Vol. 3

06 Aug, 2026

Well, making a big deal out of the nice feedback and support we got for our first volume was obviously the right thing to do since everyone has been so kind, but feels a bit quaint now when Volume 2 blew far past that. I promise I'll stop doing the weird grateful blogger routine after this week but really, it's nice as hell knowing people like what we do. Ok now check out the art Alex Degen made for the newsletter it's so sick.

That's what's up.

I will actually have to come up with intro's worth reading from now on which is far more daunting then filling out another thousand plus words on recs, but that's future Andrew's problem, for now let's focus on the mu..... Oh yeah before the music sign up for our email, I actually know how to work it now and will include an occasional extra goodie or two in the. Now onto the music

Boo:

Iris: The New Four Tet Wingdings Side Project Album

“All dance music is intelligent dance music because it’s a smart idea to dance and have a goodtime” - UK Proverb

Let’s not get it twisted, this is a Four Tet album. The incomprehensible unicode titling is Mr. Hebden’s signature move for when he wants to put something out without slapping his name on it. He’s had a couple releases under the ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ moniker (EPs and singles that make it onto albums in the future) as well as using unicode titles to hide his infamous spotify playlist. However this is his first full album released under those indecipherable characters and the branding here serves the opposite purpose of what it normally does: this album is all about the thrill of discovery. discovering bear blog can mostly handle wingdings is part of the process

⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ works as an album becuase it’s super upbeat and danceable and whenever you find yourself really in the groove you look up what track you’re listening to and it says ☼⃝☼⃝◉　҉⃝O◉◖ƪ⊁◞..◟⊀　̟̞̝̜̙̘̗̖҉̵̴̨̧̢̡̼̻̺̹̳̲̱̰̯̮̭̬̫̪̩̦̥̤̣̠҈͈͇͉͍͎͓͔͕͖͙͚͜͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢ͅ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　⦁ 　　　　　　　　　　　　 ⦁ 　　　　　　　　　　　⦁ 　　 　　❍|◗щ (ㅇ△ Φ☆)ノ☼⃝⊖☼⃝☼⃝❁　҉⃝☼⃝☼⃝　⃝͢ 　̢⃝͜ ☼⃝☼⃝oOo_____±.:.-”±.:.-"±.:.-"±.:.-"±.:.-"±_.:

So you’re left with no other choice than to hit up your friends like “hey listen to this I’m really enjoying it” and then follow up with “no I know it looks really silly but it’s honestly just good music to dance in your bedroom too” when they balk at the runes.

And it IS good music for dancing around in your bedroom. Four Tet’s work is usually hit-or-miss for me that's on the WYGAS application but the work on this album is easily some of the best he’s ever done. It’s not all original! tracks; 3, 4, and 6 are all from the EP he released under ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ two years ago, 2 is from a single he released last october, and track 5 is his clubbiest garage release that’s been quietly circulating in sets since 2022. They are all these beautiful, skittery house tracks that you would be hard pressed not to move to in the club but still feel like carefully constructed feats of production. The three new tracks open and close out the album. All are more downbeat, dub influenced as opposed to house or garage, and draw on the spiritual jazz influences that he made his name on.

Each track is massive, a crystalline example of the artist at his best. Songs bugs would listen to in the club. And I keep looping this damn album. I’ve been undergoing a bunch of stressful life shit recently. I don't want to get into it on the blog but the groove of this 37 minute little release has been carrying me through all of it. Each track feels like a different kind of warm hand placed on your shoulder and I think when looking at anything that has ever been labeled IDM that’s the real feeling of the music you’re after, the stuff you can’t put into words. Let's be clear a lot about IDM can be put into words

Ɵʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂v̴̢͚͚͎ȯ̶̞̮͖̑̈́)̸̳̥̰̜̥̺̐ͅ)̴͎̜͍̱̋̌͋̓̾̚ ̷̨ ☼⃝◞⊖◟ ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂ȯ̶̞̮͖̑̈́)̸̳̥̰̜̥̺̐ͅv̴̢͚͚͎͎̞͒͊̎ȯ̶̞̮͖̑̈́̿)̸̳̥̰̜̥̺̐ͅ)̴͎̜͍̱̋̌͋̓̾̚͜ ̷̨̢̥̅͝ͅ(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂:̴͓̞̑̌̂̆̊͋̀:̸͎̟̯̂̓̌:̶̢͙͙͕̠̩͆(̷̮͍͚̫͚͂̍̒̋̕)̵̳̗̊̍̽́ ̵͍̪̲̀̍ ̴̤̚ ̴̹̙͙̻̓̉̚͝V̸̘̅̀̒̃̚V̴̠̼̩̘͈̦̥̉͋̐͗͌͠V̵̪̮̅̉̓ (Track 7) is my personal favorite. It’s creeping dub bassline and jangly harps form the ideal come-down track, a bus ride home in sonic form. As one of the 3 new tracks on the album not from a previous release it stands out to me. Despite being the penultimate track it serves as both a coda for the album and Hebden’s portfolio up until this point as it blends the very best of UK Techno, traditional Indian composition, and a playfulness that’s all his own.

So don’t be put off by the funny unicode stuff, it’s just there to facilitate making sure your friends tap into what you’re listening to. Like with the IDM label this will inevitably get slapped with you have to look past the superficial and into the structure itself and you will be rewarded with some of the warmest, most personal, and considered electronic music that has come out so far this year.

Liv: Autechre - Confield

Andrew can you embed the Lolla video as soon as you told me this was the album I made sure to track the tweet down

it almost looks edited in 😭😭😭🤣🤣 https://t.co/xWRw9om9AP pic.twitter.com/7NGEWYXVsV

— ramonpang (@RamonPang) August 4, 2024

Where were you when Tet dropped Sim Gishel onto the blondest girls in Chicago? Honestly my favorite thing Four has ever done, since now I have an easy way to show people why this is my favorite album. There really isn't much more to say about Confield that hasn't been covered to death, if anything it's use of Max has made it an even more regimented touchstone now that we are forced to constantly talk about AI. It's weird having something you really love become something you permanently bored talking about, mostly because the conversations around it are so rarely about the actual music! So you aren't joining Bluesky? I do not care how Cfern predicted the future I want to talk about the chimes on Cfern spiraling into jazzy horror make it my rowing machine jam! I hate that turning art into purely discursive objects makes you worse at actually describing art! Ok yeah avoid Bluesky, but hopefully it is a muscle we are building There's really nothing quite like it, meticulously elegant, beautifully atonal yet filled with all these little hooks that keep (most of it) light yeah when I think of light I think of Uviol, how it's mixed in a way that I can still hear it even when the R train is whining crazily, was never expecting it to hold up this long for me, and would maybe help my upcoming rebrand to have a cooler favorite album, but who am I to deny Aes? All but one of the tracks are in 4/4??? I think what Max wrote about how experimental, avant-garde works are often quite easy to grasp and in fact want to communicate themselves, and Confield sticking to the 4/4 is a key indicator of that to me, it's meant to be mixed in with everything else.

Being not so newly single for the first time in my flirty thirties let's leave the wordplay to me has led to do an inventory of where I'm at, so I'm relying on the hiss of Pen Expers to help me lock back in. While this blog has been made out of Andrew rediscovering how to live life I will not apologize for having fun music's ability to just prop you up when you are down is something I am really grateful doesn't stop once you aren't a moody teen anymore. My life kinda sucks right now but Lentic Catachresis is still great you know?

