Music

Music is said to be the pure expression of the soul. Here's our music picks for you to show you how fucked up our own is.

Ambient

Ambient music, when done properly, "must be as ignorable as it is interesting." This makes it one of the best music genres to listen to while programming or doing something else that requires a higher level of focus and attention. Here are a few highlights, but you should web search the term to find what you like best.

• Aphex Twin is famous for being one of the pioneers of the IDM genre, but he has also released a highly praised collection of ambient tracks entitled Selected Ambient Works 85-92, followed by Selected Ambient Works Volume II.
• Brian Eno basically coined the term "ambient music" at the same time that he released what most critics consider to be the most fine example of the genre to date, Ambient 1: Music for Airports. There is also the eerie Ambient 4: On Land, as well as Music for Films, and an incredibly rich discography if you're looking for more.
• Chipmunks On 16 Speed is a colloquial name for re-recordings of the virtual band Alvin!!! and the Chipmunks slowed down to 16 RPM (The usual records are played at 33 1/3 RPM). The result is a slow and odd ambient sound, with Dave Seville's voice singing at a normal speed. It has produced very interesting results, for example making Belinda Carlisle's 1987 hit single Heaven is a Place on Earth into a Goth-style hymn and Devo's 1980 hit Whip It sound like a song by Nine Inch Nails.
• The Residents is an ambient group first formed in 1974 with their breakthrough album Meet The Residents!. They have remained highly obscure throughout their entire history by choice and have successfully remained completely anonymous in that time. Only one member has been identified, due to his death. His name was Hardy Fox whom was known to use multiple aliases when releasing music. He was confirmed as the co-founder of The Residents upon his death, and it was further confirmed in his own Obituary. When their first album was released, some listeners initially believed the group to actually be The Beatles in secret due to the cover being a blatant parody of The Beatles album Meet The Beatles!, and containing portions of Beatles' songs.Throughout their history, multiple people have been believed to be The Residents, including Mark Allen Mothersbaugh of DEVO, and Les Claypool of Primus fame. Numerous artistic recordings have been released by the group, the most famous of which include Meet the Residents!, and Third Reich and Roll.This makes The Residents the litmus test for deciding if one actually knows music or if one only listens to music, as they are entirely a satire using advanced music theory.
• Lustmord is known for pioneering 'dark ambient' as a genre. Oh I'm sorry, are all these ambient artists too chilled out for your liking? Would you rather feel afraid while you work? Do you want to feel how small and utterly insignificant you are in the grander scheme of the universe? Are you that aware of your factorial and finite existence upon the tapestry of time that you will only begin to understand the true nature of reality once it has been consumed by the heat death of the universe? Yeah, that goes for us too, so just put on Lustmord and be afraid - be very afraid.

Demoscene

Want to know what the REAL GAMERS listen to? Then enter the demoscene, a vibrant mashup of computer art that defined the 80's and 90's nerd subculture. There are two primary subgenres of demoscene music that most people immediately think of, and they'll often get them confused with each other. These are called chiptune and trackers, the difference between them is specifically how they're composed.

Chiptune

Chiptune is a form of synthesised music created with either sound chips or synthesisers such as those found in vintage arcade machines, computers, and game consoles, or in their respective emulations in VSTs.

• Anamanaguchi have cut their teeth on making their brand of pop-punk inspired chiptune, and their style is instantly recognisable.
• Jeff Kaufman (aka Virt) makes a lot of indie game music, and sometimes it's chiptune. If you want to check his shit out go here.
• 8BitPeoples is a psuedo-label that's been around since 1999, it's also a filehost for many MANY albums that get released by very well known faces in the scene, such as Nullsleep.

Trackers

Trackers on the other hand were the go-to for music production for those back then who wanted to get the absolute most out of their hardware. A lot of tracker music got its start in the mid-80's with the release of The Ultimate Soundtracker, a program that spoke to the Amiga's sound hardware directly. Unlike chiptunes however, later iterations of this software allowed users to create module files (or 'mods') to integrate their own samples inside them, making it possible for a tracker mod to take up only a fraction of the space that a .mp3 would need. Hell, you could even include vocal samples and it wouldn't made that much of a dent on the file size. Ahoy did an in-depth documentary on what trackers were on his YouTube channel here.

• Second Reality is possibly the greatest demo that ever came out for DOS based systems. Developed by Future Crew in 1993, this not only features some awesome music by Purple Motion and Skaven, but a downright mastery of the system it was running for, since DOS based systems were modular and very hard to develop for at the time
• Keygen Music hosts a heap of mods from demoscene groups such as Razor1911, Reloaded and Theta.

Hip Hop

If you don't know what this is, you have been under a rock since at least the 70's. In which case, congratulations you hermit! Hip-hop, which Encyclopedia Dramatica refers to as "Retards-Attempting-Poetry," is not without its detractors, and despite all the garbage that is put out, there's very occasionally some half-decent slumjams that get put out there. If you know where to look, you'll reduce the risk of ear-blood by at least half.

