Reading and Listening List, Mar. 1, 2024

What I've been listening to

• Collapse Etiquette, by Patrick Carey
  • Both aggressive/noisy and ambient. There are bright additive and saw synths, and a bunch of intense, percussive, glitchy noise. It reminds me of tuning a radio through a “new age” station with poor reception, and I found it very inspiring for my own work.
• “Cycles” by Alexander Panos
  • I first discovered him via his “Color Transfer” Max for Live bundle, which makes some very cool sounds. This track is heavy on the granular sounds and “mulched-up” drums, but it also has some very poppy and traditionally “pretty” chords and vocals. Very beautiful and unique.

What I've been reading

• Nathan Ho's blog post on creative uses of cepstral processing.
  • I've been interested in doing this in my own sound design, but FFT processing in Max is one area I need more work. Nathan uses SuperCollider, and while I like what it can do, I prefer to write for other people to perform, so I like Max's ability to make robust GUIs for my performers.
• Tom Coates' post on how Threads will integrate with the Fediverse.
  • I'm intensely torn on Threads, Bluesky, potential Tumblr ActivityPub support, etc. I love the Fediverse; I would like to interact with as many of my friends as possible on it; and Cory Doctorow's The Internet Con has gotten me excited about interoperability, so on one hand, I would like as many things as possible to connect to the Fediverse. On the other hand, part of what makes the Fediverse great is the non-commercial nature, and I don't want Meta to “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” it.