# wlxpvn > notes on music, creativity, work, and life Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### welcome! URL: https://wlxpvn.com/about/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T09:32:00.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/05/welcome.webp) i'm just having fun on the internet; writing, curating, sharing music, tinkering, thinking about work and life and everything else; join me! ### [txt](https://wlxpvn.com/tag/txt/) – longer reflections, research and essays - [thoughts on taste](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-taste/) - [thoughts on curation](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-curation/) ### [notes](https://wlxpvn.com/tag/notes/) – short thoughts and fragments - [boosting ambition](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/boosting-ambition/) - [get every idea out](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/get-every-idea-out/) ### [wav](https://wlxpvn.com/tag/wav/) – tracks, new releases, and monthly playlists - [jul 26](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-07/) - [jun 26](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-06/) - [may 26](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-05/) also on ig – [@wlxpvn](https://www.instagram.com/wlxpvn?ref=wlxpvn.com) (life), [@wlxpcrux](https://www.instagram.com/wlxpcrux?ref=wlxpvn.com) (climbing), [@wlxplab](https://www.instagram.com/wlxplab/?ref=wlxpvn.com) (digital scratchpad) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/08/welcome.webp) subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ## Posts ### music: july 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-07/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T08:48:35.000Z In physics, **resonance** is what happens when a vibrating force matches an object's natural frequency. The object picks up the vibration and starts moving with it. If you pluck a string on one guitar, a string on a nearby guitar that is tuned to the same frequency will start to vibrate on its own. Similarly, something resonates with a person when it meets a frequency that they already carry, such as an existing memory, belief or experience. This idea is super interesting when it comes to sharing stuff with others (like music!). Resonance is the feedback that you receive from a person, and it is based on that person's own movement or energy. Personally, resonance is my favorite kind of feedback, because it happens on its own and is therefore authentic. For example, imagine playing or sharing a track with a friend, and later hearing it at their place or seeing them play it on Spotify or Last.fm. That's resonance! If someone actively tells me, "This is a cool track", it's aimed at me and may just be politeness or signaling. However, if they play the track for themselves, I can trust that they really like it. The same applies to books, restaurants and films: you recommend something, and later you see your friends enjoying it. It even goes beyond recommendations – sometimes you do something a certain way, and a while later you see a friend doing it the same way. In my head, I think "wow, I see what you are doing there; you paid attention!" The funny thing is that you can't actively seek out resonance. The moment you ask, "Did you ever listen to that record?", the answer becomes performative. There's some social pressure attached to the response. Resonance has to happen naturally; you can't fake it. My favorite example: a couple of years ago I gifted my parents a vinyl of [Traumprinz aka DJ Metatron – Loops of Infinity (A Rave Loveletter)](https://allpossibleworlds.bandcamp.com/album/loops-of-infinity-a-rave-loveletter?ref=wlxpvn.com), assuming it would just live on their shelf. Recently, we were talking on the phone and I recognized it playing in the background – they had put it on themselves, just like that. I was like, "yeeeeah, this is so cool!" Here is my listening journal for July, [all tracks on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1rbmSeTnFPeZwgz3JbCfFi?ref=wlxpvn.com). ## Haze - Album: [Kyle Bobby Dunn – Kyle Bobby Dunn and the Infinite Sadness](https://open.spotify.com/album/2NVB7DIA1wTUEM7KmXnWeZ?ref=wlxpvn.com) (soft drone ambient, very Stars of the Lid, subtle sadness despite the title) - Album: [Serenity Complex & Aika Mal – The Garden](https://open.spotify.com/album/5E8es3GYqVdo52iCu2uImF?ref=wlxpvn.com) (cute [trip hop](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-05/) release from two dancefloor producers who got tired of the club; fav track: The Garden) - **EP:** [**The Bug – Ladybug 1 (feat. Dis Fig)**](https://open.spotify.com/album/0U171DRtrbqXZONDIPd14F?