Phthalocyanine - Navy Warship; (1997)

Here's a fucking weird noisy abstract techno-ish album for you to have an existential crisis to.

Track listing:

1. Jax 57 Or Jist BGIU

2. Navy; 3

3. 1.7

4. Eliditt

5. --> ...

6. Block

7. Fer U 2

8. Com.2

9. Liph; 39

10. West After

Living with lightning in your body

If you like this, listen to:

Philip Jeck - Loopholes (1995)

Black Faction - Internal Dissident Part I (1999)

Twisted Science - Blown (1997)

Heady electronic sounds spanning distorted breaks, echoing downtempo quasi-grooves, and uneasy noise/ambient spells, with very little in terms of anything approaching melody. However, if you're like me, you've listened to White Zombie's La Sexorcisto about 500 times, and you'll recognize that "Beady Eye" shares a sampled arpeggiating drone with "Welcome to Planet Motherfucker" -- anyone know what that's from?

Track listing:

1. Sex, Drugs and Science

2. Bender

3. Beady Eye

4. Bad Head

5. Laptop Swine

6. Theme from Slow Blow

7. Magma Hum

8. Intermission

9. Lube

10. Bad Kabuki

11. Mr Ray Gone

12. Horn

13. Here Come the Pigs

14. Fryed

15. Fin

Woven in the surface

A premonition of a land erupting

A sparkling occasion of a city

Crash down overhead

You should also listen to:

Richard Thomas - Shows and Radios Attract Paint (1998)

Ancient Methods - First Method (2007) + Second Method (2008)

Proem - Negativ (2001)

I'm up too early on a Wednesday morning, felt like a perfect time for some IDM. If you've listened to a lot of IDM, you kinda know the drill here -- gauzy, melancholic synths vs. static-y, glitchy beats -- but Negativ is an excellent distillation of this style.

Track listing:

1. Below Me Reds

2. Cold Water (Flat)

3. Running with Scissors

4. Long Distance Tiara

5. Protobella

6. Pretty Song for Alyssa

7. Take Your Pants Off

8. Bolt Action Aardvark

9. Pears in Evening Wearz

10. Access Mike (Failure to Connect)

11. Negativ Reinforcements

12. Skylup

13. Bolt Action Aardvark (Brothomstates Remix)

Go to sleep you little creeps

If you like this, you'd like:

Arovane - Atol Scrap (2000)

Funckarama - Solid State (2001)

Asura - Asura (2010)

Ambient IDM from an LA artist who seemingly hasn't recorded anything under this alias since. Downtempo beats and bright melodic elements (synths, guitar, vocals, horns) partially obscured, and at times completely subsumed in a warm, vinyl-crackling-like haze.

(Not to be confused with the French ambient trance project.)

Track listing:

1. Asura I

2. Peptine

3. I Saw You in Vice (Anenon Birthday Remix)

4. Orrorin

5. Asura II

6. From the Beach

7. Manzanita

8. Voxels

9. Asura III

10. Her Tearing

11. Timber

12. The Eleventh

13. Feathers

This night comes out of both of us

You should also be listening to:

Saule - Saule (2002)

The Village Orchestra - Et in Arcadia Ego (2005)

Jega - Spectrum (1998)

Expansive, genre-omnivorous electronic music from UK producer Jega. Breakbeat, IDM, drum n bass, instrumental hip-hop, and downtempo all pop up throughout, but warm, crystalline synths secure a certain level of sonic cohesion through the chaos.

