Vol. 6
Love Hosono, have had barely any time to write since it's been fashion week proper, simple as. Would love to write about the new short span in Vault, Club Imperiale (one of the best albums of the year tbh), or examine gyrofield flipping Tim Reaper into Objekt into Xiu Xiu on her NTS show but, it's already the day before publishing as I start this whoops.
Did have the first WYGAS meet up at the Hosono lot show, with both Max and official artist Alex Degen coming through, here's proof. Anyway onto the music
Max: TaiyoMartinKohga (w/ Hatsune Miku & Namae Shirezu) - Sam/pler
As a relative outsider, the world of vocaloid (or “virtual singer”, but let’s please not get into that) you got into it! music can sometimes feel impenetrable. There’s the language barrier (in the music, yes, but even more so with the active fan communities), a very digital, maximalist quality to the production style which can take a bit of adjusting to, and the fact that there’s a truly daunting amount of it out there. Of course, some of these hurdles are becoming ever easier to clear, and there’s no doubt that if you have the palate for it there’s a lot of pleasure to be found in the space- on a conceptual level (you don’t need me to tell you why a gorgeous topline sung in uncanny approximation by a synthesised vocalist can be affecting!!) but also in the basic truth that there’s a lot of bangers out there!
So whilst I know enough to tell my Teto from my Neru, and my Mitchie M from my Niconico, for the most part my approach with the genre has been to lean into my natural instincts (i.e. laziness) and let others do the work for me, following recommendations when they fall into my path and finding that it results in a pretty decent strike rate. Today’s track is a tip courtesy of producer gaburyu (check out Maid-san and Witch!) and is the work of TaiyoMartinKohga, seemingly a 16(?!) year-old producer hailing from Japan whose sole prior released track is a busy synthpop number reminiscent of PAS TASTA. Sam/pler is quite a different piece, ambitious in both scope and sound. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster of a track (to the extent that I spent about 10 mins trying to find out whether this was actually just a sampling of teasers for a forthcoming record), smashing together a bunch of distinct segments to form a whole that has its seams very much on show, but I don’t really mind when each sounds this lush and fully-realised. There’s the yearning strings of the intro, a gentle bridge so delicate it feels like it could break in your hands, one section that builds into a convincing and cathartic post-rocky swell- it’s certainly trying very hard but I’m happy to let it sweep me off my feet. helps the transitions all flow quite smoothly
Now it’s time to admit, I’ve been burying the lede a little, because really there’s just one simple reason that I wanted to share this track with the WYGAS faithful- the chorus is INCREDIBLE. A vocal coos over a bed of bustling synths and punchy drums, somehow urgent and sweet all at once, before it all dissolves into a stuttering wash of chopped vocals and thundering percussion as if the song (and its singer) is malfunctioning in front of us. It’s hard to describe why I find it so moving, but the first time I heard it I had to rewind and listen again three times over, getting my head around how it can be so disorienting without ever feeling abrasive or losing track of the groove. This section infuses the rest of the song with a whole new energy, I’ve never heard anything quite like it and feel convinced that the clarity of the vocaloid’s singing piercing through the mix is essential to it landing the way it does. It’s not shocking that a producer so young came up with this idea, but the degree to which it succeeds is kind of staggering and now I’m itching for the next recommendation that will do the same. (let’s be real, it’s probably coming from somewhere else on this page!)
Boo: boocanan @ second summer III [09/12/2026]
i was mostly noodling through ambient/chillout tracks for a sunrise set i played in the woods last weekend, so unfortunately for the Boo Crew's WYGAS Chapter there isn't gonna be a whole lot from me in music writing this week (this is where andrew puts a note among the lines of "Did she forget that's her standard" "Notice how I'm able to write about multiple songs while Boocanan can only do half of one", etc.) well I feel like this doesn't capture the WYGAS comment tone, more of the twitter/bluesky reply one but the good news is that 1: you can listen to the aforementioned mix right here, right now, on youtube, and #2: in a WYGAS XXXCLUSIVE, you also have access to an offline download copy for when you're out in the backcountry and need to see the sun rise yourself :) honestly nice for my many upcoming flights
the show was a pretty older crowd looking for idm ah yeah see THIS is where the snarky comment comes in, classic blunder, much like believing in IDM braindance stuff, so i initially felt a little embarassed loaded up the crowd on trendier ig ambient + old cafe del mar + typical boocanan vgm and movie score stretches (all keyed around Em/G ofc), but it went over very well and i got lots of props and i'm epic and so on. wait hold on you were worried about the uncs fucking with ambient... we live in such different worlds you and I everyone else's sets were awesome as hell (a special shoutout to skarjala who melted my face completely off) and it was just an awesome weekend camping and raving and having fun!