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(trip hop + bass, ambient dub, illbient; the label calls it a fusion of Massive Attack and Basic Channel, heavier and stranger than most trip hop; the vocals keep decaying into dub; this is the first in a new series pairing Kevin Martin with a different female vocalist each time; so cool I can't pick a fav cut)** - Album: [Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim](https://open.spotify.com/album/4fHSzoFNYfU9SKFQzc97co?ref=wlxpvn.com) (Senegalese mbalax rhythms and vocals, combined with minimal Berlin dub techno; tribal, very viral, groovy, almost infectious; saw them live at LGW25) - Great [mini documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owk425-FPcw&ref=wlxpvn.com) featuring Mark Ernestus and the band, on the origin story and present day touring - Album: [R.O.W.S. – 6.05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JImn%5Fo7BeD4&ref=wlxpvn.com) (dub techno at first, slowly turning melancholic and progressive, with a big Traumprinz vibe; R.O.W.S. is Martinou and Eletun Selona, who passed away in 2024 – Martinou finished their unfinished tracks alone; fav track: 11.1; unfortunately youtube only) - Album: [Function – Aeternum (Existenz)](https://open.spotify.com/album/1U7ROUxjQ22RaVslHy6e4F?ref=wlxpvn.com) (ambient techno and acid, warm and a bit sci-fi; fav tracks: Ascent (slow ambient techno opener, feels very 96 rather than 26), City of Luz (acid ambient techno), November 29 (acid + electro in one)) ## Strobe - **Album:** [**Decius – Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience)**](https://open.spotify.com/album/7tw9VZCzCmiavs3jddFeCm?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(acid house + dance punk, very hedonistic and fun; fav tracks: Queen Of 14th St, Walking In The Heat)** - **Album:** [**Decius – Decius Vol. I**](https://open.spotify.com/album/2bFXQyPnVlhL17xXToDi6z?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(the 2022 debut, sexier and less punky; fav tracks: Look Like A Man, Quick Reliefs, Come To Me Villa, Roberto's Tumescence)** - **Album:** [**Batu & Donato Dozzy – Exhale**](https://open.spotify.com/album/22jowoaOweuYui1WgFZvvB?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(Batu's Bristol bass meeting Dozzy's atmospheric techno; more bass and percussion than usual for Dozzy,** [**who Batu says has an unusual appreciation of bass and soundsystem culture**](https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/batu-donato-dozzy-cover-story-interview?ref=wlxpvn.com)**; fav tracks: Drift, Emergence, Bloom, Exhale, Off Axis)** - **Recorded in about three hours, all on the fly, in Dozzy's studio – which has no chairs, to keep the process "active and upright"** - Track: [Forest on Stasys – "Deprogramming of Reality"](https://open.spotify.com/track/2i9qH4oclZTpMf18bN6goo?ref=wlxpvn.com) (hypnotic driving techno, gives off the vibe of an alarm system going off, with a surprise brass melody on top) - Album: [Octo Octa – Sigils for Survival](https://open.spotify.com/album/6DsMqtKy0VJlvcxRFozKw8?ref=wlxpvn.com) (warm acid and deep house, ranging from progressive tracks like Hypnotic Cycle to breaky ones like Rituals to Exist & Connect; my fav track is the downtempo sound of ...To The Divinity of Gay Sex; her first album in seven years) - Singles: [Black Rave Culture – "Jump on Da Floor"](https://open.spotify.com/track/4UL6Ekx4hnEb4vd6e3mynr?ref=wlxpvn.com) & ["Herengracht"](https://open.spotify.com/track/25BVEjs3WsB4axQr9kqEAV?ref=wlxpvn.com) (super cool sound – what is this, bmore club? looped ghettotech vocal on the first track; looking forward to the whole album release) - Compilation: [Shannen SP (curator) – Mzansi Bass](https://open.spotify.com/album/50rsnvVZhko9DCuxOj8w89?ref=wlxpvn.com) (gqom and more, the "real current underground" of South Africa; broken kicks, heavy, sweaty; curated by Shannen SP, who put me onto State OFFF back in [February](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-02/); fav tracks: NOPS, Alarma, Midnight Session) - EP: [Efdemin – Mirror Phase](https://open.spotify.com/album/4q09fIqkf466XoQcL31GnN?ref=wlxpvn.com) (minimal acid techno, somewhat spacey and atmospheric, very energetic overdriven kicks; fav tracks: Unity Grain & Mirror Phase, which samples DJ Minx's voice) - Album: [Madonna – Confessions II](https://open.spotify.com/album/1CWY6mfnuLlF4BKRLFcUDQ?ref=wlxpvn.com) (my fav Madonna album is Ray of Light, a proper 10/10; on this new release, My Sins Are My Savior and Betrayal have that same downtempo trip hop throwback feel; the rest is dance-pop and a bit kitschy, sometimes over breakbeats, mixed as one continuous set; fav tracks: Fragile, My Sins Are My Savior, Betrayal) Thanks for reading! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/08/jul26.webp) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### music: june 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-06/ Last updated: 2026-07-05T21:45:45.000Z There are two kinds of discovery that I love. The first is when you stumble upon something by accident. For example, discovering a strange song in a playlist or an artist in a line-up that you hadn't seen before. The second is almost the opposite. You search for something for a long time – a song you heard somewhere but could not find on Shazam – and then one day it appears. Both of these have in common that you get surprised at the moment of discovery. The flipside of being surprised is knowing exactly what to expect. Before many experiences, you can either research them or not. Research protects you somewhat: it reduces the chance of wasting your attention, time or money. But it also trades real-life discovery for an imaginary preview. > "I love going into another world, and I love mysteries. **So I don’t really like to know very much ahead of time.