Track listing:

1. Phalanx

2. Kid Sista

3. Muzical Chairz

4. Red Mullet

5. NIA

6. DMC

7. Brad's Garden Maintenance

8. German

9. Intron.ix

10. Mai

11. Pitbull

12. Gemini

13. Ephem

14. Bikini Ski Boat

15. Manic Minor

Super, modern, intelligent

You might also enjoy:

Alec Empire - Generation Star Wars (1994)

Nobukazu Takemura - Child's View (1994)

Tipsy - Uh-Oh! (2000)

Second album by the great, inscrutable Tipsy. For those unfamiliar, Tipsy pairs electronic/IDM with mountains of samples from old easy listening, exotica, and lounge records. While Esquivel-fueled 'electronica' was fairly popular around the turn of the millennium, Tipsy's dense, manic, unrelentingly imaginative take on the microgenre was unparalleled. Their first record's the classic, if they have one, but Uh-Oh! is equally worthy imo.

Track listing:

1. Hard Petting

2. Papaya Freeway

3. Hey!

4. Sweet Cinnamon Punch

5. Neon Tetra

6. Wig Out

7. Reverse Cowgirl

8. Swallowtail

9. Moisture Seekers

10. Kitty Takes a Ride

11. Fur Teacup

12. Pink Mood

13. Bunny Kick

14. Suez Motel

15. XXXmas

16. Seaweed

17. Zombie's Mood

18. Eclipse of the Sun Virgin

Firecracker

You may also like:

Martin Denny - Forbidden Island (1958)

Stereolab - Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night (1999)

Miss Dinky - Melodìas Venenosas (2001)

Woozy, ambient synth abstractions from Chilean-born, NYC-residing producer Alejandra Iglesias, aka Dinky/Miss Dinky. Melodìas Venenosas is her first album, and it's a definite outlier in her discography, as from here she went in a generally more danceable/techno direction, which I admittedly haven’t really explored, as I just keep coming back to this record.

Track listing:

1. Spring Rolls

2. Perpetuidad

3. Cilantro

4. Sapos

5. Broken Dream

6. Bahia Azul

7. Chili Drama

8. Chinatown Rape

9. Nora

10. Clare de Sangre

11. Sto Domingo Dub

12. Neruda

13. Agualuz

14. Capoeira

Milk

Similar listening:

Hex - Digital Love (1993)

Locust - Weathered Well (1994)

ilkae - Pistachio Island (2001)

Chilled-out sounds released by the great Merck, a Florida-based label that put out tons of great shit over a relatively short run.  Pistachio Island = 45 vignettes of ambient, beat-driven IDM, along with the artist's encouragement to play it on shuffle. This conceptually playful approach feels like a relic of a bygone era of electronic music, but sonically, the record feels like an antecedent to the whole "chill lo-fi beats" thing, only in ADHD form.

I'm not typing all that out; find the track listing here.

Warm filaments

If you like this, listen to:

Gimmik - ?!Load-Error E.P. (1997)

Opiate - While You Were Sleeping (2002)

Opiate - While You Were Sleeping (2002)

First off: I've been off the internet because my parents have been in town. I hadn't seen them since Christmas 2019, so it was absolutely wonderful, thank you for asking. Really wish we lived closer.

Second: I've been watching more TV than I normally would over the past, oh, year and a half or so, and I only recently noticed that one of the more prevalent trends in advertising is playing off of the viewer's anxieties around insomnia. Tons of ads in current rotation do this, and it's a real bummer because that means that focus testing/surveys/etc. have found that we as a society are having trouble sleeping, and it's probably because everyone's approximately one bad news story away from a panic attack at all times.

So with that in mind, here's a bit of glitchy, low-key, mostly downtempo IDM that is perfect both for sleeping AND lying in bed worrying about the future. Whatever fits your lifestyle. You'll recognize the opening track as having been sampled in "Undo", which might be my favorite Björk song.

Track listing:

1. 1% in 2/3 Speed

2. Srain

3. Late

4. Drømte mig en drøm

5. Last Dr. Pepper

6. GM Memory

7. Opto File 1

8. Insert

I'm praying to be in a generous mode

You'll also wanna hear:

Oval - Systemisch (1994)

Arovane - Atol Scrap (2000)

Manual - Until Tomorrow (2001)

Lovely, organic-sounding IDM -- think early múm without the vocals, or even The Album Leaf -- from Danish producer Jonas Munk Jensen. I got my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday and my body has been simulating a flu ever since, which means I've been spending all of my time either rewatching movies for the millionth time (Young Frankenstein, Life of Brian, Mars Attacks!, that kind of thing) or listening to gentle electronic music like this.