• Deltron 3030's Virus, from their album Deltron 3030
• YTCracker is the stage name and alias of Bryce Case Jr. who was a cracker, now he is a rapper rapping about hacker/cracker/internet culture.
• Yung Innanet is a computer geek and soundcloud rapper inspired by YTCracker. Did a few songs with him.
• Ohm-I is an infosec consultant that makes nerdcore soundcloud songs in his free time. Most of which themed around hacking/cracking and computer science.
• crypt0bear is a nerdcore soundcloud rapper that raps about hacking and crypto like Monero.
• tomcr00se is George Hotz's soundcloud alias where he memes around and has fun trying to rap or sing. George Hotz is a hacker known for being the first to crack SIM lock on iPhone. He also has developed jailbreaks for iPhone and partially reverse engineered PS3.

House

House music is a type of music you would hear in a club. It is essentially electronica, but is its own sub-genre of electronica music. Not all of it is Unts-Unts-Unts-Unts crap, there's some decent house.

• Daft Punk - Who doesn't know these two French guys? They also did the OST from Tron: Legacy
• Hardfloor - If you want a more of a techno sound you can't go wrong with Hardfloor. Acperience 1 managed to become a UK Number 1 hit in 1992.

OST

Every good movie and game has a good score.

• Blade Runner
• Deus Ex
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Hotline Miami a fan-favorite, highly energetic.
• Hotline Miami 2 much quieter, twice as long, but just as slaying of a soundtrack.
• RUINER Really strong cyberpunk vibes in this one.

Plunderphonics

Plunderphonics is a genre of art (in this case music) which takes numerous found sources, mixes them up, and makes new artisitc music out of them.

• The Avalanches is an Australian group that has made two amazing albums consisting entierly of sampled sounds. They play no instruments, every note is taken from other obscure sources. They recieved international fame with their debut album Since I Left You (2000), which was the first plunderphonic album to have reached mainstream success. Their second album, Wildflower, was released two decades later in 2016.

Sound Collage

A sound-collage is a type of plunderphonic recording. It makes use of heavy samples and mixes, rarely having actual singing or sometimes even anything resembling music. It is a smorgasbord of sound, assembled together similar to the Kuleshov effect, albeit audio.

• Negativland is a very humorous Sound Collage band. They also have had a radio show for longer than they were a band, Over the Edge on KPFA Radio, UC Berkley.

Speedcore

In the 90's, rock evolved to industrial. After industrial, *-core music was developed to be faster and harsher. Speedcore combines horrorcore and other core genres. The music of speedcore is so fast, it can not be played on an instrument. Usually, the melody is sampled from other sources and put into a computer program which speeds it up to insanely fast time signatures. The speed of this music rarely is below 300bpm.

• Jimmy Screamerclauz is a pretty awesome dude. Made a few movies too. He also has an Action Figure. His last album to date, Planetary Evacuation Recruitment Tape is a concept album showing the dark and depraved side of humanity. It explores Serial Killers, Cults, Rapists, and Reptilians all from the comfort of your Grave-Robbing HQ.

Synthwave

One of the many *-wave musics, Synthwave is primarily designed to emulate many vintage synths that defined not only the music of the 80's and early 90's, but a lot of musical scores for action and horror movies. This could include elements of traditional synth instruments, such as those found on a Roland or a Yamaha, or other electronic instruments like the Theremin (that one synth that makes it sound like you're in a schlock movie with aliens). Anyway there's a lot of love for this kind of music right now, and there is no shortage of artists and bands out there producing Synthwave.

• Perturbator and Carpenter Brut - these two in particular have been there since the beginning, and they made some of the songs in Hotline Miami
• Tangerine Dream - They were a group formed in the late 80's, but they've done work as recently as 2016 with their soundtrack for GTA:V, very retro inspired sounds
• Hollywood Burns Another great synthwave artist, some of his music includes some good use of that Theramin.
• Whitewoods - You might have heard Beachwalk before if you've watched Pyrocynical videos
• NewRetroWave - A whole record label dedicated to the promotion of Synthwave

Vaporwave

Vaporwave is a self-parody, designed to be a kind of Post-Capitalistic emotional trip. Primarily sampled from Easy Listening tracks, elevator music, and the background music of The Home Shopping Network (and like things), it is slowed down and presented as a kind of calming background for the spaz and weirdo. It began the Lo-Fi craze of the early 2010's, and is designed to be listened to in the lowest quality possible. Many Vaporwave artists release their music on tape and emulate CD skipping as a part of the song.

• Oneohtrix Point Never pretty much created vaporwave in 2010 under the album "Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1" Infamous for their fan-made video by /mu/.
• Vektroid is a vaporwave artist who, often many aliases, has created some remarkable music, including Macintosh Plus-Floral Shoppe.

See also

• /g/ related Books
• /g/ related Movies
• /g/ related Video Games
• /g/ related TV Series