMA Editions,
11. Horse Lords - Fanfare for Effective Freedom
OMA Editions, 4:3, 5:4, x:y, x:y:z, music to figure out, harmonic series of tempos, ratio scales, ice dancing, xenharmonic rock bands, polytempo,
12. Jlin - Black Origami
13. Jlin - Dissonance (Third Coast Percussion)
polytempo, planet mu, shakuhachi, Gary Indiana, elephant-lovers, math majors, Holly Herndon, marching percussion, tiny opera gongs, quartet (percussion),
14. Ben Johnston - String Quartet No. 9: Fast, Elated (Kepler Quartet)
quartet (string), the Harry Partch-verse, Maximum Clarity, harmonic neighbors, taking all the repeats, Kepler Quartet, no-drone just intonation,
15. Shuffle Effect - Arnold Dreyblatt
no-drone just intonation, the Dreyblatt Tuning System, New York, Berlin, the Orchestra of Excited Strings, microtonal swing, the 11-limit,
16. Harry Partch - The Dreamer that Remains (1972 Film)
the 11-limit, Boo, instrument building, tank-tops, cloud-chamber bowls, quadrangularis reversum, forefathers of microtonalism, Boo II, the Hermann Helmholtz-verse, corporealism,
17. Star of Indiana - the final forty-two seconds of the 1991 season
corporealism, George Zingali, drum corps high-cam videos, summer, Resphighi, classic drum & bugle corps,
18. Santa Clara Vanguard - Fugue and 3:2 polytempo, 1981
historic drum & bugle corps, Gail Royer, Benjamin Britten, the day they moved the timpani to the front sideline, Santa Clara Vanguard, football field polytempo,
19. Barker - Reframing
dance floor polytempo, Berlin, embracing limitations, techno, metric fluidity,
20. Dawn of MIDI - Algol
metric fluidity, Bedstuy Ewe, West Africa, Brooklyn, through-composed repetition, the Radiolab-verse, the Radiohead-verse, dance (with or without shoes),
21. Star Feminine Band - Rew’ Be M’me
dance (with or without shoes), highlife, Natitingou Benin, Peul, Congolese rumba, girl-groups, psychadelia, West Africa, next-level drum feel recorded on this kit, UNICEF Ambassadors, Born Bad Records, the Angélique Kidjo-verse, multi-instrumentalists,
22. Kaidi Tatham - An Insight To All Minds
multi-instrumentalists, bruk, Belfast, live synthists, Co-Op club, the Bugz in the Attic-verse, fender rhodes,
23. Larry Polansky - Piano Study #5 (for Just Fender Rhodes)
fender rhodes, pedagogical form, solo instrumental, screen-printed lathe-cuts, the 13-limit, non-octave-repeating tunings, folk tune adaptation,
24. Meitei - Oiran II
folklore adaptation, historical vocal sampling, incredible vinyl package design, Hiroshima, Dilla Time, the Meiji era, shiokaze, ghosts,
25. Cindy Lee - this entire 3xLP triple album
ghosts, albums not on sp0tify, Canada, albums released on geocities, timeless tales of love and longing, 3xLPs with no skips, pitchfork raves,
26. Cassandra Jenkins - Hard Drive
pitchfork raves, sophistipop, the Ramble Band, asmr colonoscopy prep, the South Brooklyn Community Exercise Cooperative (sbcec),
27. Aaron Roche - Idle Hours
the South Brooklyn Community Exercise Cooperative, surfline, Figure 8 studios, Brooklyn, seventh-day-adventists, the Philip Weinrobe-verse,
28. Philip Weinrobe - Dan
the Aaron Roche-verse, childhood, feelings, sugar mountain, gold-standard art of vulnerability,
29. Paul Swartzel - Music for Mental Health: Ronald
30. Paul Swartzel - Music for Prepared Piano
gold-standard art of vulnerability, thoughts, pro wrestling gesamtkunstwerk, Me2/Orchestra, analog prepared piano,
31. Dan Trueman - Marbles
digital prepared piano, Princeton, Adam Sliwinski, bitKlavier, PLOrk, stromatoliths, music sampled from machines,
32. Cate Brooks - Regie