Graham:
Liv: ex_libris - ex_libris 002
One of the things I've really come to recognize in myself over writing these few little blogs newsletters is how much work negative space really does for the music I gravitate towards she LOVES Pharrell omg, and Dave Huismans really has a knack for these fun little juxtapositions across his various personas, but #32 (walrus) you can just call it walrus has really cemented itself as my favorite songs of his. It has such a similar structure to a lot of shimmering runway tunes, but the thunking drums and alien little squelches make it too dominant of a sound to actually play on a runway. At least according to the music supervisors I've been dealing with and happy to have one less decision for me to be involved with. It's filled with all sorts of little hooks and switches that make it the antithesis of hypnotic, especially with how disruptive the THUNKS are, but rather a very embodied and physical track, which is nice to have something to chew on as I've been really running on empty the past week and a half. Would love to write about #3 (running out) you can just call it running out and #8 (cascade) you can just call it cascade since they are fun tunes in themselves and also find a lot of their own elements pulled into #32 (walrus) but I am so tired, it's a 3 song EP anyway you got this.
Claire: BBBBBBB - Positive Violence
once again, big ups to my lovely friends in the vr scene (hi mel!) and my consequent ability to hear lots of awesome shit. BBBBBBB is exactly the kind of thing i want more of in my life. honestly, i blame Deathbomb Arc. what the hell guys? im sure you have social media presence. i know ive got friends who are fans of the label. and yet i hadnt heard this before? can you guys like invest in a telepath of some kind? id like to hear your latest offerings, in my dreams.
but anyways, back to the hardcore. or the "victory hardcore" i guess. great first sign btw, its not electronic music without gratuitous and idiosyncratic microgenres YUUUUUUUP EBM ISSUE SOON. BBBBBBB approach hardcore from one of the most admirable angles i can imagine: the angle of just wanting to make fuck you music. jumping around and breaking shit music. music where convention is followed or bucked solely for the sake of making the most singularly loud and aggro song for that moment. or in one phrase: upstairs neighbor activity music. [ANDREW PLEASE ATTACH THE INCLUDED UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOR ACTIVITY VIDEO THANKS] yeah sure
nothing feels off limits here. were pretty effortlessly blending disparate elements of hardcore (electronic!) drums and synths with post-hardcore (the punk kind!) ah got excited for a moment screaming into a package thats noisy as hell and downright electrifying. or i guess electrocuting if you go by deathbomb arc's ad copy. weve even got some really funny sample work going on here that i will always slurp up as a Certified Sample Lover. its genuinely always a treat when an album just bleeds pure vision. its really common for even an album that feels incredibly cohesive to have one or two tracks that are maybe compromises. "we put this on here cuz we liked this song even if it doesnt fit the idea were going for" is i think even a reasonable thought to have, if not incredibly human. but there's no compromise here. sometimes you gotta let the whole world know "this is our awesome album, get fucked!"
Hypertone Records - Absolute Hypertone Anthems
yuuuuuuup. here we go baby. normally i prefer to let my writing convey emotional or personal feelings about music. that's something that is wholly unique to me after all. but in this case i do just have to give a bunch of background context because this release is going to be so so far outside the conceptual bounds of most of our readers (and the writers aren't necessarily safe either)! when people discovered stuff like putting a bunch of distortion on kick drum samples (to make what was eventually called gabber) I call it massive or even on the simpler level of "a drum machine can play the drums in a way humans can't", this raised a pretty obvious question. what if we did that even more? the 303 can be understood as god's voice and so began the race to make the fastest drums ever baby. speedcore is pretty obvious. that buys you several hundred bpm pretty freely. once you get around 600, you have to start slicing individual drum kicks down to 8th or 16th bars. and that's splittercore baby. these are pretty standard genres (and some of my favorites) but we can do so much fucking more lol.