Track listing:

1. Nova

2. Velvet Sunset

3. It'll Be Fine

4. Frequently

5. Lunate

6. Inn

7. Fortnights

8. Baja Nights

9. Tomorrow

Don't touch him! He wants to do it by himself!

More along these lines:

Purple Confusion - The Sound of the Atom Splitting (2002)

Glitterbug - Privilege (2010)

Gimmik - ?!Load-Error E.P. (1997)

First record by Gimmik, a project of Toytronic label founder Martin Haidinger. Distorted breakbeats and toy sound effects juxtaposed against texturally rich, often quite lovely synths, all tied up with a glitchy bow.

Track listing:

1. Little Computer People

2. Sister Moon

3. Soft Drink

4. Floppy Disk

5. Thing on a Spring

6. Floppy Disk (Load Error Mix)

A buzzing refrigerator

Also listen to:

Funckarma - Solid State (2001)

The Tuss - Rushup Edge (2007)

Jetone - Autumnmonia (2000)

Before becoming one of the most acclaimed experimental musicians of our time, Tim Hecker made IDM under the name Jetone. Sharp beats, wandering synth lines, and some hints of the glitchy ambient scrap heaps that would become his signature.

EDIT: Wow, just noticed how similar this album cover is to the one that I posted two days ago. Completely unintentional on my part.

Track listing:

1. Sandstrings

2. Fukfunk

3. Flowers No. 4

4. Marilyn Chambers

5. Heatdeath

6. Fresh

7. Sputtertones

8. Diamonds No. 3

9. Huntington

10. Shear/Refract

11. Meltdown Skyline

A quitter

Also listen to:

Reagenz - Reagenz (1994)

Funckarma - Solid State (2001)

The Village Orchestra - Et In Arcadia Ego (2005)

Debut album by Glaswegian producer Ruaridh Law. Lovely, contemplative, slightly glitchy ambient IDM/techno.

Track listing:

1. COSHH

2. Jacob / Bad Hand at Cards v2

3. Dawn

4. Bryan's Tricky 'Do You Like the Drummer?' Question

5. All the Little Lights Going Out

6. Love Theme from 'Two Man Rumble'

7. Sunken

8. Many Rooms in My Father's House

9. In Arcadia

I can hear the sirens singing again

You might also like:

Philip Jeck - Loopholes (1995)

Slicker - Confidence in Duber (1998)

Arovane - Atol Scrap (2000)

Beautiful, magnificently rendered IDM from German producer Uwe Zahn. Blogger's forcing me to use a new interface so I'm honestly more focused on trying to figure this shit out than on actually writing this post. (Also, I can't figure out how to get two images to be aligned but not right next to each other, so that's why there are no album covers with the "also listen to" links below.) It's a really, really great album, though, I swear. 

Track listing:

1. Nonlin.R

2. Tascel_7

3. Thaem Nue

4. Ambelio

5. Scapen Te

6. Norvum

7. Revart Amx

8. Failed

9. Amine

10. R-Elet

11. Atol Scrap

Tomorrow morning

You should also listen to:

Reagenz - Reagenz (1994)

Plat - Compulsion (2004)

Ro70 - Ro70 (1995)

Atmospheric IDM that generally lands somewhere within the realm of dub-techno, from German producer Roman Flügel. Jittery rhythms, echoing synths, and uneasy drones.