music sampled from machines, Dieter Rams, Cafe Kaput, the Braun AB-30, library music, applied music, Clay Pipe Music, great design,
33. DOVS - Vernal Fall
great design, balmat, the Philip Sherbern-verse, new ambient, no drums, Prophet 5, the Pitchfork-verse, Spain, analog synth purism,
34. Mort Garson - Swingin’ Spathiphyllums
analog synth purism, golden Era Moog-ists, music to play for your plants, Ruby and the Romantics, Canada, Patch Cord Productions, swingers,
35. Donny Benet - Konichiwa
swingers, Australia, Porn-adjacent (straight), japanese translations missing the っ, “the lick,” sick basslines,
36. Vulfpeck - New Beastly
sick basslines, bands with vst plug-ins, bands with typefaces, funk, soul,
37. Patrick Cowley - Shakin’ All Over
38. Sylvester (w/Patrick Cowley) - You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)
soul, disco, divas (male), porn-adjacent (gay), DJ Leo’s crate in Party Girl, dawless,
39. Reclaimed Space - concurrent excursion
dawless, audio collectives, cassette culture, DIY, live electronic music, flow states, modern modular,
40. Raymond Scott - In the Hall of the Mountain Queen
early modular, the electronium, library music, generative algorithmic composition (alignment: lawful good),
41. Dom Aversano - Discovering Quasar
generative algorithmic composition (alignment: neutral good), harmonic seriescore, The Liner Notes, raw waveforms (sine)
42. Aloboi - Paranoid (Just Raw)
raw waveforms (sawtooth), being really, really, really, in-tune, 4:5:6, just raw, these youtube shorts, next-xen synthesists,
43. Sevish - Plot Hole
next-xen synthesists, the scale workshop, London, Sega Genesis, artists who switched from Ableton to Bitwig, the Xenharmonic Alliance, kind and generous citizens of the microtonal internet,
44. Kraig Grady - Orenda
kind and generous citizens of the microtonal internet, Anaphoria Island, meta-slendro, Mt. Meru, vibraphones, fixed-pitch metal retuning,
45. Max de Wardener - Color Cry
fixed-pitch string retuning, the Harry Partch-verse, spirit talk mbira, London, fast xenharmonic music,
46. Pilgrim Talk - Couperin: Les baricades mistérieuses
fast Baroque chiptune, musicians who illustrate, cassette culture, oscillators, Nick Hoffman, lutists, Los Angeles, zines, automated chamber music,
47. John McGuire - 48 variations for two pianos - variation 1
48. John McGuire - 48 variations for two pianos - variation 48
chamber music, cult classic minimalism, 48 variations for two pianos, introverted music, serial minimalism, low profiles,
49. Ray Lynch - The Oh of Pleasure
low profiles, cassette-culture, feelings, new age GOATs, Grand Theft Auto IV, Deep Breakfast, car rides in 1985, watercolorcore, pre-pre-vaporwave,
50. Chuck Person - Eccojams Vol. 1, #A3 (Be Real)
pre-vaporwave, time-stretching, sunsetcorp, Daniel Lopatin, plunderphonic, Oneohtrixpointnever, JoJo, copyright violation minimalism, perfect loops, tape vaporwave,
51. Neon Catalog - back to 1991.
youtube vaporwave, slowcore, nostalgia ambient, neoncatalog, no ambition just vibes (late night),
52. Aphex Twin - #19 (Stone in Focus)
no ambition just vibes (philosophical ape), the sensations of living, the sensations of dying.
✌️
This is really important to me: my “tag clouds” are not intended to label or genre-fy anything, but rather sort of associate music with adjacent ideas for further exploration. Whenever possible I’ve tried to use descriptions that the artists have actually used to describe themselves (although anything “-core” is probably just me trying to be whimsical).
Also these are almost all bandcamp embeds and you know what that means, if you love it: go buy it! You’ll feel really awesome about that, promise.