once you hit 1000 or so bpm, it becomes impossible to hear a stream of kicks as individual hits. they instead will become tones and, very interestingly, they have a pretty unique sound. this is extratone! yes i know i kinda sound like the goku super saiyan 3 monologue rn, it's fine. extratone is not actually that new compared to the previous genres. its first pretty solidly in spec release is from 1998! but it was for a long time considered so extreme that new releases remained sparse. communities did not really form. the genre did not get even the opportunity to enter someone's conceptual bounds. except maybe if you are a producer in this scene and/or on the bleeding edge of experimental music. but i'll have more to say on extratone later.
finally, let's skip over a step that's not relevant to my background info here. at 1.2 MILLION bpm oh ok and higher we experience something truly one of a kind here. we suddenly have reached a physical limit. we have a data problem. we're now at the point where the bitrates we use for audio can no longer fully capture the sound we've made. this causes an effect called aliasing where the out-of-bounds data, when it is transcribed into standard audio formats, loops back around and creates incorrect data. like the fake-ass myth that you can underflow gandhi in old ass civilization and get nuked into oblivion, but for real. a shame the Gandhi nuke thing became such a boringly standard reference point for gamers that fucking Hearts of Iron uses it that the computer fake math aspects got stripped out of the context if you're familiar with the concept of databending, you know that incorrect data can cause really interesting effects (and if you're not, look it up! i used to databend myself so you can say i'm a fan of the concept). music that incorporates this idea is hypertone and with that we've got the wikipedia summary tier of exposition done and dusted.
which lets me instead flex my scene knowledge, hehehe. i mentioned above that extratone was too extreme to have a real scene, "for a long time". well, that stopped being the case! and it was in large part the work of one person. through his netlabel 1000+, DJ Ninja Love Mistake dragged extratone into a (relative) mainstream scene. he found new artists or artists interested in exploring the space a home to put releases out. he put out comp albums like Absolute Extratone Anthems to foster a community and let the idea of extratone stretch its proverbial muscles. though i'm sure it won't surprise you to hear that as the exact same kind of girl 15 years ago as i am today, i instead gravitated towards Absolute Moetone Anthems. and he was a tireless advocate for the genre, both for the sake of it's own scene and as a tool for artists in other genres to add to their toolkit.
unfortunately he didn't live to see where we are now. but he did succeed. extratone is still relatively niche, but in a world where zaag kicks and microwaves get airtime, you can get away with extratone no problem. i even linked a song with extratone, uh, tones in the last blog! its pretty integrated into the scene now. but did you notice it? the same thing i did when i stumbled on this release. Absolute Extratone Anthems. Absolute Hypertone Anthems. yes, that's right. this is even explicit if you check out the release on rateyourmusic. someone out there (specifically Richie Call, owner of Hypertone Records) wants to do the same thing for hypertone that we once did for extratone.
and honestly? that idea makes me giddy. it feels extremely last decade in a way i love. my first taste of the concept of a Music Community was in the mid-aughts netlabel boom (WORST forever!). people who think the same way coming together to make it real. its so sad to me, still, that the concept of a netlabel as this specific thing exploded. netlabels can never die.... just the concept of a community based internet... everyone feels both more atomized (if you want something that isn't on a tier to get released by Deathbomb Arc or even a Lost Frog Productions, you have to find them directly) but also more centralized (I FUCKING HATE SPOTIFY) finding out how bad uploading your bandcamp etc files to Spotify still is is so spooky. a vibrant underground scene is crushed from above by the same forces always crushing independent music, while the support structures meant to gird the underside feel like they're slipping away. so from that basis alone i could recommend you listen to this album. solely as a way to Support The Scene. the musical vegetables you chew up for cred, or knowledge, or networking. signaling some dare i say, virtue, that you are an open-minded person who Gets music.
here's the part where you expect me to say that's the only angle i can offer to recommend this album on. but haha joke's on you, this album kinda fucking whips. it's eminently listenable, as long as you understand the natural caveats in play. well hold on I thought the caveats are digital it's an open call genre comp album. this means the ideas at play here may not be the totality of hypertone (though given the even rudimentary research i did on the artists, this does seem to have a great mix of genre oldheads and people who are trying out something new from their own disparate backgrounds). it's a comp album so you get The One Second Joke Track that always end up on these things. all you can really do about that is smile and move along, and don't import it to plexamp i guess. and of course a genre comp album is not going to feel cohesive in the same way a more focused album by one group will be.