Track listing:
1. Einklang
2. Gog
3. Alma
4. Room 385
5. Visible Speech
6. Magog
7. FM Rhythms
8. Balloon Above Java
9. 10 to 10
10. Künstlicher Ausklang

4-door body cell

If you like this, try:

Black Faction -
Internal Dissident Part I (1999)

Claro Intelecto -
Neurofibro (2004)

Purple Confusion - The Sound of the Atom Splitting (2002)

One-off LP of glitchy, downtempo IDM from a group that featured, in its 6-member lineup, both original members of M83. Fractured, stuttering beats and gauzily layered synths, with a sense of beautiful, melancholic wonder that brings to mind the spirit -- and occasionally, the sound -- of post-rock.

Track listing:
1. Introduction
2. Return to Nassau
3. Running Behind Butterflies
4. Jeff Koons
5. Bliss
6. Secret Tragedy
7. The Endless Harmony of Your Cosmic Wonder
8. Dreaming of an Hypersomniac Princess
9. Breathing Underwater
10. The Cloud in Your Eyes
11. Falling in the Sea at the Speed of Snow Part I
12. Falling in the Sea at the Speed of Snow Part II

Things are sometimes tragic

You should also check out:

Funckarma -
Solid State (2001)

Ulrich Schnauss -
Far Away Trains Passing By (2001)

Demdike Stare - Voices of Dust (2010)

Stellar abstract electro that's somewhere between dark ambient, drone, dub, and good ol' IDM. Here's how much of a dork I am about Halloween and this blog: I have been meaning to post something by Demdike Stare ever since I started this blog back in 2013 (Jesus fucking Christ that's a long time) but I'm always like, "Nah, I gotta wait 'til Halloween, it's too perfect," then I promptly forget every October, so it never gets posted. So this post is essentially the culmination of a five-year battle between absentmindedness and stubborn nerdery.

Track listing:
1. Black Sun
2. Hashshashin Chant
3. Repository of Light
4. Of Decay and Shadows
5. Rain and Shame
6. Desert Ascetic
7. Viento de Levante
8. Leptonic Matter
9. A Tale of Sand

The stars are moving

If you like this, listen to:

Black Faction -
Internal Dissident Part 1 (1999)

Cyclobe -
Luminous Darkness (1999)

Reagenz - Reagenz (1994)

Ambient IDM nirvana. Shimmering waves of synths, gentle but deceptively complex rhythms, and bleepy-bloops galore. Would sound right at home nestled between Aphex Twin (in ambient mode) and early Autechre on your "Dropping Acid/Doing Schoolwork" playlist.

Track listing:
1. Ä
2. Ö
3. Ü
4. ß
5. Long Leaves
6. Hollow Mountain
7. DJ Friendly
8. Tz

Anything to feel weightless again

You should also listen to:

Pole -
CD 1 (1998)

Funckarma -
Solid State (2001)

Funckarma - Solid State (2001)

Excellent Dutch IDM. Lush, shiny synths, stuttering rhythms, and hella glitched-out atmospherics. Having listened to this in full and completed the in-depth analysis that you've just read, I'm about to attempt to sleep again, so good morning and good night, nerds.

Track listing:
1. Blex
2. Lolala
3. Lawk
4. Zena
5. Emplinx
6. Bace
7. Nuncas
8. Arati
9. Knildnuos
10. Lone

Voiceprint

You should also listen to:

Slicker -
Confidence in Duber (1998)

Plat -
Compulsion (2005)

Black Faction - Internal Dissident Part I (1999)

Glitchy, abstract IDM from English producer Andrew Diey. Stuttering beats, sample fragments, and misfiring digital synapses, echoing within a spacious, pitch-black aural environment. There's gotta be something I'd rather be doing right now than listening to electronic music with headphones on while slowly getting more and more stoned, but offhand, nothing really comes to mind.

Track listing:
1. Introduction
2. Manchestique Concrete
3. Virgil's Bride
4. Caucus Burial Tape Part II
5. Sepia Indate
6. Afghan Front v1.1
7. Odessa
8. Caucus Burial Tape Part I

Magnetic navigator

You should also listen to:

A Small Good Thing -
Cool Cool Water (1996)

Pole -
CD 1 (1998)