Jay: Groovy Groovy with Akanbi (Shinichi Atobe Special)

Moving is somehow even worse for me than last issue volume but I know being the first person to drop out of the writing rotation will get me shit well good news on that but I have been spinning this a few different times. I know so much less about Shinichi than Andrew and Liv, but this is really getting me ready for the journey into these ethereal gems. Also just love the hype moments Akanbi gives us, the energy makes me feel noticeably less aggravated over setting up a new kitchen. How does everyone not know about The Red Line? I am fascinated by how a lot of his compositions have a sort of Mingus, Ron Carter, or George Russell style to them, all these moving parts designed to come together so slick and smooth. Also yeah the track titles are great, another very personal touch to his sound.

Sorry this one is short, eventually I'll pontificate The law of Balance means we need more people writing 300 word capsules not 3000 word ones. Not me though, to be clear.

Alexis:

Nasu stated that he was asked to write the Mahoyo collab with FGO two years ago. He felt like he was writing Mahoyo 6 when designing characters outside of previously revealed content.

Nasu says he'll reveal the meaning of Alice's 3rd ascension "sometime, until the next Night." pic.twitter.com/drr1qvs7gU

— Kars (@KaroshiMyriad) May 6, 2024

Max:

sueter7 - Confluencias

The other day I learned about a hot new thing called empathy have you heard of rejuvenation?, and it got me thinking about WYGAS. With such a worldly and cerebral writer-base, do we run a risk of leaning too heavily on the obscure or obtuse when people simply long for summer bops? Reader, are you looking for something cool, but not too cool? Something a bit less Boomkat Runoff™? Topdown Dialectic set at Nowadays in a month btw Something that has (sorry Andrew) GUITARS? Well for this week at least, your wish is my command.

Argentinian bedroom popper sueter7 (you’ll never convince me this wasn’t his PSN name circa 2009) is having somewhat of a breakout year, his new album generating whispers in indie circles, being eulogised in the far corners of SputnikMusic, even forcing me to see the word “indietronica” once more. It's the fucking Four Tet themed Volume I guess It’s a pretty cool record, full of charming, homemade, surprisingly expansive guitar pop. You know the drill at this point: guitars, drum machines, gentle synths, modulated vocals; the main distinguishing factor is that the average song length is five and a half minutes, the tunes often taking extended detours or changing shape at the halfway mark. It’s interesting and definitely ambitious, but sometimes these lengthy pieces struggle to justify their heft, fading into the background in a way that once I’ve reached the end I feel like I’ve been zapped with the Men in Black device, unable to remember what I actually heard, even if I know I enjoyed it in the moment.

And anyway, doesn’t this all sound a bit leftfield, and that’s not what we’re here for today?! Which is why it’s a good thing that tucked away within this all we have “Confluencias”, the shortest and most straightforward track on the album, a pure blast of sunny, pleasure-first guitar pop that I have found myself coming back to time and time again amidst this summer’s endless heatwave.

Sometimes my issue with guitar-driven bedroom pop is how neatly put together it is- by virtue of being pieced together solo on a laptop, a form of music whose construction should be scrappy by definition so often misses out on the spontaneity of the live group recordings it is trying to conjure. Here though this works in the track’s favour, everything in its right place to such an extent that it almost feels archetypal, like a million pop tunes gone before, the pleasure sensors in your brain already knowing exactly what to feel and when to feel it as the backing vocal “oohs” come in or his voice cracks in the second chorus. This might sound sad in theory, like it’s been focus-grouped or AI-generated, but in practice it is perfect, and if we’re going to start discounting the pursuit of perfection in pop music there’s going to be a whole heap of babies thrown out with the bathwater. Sometimes it’s okay to open ourselves up to easy pleasures and nostalgia, just for a little while, especially when the days are long and the sun is warm.

There's a brief moment in the chorus where it seems as if we're going to hit one of the left turns typical of the broader album, the track slowing down to rest on a bed of lazing synths for a moment, before sueter7 pulls the rug out from under us, (proverbially) yelling “not this time!” as he hits us with a drum machine breakbeat and then a momentary pause that makes the subsequent guitar solo feel like it is being fired from a gun, with you a passenger clinging on for dear life. The solo is simple but so evocative, a chunky, repeated riff that is as perfect for gazing up at the summer sky as running down a twilit street with friends on the way back home from a club, buoyant and warm in a way that makes me want to stick the song on repeat and believe that the summer’s still young- who knows, maybe it still it is?