but it can feel cohesive in a different way. this album truly showed me all the different ways hypertone can be used in a song. i guess i forgot to say this til now but what the aliasing at the heart of this concept sounds like can vary a lot, but it is often a squealing sound. it sounds totally electronic in a way that really lends itself to a wide variety of uses. there's a lot of noise and dark ambient stuff, which to my understanding is the closest the genre has to a default mode. makes sense to me! and these tracks are done well, with the hypertone adding a flair that justifies being hypertone instead of Just Noise or what have you. but we've also got other fun stuff! we've got hypertone flavoring for other genres of track. poppy stuff (some of the best stuff on the album imo), a dubstep track or two (i honestly did not expect to listen to this much dubstep and adjacent music when i started my tenure on this blognewsletter lol proper dubstep is massive since anything with enough reverence for dub will be massive), and even a track that remembers our roots! hardcore baby!!!! full circle!!!!!!!!!!
i came into this album expecting that i would log it as a curiosity. "oh, that's neat" and move on with my life. id have something for the blognewsletter and we could all share a knowing glance that the When You Get A Second Official Shithead Correspondent (self-styled) found herself a crazy album we could yuck it up about. but fuck that. im a shooter for hypertone now. this shit whips. i want to live in a world where 15 years from now hypertone is a niche but real scene offering. i want people making touhou hypertone albums. i want netlabels to matter again. the altema logo still so sick i want us all to be more adventurous and conscious people about art, but also able to go "yoooooo this song fucks!!!!!!!" when someone puts electronic squealing over Clarity by Zedd or other miscellaneous white girl music. i hope you listen to this album and understand my vision. and that you'll take my hand and join me. [ANDREW PLEASE ATTACH THE INCLUDED PICTURE OF R BUDD DWYER HOLDING HIS HAND OUT AND SMILING THANKS] stage directions are really important to keep in scripts
Iris: From Within - Eden Marsh
Hey remember when The New Sound came out 2 years ago? That Geordie Greep sure is something. However I recently learned that as he has been touring that album for the past couple years his touring guitarist Eden Marsh has been releasing some incredible tracks. Their virtuosity on the guitar is only matched by their hypnotic singing voice. The sound is like what you get from music students banding together to create overcomplex math rock orchestrations but with a level of polish that sets it far above that description. She has only released three tracks publicly so far but each one of them is enchanting and I anticipate any larger release from her in the future because these are so damn good. I’m particularly fond of From Within.
Crying Orc exists at an odd place with metal fans right now. He is largely resented for making DSBM (Depressive Suicidal Black Metal) too mainstream because he blew up on tiktok after taking a bunch of promo photos where he looks like a beautiful elf and is signed to Sacred Bones. However, as a fan of Romantic Black Metal that could soundtrack all my favorite fantasy comics, I have followed his career with interest and his most recent album Morning Star is one of my favorite releases this year. A series of songs written and recorded over the past couple years, Morning Star is Këkht Aräkh refining his sound into something truly unique in the Black Metal world. Drömsång was originally released as a single in 2024 but the album version shows how far he’s come since then as a musician and I think exemplifies the most approachable aspects of his music. Shoutout the pale swordsman wandering in the night.
Jacques Greene - What you say ft. umru
I am so unbelievably excited for the new Jacques Greene album holy shit. He’s been teasing singles from it all year and it comes out in exactly one month. If you are unfamiliar with Jacques Greene he’s one of the illustrious alumni of Montreal’s Turbo Crunk club parties, alongside Lunice, Hadji Bakara, and others. He released this album called Dawn Chorus that rules and you probably heard about and forgot but it’s really good it holds up. Feel infinite erasure... His upcoming album jg departs from the chillout vibes of Dawn Chorus in favor of precision dancefloor bangers, featuring collaborators like DJ Boring and Umru and all three of the singles are incredible. I picked one at random but go listen to all of them, dance around your room, get excited for the rest of the album in october.
