Founder of the Social Media Escape Club
I gave this one more time to come together. Music from amby downs, Norah Lorway, Signalstoerung, Sarah Davachi, and Saturn McBride. Nearly 40 minutes of heavy, dark sounds and spirits.
All music sourced and purchased via Bandcamp. Browse my Bandcamp collection and find something nice for yourself.
Hear more mixes like this here.
Randomly discovered this video with bassist Juan Alderete from a recent email blast from Abelton (for this post). Jaun played in The Mars Volta, and started a website at one point called Pedals and Effects, because he hated pedal review websites.
He just… made his own.
He bought a domain name and started doing it like he wanted.
Such a theme in life, right?
Don’t like your job, find a new one.
Don’t like the music you hear, start a band.
Don’t like podcasts that are out there, go make one.
You don’t need permission.
“Do you think people would like this sort of music?
“Should I start this podcast about weird horror movies?”
“If I made more of these, do you think people would buy them?”
Stop asking for permission and make your shit.
Can you walk around like Jaun here everyday and hang out with the dude from Nine Inch Nails? No, but I’m sure 20 years ago neither could Jaun.
And, holy shit, in digging more into this, Jaun was in a serious bicycle accident back in January 2020 and had to learn to fucking walk again.
Time is short, life is fleeting, start your shit now. Today.
Buy that domain name, shoot your first episode, upload your three song demo to Bandcamp today – tomorrow ain’t a promise.
Heavy, poppy, catchy – hell yes, I love this. Discovered by random on the Bandcamp front page, on the “Selling Right Now” scroller. Click, click, bang. Fell in love, listened to it twice, and had to buy it.
The last album that came my way via a DSP algorithm was VOWWS‘ ‘Under The World,’ back in 2018. For real, two years since and Apple Music nor Spotify has really surfaced anything for me.
These days I just go to Bandcamp, pick a genre that I’m interested in at the moment, then look for album art that intrigues me. It’s how I found these amazing albums:
If you’ve been listening to music for years, and buy albums, you know shit that looks good most of the time sounds good. It’s how DJs source music from local shops – finding shit that looks cool is a great place to start. And now with Bandcamp, it’s even easier.
Compare with this Spotify playlist, one of the biggest for “Dark Ambient,” with almost 7,000 followers.
It may has well be a fucking Google Sheet. No artwork, no branding, no vibes.
Same with Apple Music. Sure, it’s got the cool Apple playlist branding, and while it has album art, you have to use binoculars to really tell what looks good.
Of course, this is all a ploy to get you to hit play. Just trust them, and don’t worry about that album art, I guess.
All that said, nothing is black and white. I still use Apple Music for streaming a playlist on my runs. I also stream NTS radio via Apple Music, and some DJ sets via the MixCloud app.
There are so many ways to listen and consume music. Bandcamp, though, is the closest we got right now to the local record shop, and the feeling of digging through the used CD bins (my favorite).
Above I just outlined how I dig, and maybe you have better luck than me with the big streaming services. So keep digging, friends. Support artists and musicians when you can and buy their music.
Long walks on gloomy days, evenings folding laundry, or staring at the ceiling, here’s a four song mix to accompany your journey. This one features Moss Moist Moth, Alphaxone, weglowski, and Sana Obruent, guarding you with a layer of comforting sound and static.
More of these Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes can be found here on Mixcloud.
I love this bit from Bandcamp, as they’re doing away with ranked lists:
The goal here is to change the Best of the Year from a math equation into a discussion.
Bandcamp
As I remarked on Twitter, it’s hard enough to rank athletes who deal in hard fast numbers like wins and points. Like, sports stars have a record of Championships, and even the one with the most is still debated as being the “best ever.”
Ranking sure makes bands, labels, management and the entire music machine happy (who doesn’t want to say they were an outlets number one album in 2020?), but I think the discussion of what albums just simply mattered in a certain year is important, too.
I’ve been thinking this for years – musicians need to collaborate with artists more often. Not just for music videos, but for stuff to get people to watch.
I’ve heard of Four Tet, but never gave them much of a listen. I think I found this video from a Twitter. The color caught me, the imagery. So I gave it a shot.
Like, in 2020 you’re just looking for a shot. As an artist, a band, a musician, a writer, whatever.
Appearance and branding and presentation really does matter. I don’t care how technically proficient you are, if your album art is sitting next to another release with better looking art, you lose.
Like, this is science. This is biology. Shiny objects get noticed.
So I left this video open for like 2+ hours the other day while working. Another hour today, and I’ll probably revisit a few more times.
And you know which artist I looked up today on Spotify?
Four Tet.
Five song mix, featuring Everly Pale, Seffi Starshine, and Laurie Spiegel.
A few months ago I didn’t really know that “dark ambient” was a thing, but I’m really enjoying this new season of discovery. This only started during the pandemic, but also because I deal with heavy metal everyday, and have since 2008 or so. I’m not quitting metal by any means, but it’s my day job, I need to give me ears a rest.
It’s been fun learning a new piece of software, too; Serato DJ Lite.
I didn’t really know how to make a mix – I tried just stacking the tracks in Abelton Live, then ScreenFlow, but neither was very fun, since they’re not really made for that. Not a huge fan of Serato aesthetically, but it does the job.
The process of making these mixes is fun, too. Finding the music on Bandcamp, keeping track of stuff I find, downloading, managing those tracks, arranging each song, then the fade in and out, while recording the mix in real time to Audio Hijack Pro.
I’ve been making these on and off since May, and they’re a great distraction to *everything* that is going on these days.
If you dig this, I have more mixes here on MixCloud.
This year has me diving into lots of electronic music, and these two recently popped up via Twitter and I am stoked.
I can close my eyes, count my breaths, and then I’m in a dark room filled with strangers and speakers stacked to the ceiling. The only light is from a few bulbs on stage, the air thick with reverb and feedback, a low rumbling hum wraps around my rib cage.
Since live shows aren’t a thing anytime soon, I like to go here when making these mixes. Count the minutes before the next track, stay present, feel the music in bones and my thighs like we used to.
If you like this, I have more here.