Claire:

The Gerogerigege - The Gerogerigegege

volume warning!!!

i would like to start my (hopefully long!) tenure on this blog with a different kind of first: the first WYGAS inter-contributor beef. boo: we can all agree she's had it too easy for too long that rustie song is really good. like really awesome in the way that just makes you laugh in some combo of joy and disbelief. but i have to crrect the record. the loudest song ever is The Gerogerigegege by The Gerogerigegege on the album Moenai Hai. and i will stake my life on this claim. if you dont believe me, click the link above. and if you click the link the link above and go "nah, this is just the normal kind of loud", understand that youtube's default video compression also pretty consistently duck audio thats too loud. you can find the song uncompressed on places like archive.org if youre curious :)

but i wanted to talk about this song for more reasons than just to razz a friend. i do think its actually awesome and technically well done, even pretty standard, for a band with a reputation like this one. its just pure cathartic release (or an audio shock, haha). i think you can listen to just this song and get a good sense of where gero is as a serious project of musicians who like making music. or like any of the several ambient releases they have, including the rest of this album lol, if you like that kind of stuff!

Vieze Askab - Kiss Me Again

volume warning here too kinda but not so much lol

got to hear this particular song for the first time the other day in a pretty awesome context: as part of a friend's vrchat dj set. it was a pretty fun set! vrchat actually seems somewhat big for doing this exact thing, which is extra nice for a person like me who lives somewhere where i cant really Go To The Club (and i dont drive, which also doesnt help). even sober driving back from the club seems so scary already eyeing up an event that works even better for my schedule though the genre on deck is less my thing than hard dance like this lol. ill still probably go though! hopefully it becomes a regular thing in my life, both because music is awesome and because then ill have lots of material for this blog.

ive always been really attracted to shit thats just loud and kinda obnoxious. i like to joke with my electronic music scene friends especially that i have a general Shithead's Disposition. im cool with chiller stuff like dnb and such, fun times to be had, but im not hyped unless theres a distorted kick or some dblueglitch breaks or speedcore shit or something. maybe in another life im a hulked out cis guy tearing the club up and calling stuff "wicked". terrifying thought! but yeah this song is loud as hell, the sample is fun and goes for that classic hardcore+poppy mix thats been oh-so-popular for forever. just an all around fun time here. makes me wanna do a dive on vieze's stuff, something ive been not good about lately but hopefully this helps motivate me.

Cycheouts - ÉÅÉKìπäyêÍóp

*Only one song is freely out there but it's a ripper

told you i like chill stuff too! my story about this one is short but kinda funny. was on jpopsuki last night (so like a week and a half ago if youre reading this on da blog) looking for kazumoto endo stuff, which they dont have at all btw!!!! and when i log on i have a message alert, scary stuff, but it was just someone fulfilling my prob nearly a decade old by this point bounty on this release lol. support your trackers and archivists folks!

but yeah this is just a classic release for this era of dnb or whatever other genre you want to argue with me on bluesky it actually is. cycheouts were masters of their time, and while to my mind this is not one of their bigger releases in public consciousness, its one of the best. the lead track is especially killer. hard to be very specific here when in my mind this is just platonic forms of music lol. but you probably know what youre getting here if youre at all in the world of electronic music. the good shit, to be clear.

Emi:

Andrew: Foodman - HIKARIGASASHIKOMU

This album is so goddamn funny man. I get it, I also went through a lot of bad shit in the recent past and I hope whatever he has been dealing with was less life and death, but calling this your big happiness album? Doing that to your own voice? With how short all these songs are? Incredible panache man, it's an honor to be along for the ride.