Emi: Adventures - Adventures
This EP always finds a way to worm itself back into my life at some point every year or two, like the loose belt on a bike clicking periodically. Being a fan of emo music is so funny sometimes. A song you used to love will come on shuffle and you start to recoil in disgust at the memory of the lyrics you're hearing now once touching you. Being pathetic is a cyclic, self-espousing fear, one that is a bad idea to vocalise and a worse idea to seek assurance on. Emo has always been a nice outlet for me to curb those degrading instincts and excesses, but it might be a bit more like using a crutch when your legs are fine. As a grizzlies fan this feels quite loaded Having said that, I think it's probably okay to let someone else say all the painfully earnest, embarrassing things on your behalf in your headphones. Of all the music that keeps me clinging to a version of myself I mostly hope is receding into the distance, Adventures stands quiet, deft, generous; it's like sitting down with an old friend you haven't seen in forever, being reminded of the way they laugh, and groan, and smile. The occasionally wobbly vocals remind me why I fell in love with the genre in the first place. It's pretty long for an emo record too - almost 12 minutes. You could listen to the whole thing in the time you took to read this piece. If you read really really slowly. Or if you did it backwards like cops make you do at the side of the road if they think you've been drinking. I don't even know how to drive but I've seen some TV. You've seen me use cars in Vic 3
Jay: Chuquimamani-Condori - Until I Find You Again
I have to miss this volume with life going on but please let everyone know how much I have been listening to this again, it's what all forms of fusion music have been leading to.
Alexis:
Preview of the Grand Scenario Mode for MELTY BLOOD: TWI-LUMINA which will be written by Kinoko Nasu pic.twitter.com/kDIUSYSaUF
— Kars (@KaroshiMyriad) September 12, 2026
Andrew: Haruomi Hosono - Yours Sincerely
Making an album about how you are dying soon, opening with a ticking clock would usually be a devastating maneuver, but the swift introduction of a child’s voice makes the first few moments of Yours Sincerely become quite poignant, the genius of Hosono strikes again, perhaps for the final time..... Ok after seeing the concert the sound might also be a reference to his pacemaker, more on that down below. It’s sleight album with its 26 minute runtime, but you still get a grand Hosono tour, the doo-wop covers, verved out bossa nova, and a song where bugged out synths can only be matched by Hosono’s voice being pushed as far forward in the mix as possible. Some of the songs are even based on his work for NHK and Parco! Which is not to say it's a simple retread or locked to the past, M for Mandala still sounds like the future for a label like Peak Oil and Ayurveda's latest form is the actual answer for what hypnagogic actually means. That it all feels fleeting does feel intentional, that’s life innit?
It’s a bit hard to listen to more than two or three times a day honestly, one of the defining artists of my life is gonna die soon and he still has so much more to share with us. One of the things to share is Anemo Wheel, a song some 40 years in the making, on those old Prophet-5 synths from the YMO days... it can be a bit trite to say it's a clear tribute to his dead friends but well sometimes you have to accept you are gonna be a bit trite. But he's still here now, and Happy Holiday is such a nice tune.
Haruomi Hosono - Worry Beads
On the short list of favorite Hosono songs, one of the most harmonious things I've ever heard
Ryuichi Sakamoto - The End of Asia
On the short list of best Hosono tributes ever, incredible riff on Worry Beads.
Lot Radio - House of Hosono: The Yours Sincerely Hour
Was so cool to see Hosono on the lot, and to see how many of my friends did not realize what the lot's actual set up is.
Hosono at Radio City Music Hall:
First of all: Toro y Meh. I try to have this be one of the few outlets in my life to just be positive but I've never got Toro y Moi, and this show was not going to change my opinion on his work. Also dress better man you are opening for god!
Hosono was so cool though oh my god country fried version of Sports Men, one of the encore songs being something he made two weeks ago (and in using a prerecorded backing the only use of synths the entire night), and had two "cig breaks" to highlight the two different sections of his backing band (shoutout to Kukuku, especially Manami Kakudo, whose work on all the more experimental instruments from marimba to water bowl, genuinely left radio city music hall in stunned silence). That emphasis on collaboration has always been such a big part of the his music, even on albums like The Agean Sea he made sure all the proper credit was given, so seeing it unfold so naturally live a real nice signifier of the Hosono deal.
Before the show we did learn something a bit dire and human however: Hosono has gotten a pacemaker, and there were worries he wouldn't be able to do the show, but thankfully he was here now, and still looking as cool as ever, and despite his characteristic deadpan downplaying of his own abilities, his voice still has that baritone heft. To think he was so insecure about his voice for so long... peepaw...
Just such masterful control of the room, from an early spin of Sketch Show's Supreme Secret, which rightfully got a pop as New York's part of YMO history, to Hong Kong Blues, to the aforementioned sports men riff. I can't believe it's over, he still has so much to give, I hope that unreleased new track comes out soon.