It's always incredibly frustrating when people talk about Foodman's music as distancing itself from Footwork/Juke, or dance music generally, even when accounting for not everyone is able to see him play bubbly ass shaking Juke live three times in a year or spend a decade following his NTS show. But Thicket is also over a decade old now... the experimental nature of his music is not novelty it's baked in. He is not a black guy from Chicago so why should the record sound like he's applying to be on teklife if it's to be authentic? If you can't hear the baile funk in this I just kindly ask that you spin it back. There is no denying Foodman is a music nerd with he is constantly seeking out new sources of inspiration and has no desire to just turn into a caricature of his past selves and play the hits.

Ok now that that's out of the way.... Nukumori being the most dancey track on the album but only after the first 1:45 pass is hilarious. Kokizami, my favorite track and the only thing on the album that clips over four minutes, feels like going to the afterparty you are unequipped for, the kinetic explosion leading to the elongated morose negative space. Hard Reclining has these brief moments of pop beauty, but also the gurgling background voices make it too uneasy to unwind to. Okuzaku Marunomi has such fun with its own single title, and the sputtering ending just feels so gleeful. It's also maybe my favorite mixed album of his, it's dry in a way that makes all the negative space and transitions between the songs leave you on the back foot. I think this is the hardest album to blindly recommend I've put on the newsletter so far, having the context of the overall Foodman experience matters so much, but I have that and it's great, and if you don't check out Shokuhin, Ez Minzoku, the aforementioned Thicket, and all the NTS shows he plays Yu Yu Hakusho OP's on.

Eden Aurelius - Entre Nous

Short Span at it again bayyybeeeee. Is that not enough? An ambient chill out session par excellence needs me to make the case for it? Well the basslines are smokey and sultry as hell for one, showcasing the influence collaborations with both Purelink's Millia and the Kino Disk crew have had on Eden's soundscapes. The drum patterns all over this album are fun, never knotty enough to pull you out of the zone but a fun handrail amidst the wooze. If you are wondering what the next album I will put on at 5AM on the way home from he club, the answer is Entre Nous, just between us.

As an annoying music nerd I have to tell you that actually a lot of ambient music rewards close listening, that the genre name is more of a misnomer than you'd think. While that might end up being true for Entre Nous as well, I've really been charmed in how it really is just something to get lost in during these first few listens, with Dark Room and the title track especially being worlds unto themselves. Which makes it more unfortunate that the album's real clunker, Ion, feels like a mostly standard playlist ambient track. It's not ruinous to listen to by any means, but why get Pontiac Streator on your release if you aren't going to see how harsh he can make the pleasant be? It's an oddly anonymous track on an album that so clearly maps out the personality Eden is pushing forth otherwise.

LOVEBEAT - Yoshinori Sunahara (the first on streaming but non Bandcamp rec of the newsletter wow)

YEAAAAAAAAAA. Sorry just listened to the first fifteen seconds of Earth Beat again, one of my favorite album openers ever. LOVEBEAT is just a timeless album for me, rarely at the center of my attention but always getting a weekly spin, though Pierre Taki's turn in The Last Blossom has had me playing more Denki Groove and their extended orbit in the last few weeks (special thanks to Graham for introducing me to Taki's travelogues as well), and man LOVEBEAT is so goddamn perfect.

One of the true achievements of sound design, the sharpest snares, heaviest kicks, and just vacuum wrapped atmosphere, the perfect sounds of the y2k era of digital music to me. One of the first albums where the panning and placement of sounds really kicked in for me, even on the shitty headphones I had at a teenager, everything is just placed so beautifully. The Center of Gravity is one of the ultimate musical mazes for me, I still get lost in it half the time, for as minimal as it is there's still so much texture and detail to discover. I know it can often be a crutch when trying to explain why electronic music "matters", but the entire album just feels so architectural, it's perfectly planned to the point you understand Sunahara taking a decade to release another album after fully letting the perfectionism fly on this one. As I continue to (very slowly) learn how to use Ableton, LOVEBEAT has been a great help in thinking of how to structure songs beyond gleefully figuring out how to make an 808 sound like tuberculosis coughs or other modulation flips. It does make me sad that most English language writing on this album seems to have been SEO'd out of existence, I very much remember this having more than a few writeups as an album of the 00's in decade retrospectives!

MAKE-BELIEVE w/ object blue episode 18

Cooper Hewitt Listening Room

Does a good HiFi make anyone else tear up? Like a good sound system at a club or venue is not nearly as emotional to me as when you get to experience it in a sit down calm way, and Devon Turnbull I forgive you for finding your speakers ugly my eyes were watering the entire two and a half hours I sat my ass down while you played of Jeff Parker. There were other artists played, namely Pharaoh Sanders into Floating Points which seemed funny only to me, but I walked into the room to Happy Today, left to Mondays at ETA, and got parts of Lados B and The Way Out of Easy in between. It all just sounded so good, as Turnbull flipped between quarter inch reels and vinyl, not offering up much commentary since the music really could just speak for itself, an installation of two fifteen sectioned speakers and a double sub almost as tall as me. Previously I'd only been to the exhibit for Coltrane's Ascension, itself a great experience but a standing room only one, so being able to sit down (in some truly awful) seats and close my eyes to the tunes was revelatory. It really is a full body experience, feeling the bass around your feet, all these warm details in the sound washing over your body without any interruption. Gotta go back next week it's the last chance!

Pacific Mode @ Trans Pecos

Oh wow Andrew did another 12+ hour party isn't that cool? Yes, yes it is, one of the beautiful women who was impressed by my stamina asked me to go to the after party, so never let them tell you acid hurts your social life. Might not have been quite as good as Dripping but part of that comes down to Trans Pecos just... not being amazing...

I realize more people read this blog in Romania than New York, but I really don't get why people treat Trans Pecos as more than just an average venue. Like it sucks so many places have closed down or priced up, but, the sound system isn't even good enough for the apologia. The outside bar run out of a converted nut cart is kinda charming but the outdoor area is so whatever. The warehouse part is fun though good job on the fun lights anyway onto the highlighted sets.

While Galcher Lustwerk's set was the general high quality boogie he's built an empire on, it unfortunately was timed to the worst crowd of any of the gigs I've been to this summer. Thankfully by the time it ended and the party split into two indoor stages a lot of the people left but you know who didn't have that problem outside? Kat Offline, who really captured a joyous summer energy, bouncing around BPM's in the fun way an afternoon outdoor set should. If your sound system is gonna be kinda busted at least let the energy flow with fun flips and breaks! Looking forward to seeing her again soon.

Now I don't want to shortchange adobeprincess, a former newsletter favorite even, but while her set was my favorite of the inside the warehouse sets, I unfortunately couldn't shake the need to get back to Millia and Alien D's set in the bar proper the entire time I was sweating it up. You have not lived until you see a six pack of asian baddies under 5'4" try their hardest to keep up with a dubbed the fuck out remix of baby got back. That alone was a highlight of the summer, and thankfully the rest of the Millia D experience kept pace to that. I'll skip my usual evangelization of modern dub techno because these two were just broadcasting gods will for six hours, from the most clearly Jamaican rhythms and distortion effects to the scariest techno gurgles and modulations. I tried catching up with a guy I met earlier in the summer in the middle of the set and both of us quickly realized we'd both rather be listening to the music haaa. I was having such a good time(and coming down, obviously) that even the spoken word cool down interludes were vibing with me. Maybe I should monetize WYGAS so I can hire these guys to just play once a month or so. They made me believe going to Nowadays at 6AM wouldn't obliterate my root chakra.

Going out and listening to these long parties is kind of like communism for me. I'm willing to hear suggestions for new ideas if anyone has them if you think it might not be the ultimate form of humanity, but a ton more people need to try it out before they knock it.

Thanks for making it through another volume, see you in two weeks!