** I like the feeling of discovery." – David Lynch Take music, for example: reading too much about a new album can numb the first listen. You form an opinion (or adopt someone else's?) before hearing the first note. The same thing happens everywhere. People watch films because of the reviews, order a dish they have seen on social media photos, travel to places they have studied from every angle. There is no surprise and discovery in "experiencing" before the experience itself! I understand that time is valuable, and I also hate being disappointed. But if you want discovery and surprise, you need to have an exploratory mindset, and part of that is discovering unimpressive things from time to time. However, there are ways to derisk without sacrificing experience: [curation](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-curation/). Let someone else absorb part of the risk, while you keep the element of surprise. Let a friend send you music they know you will like. Let someone invite you to a film, a performance, a concert. And if you trust their taste, do not ask for every detail. Just go! Here is my listening journal for June, [all tracks on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5FSHFJplu3OaCAdPEKmm35?si=2d2e5163c8a340bc&ref=wlxpvn.com). Don't read too much before listening! ## Quiet shade - **Album:** [**Coatshek – Sound Bath**](https://open.spotify.com/album/3mhoSPCEidFSSj3Fwvzyr1?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(ambient techno, nocturnal sexy & dubby downtempo set with a** [**wild backstory**](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/coatshek-sound-bath/?ref=wlxpvn.com)**, very warm and melodic; fav tracks: Labyrinth, Eternal Lovers)** - **Track:** [**John Beltran – Sunrise and the Life We Live**](https://open.spotify.com/track/5sdm2eOKN6uNDRGN2ZSjWr?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(balearic ambient techno, very glassy, warm, chill; it's the title track of a new album that's coming out in September and is apparently a return to his Ten Days of Blue aesthetic (!!!), this is absolutely my sound right now, can't wait)** - **Compilation:** [**Apollo: Past, Present, Future**](https://open.spotify.com/album/4SRypq8s66Oci5iirHBm40?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(ambient techno, trip hop, downtempo – a 2009 retrospective for Apollo, the R&S sublabel focused on ambient, ambient techno and chillout home to Aphex Twin, Biosphere and Locust; the middle stretch is really strong, good selection)** - Album: [Tornado Wallace – Lonely Planet](https://open.spotify.com/album/46fxnc299JVRfJLJx8Ua0S?ref=wlxpvn.com) (last month I dug into [trip hop](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-05/) and discovered a.s.o. – one half of that duo is Tornado Wallace, who also made this super cool ambient house album; balearic, warm, tropical; maybe even a little too tropical on some tracks, but it fits the 40 degree June weather) - Album: [Dettinger – Intershop](https://open.spotify.com/album/3SUN3uRMwJ157YaqwstUod?ref=wlxpvn.com) (cold and minimalistic ambient techno from 1999; mysterious and nocturnal, balances the other balearic ambient techno tracks above; [one of the highest ranked ambient techno records on RYM](https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/all-time/g:ambient-techno?ref=wlxpvn.com)) - Album: [Gigi Masin – Movement](https://open.spotify.com/album/7r8WcFH2Vgxb5cNNOgb6o3?ref=wlxpvn.com) (Gigi Masin is an early Italian ambient legend; instead of his usual floaty ambient, this album is "ambient music for movement": some tracks lean into ambient house, others even into acid, but my fav tracks stay on the slower side: UMI, Bed on Mars) - **Track:** [**Gaussian Curve – Winter Sun**](https://open.spotify.com/track/5hOyjTh2G5TuqQS1X9oGzc?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(Gaussian Curve is a collaboration between Gigi Masin, Young Marco and Jonny Nash, and I absolutely love this track; it's ambient pop, balearic, leaning a bit into downtempo; listened to it 10x in June)** - Album: [Bot1500 – The Black Sea](https://open.spotify.com/album/4XLFSvC7j1HMG7ollYHPYb?ref=wlxpvn.com) (very spacious ambient IDM, meditative; fav tracks: Abstract Springs, XB 2, Caves) - EP: [Peach – Soak Vol. 1](https://open.spotify.com/album/1o5Vf001ZZb7ysQE9VFQJI?ref=wlxpvn.com) (ambient downtempo, sounds soapy! fav tracks: Bathtime Bliss, Batangas Beat) - Album: [Konono Nº1 – Congotronics](https://open.spotify.com/album/4uQYrxOnOP5MqLN9Y0j2wj?ref=wlxpvn.com) (I don't listen to much African music day to day, but this is a very fun, lively release from Congo; the outlier in an otherwise very ambient/techno month) ## Peak sun - **EP:** [**Lord of the Isles – Venus Flux**](https://open.spotify.com/album/0sh5aatyYNBGcu793EgATF?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(very very cool EP that takes you on a journey, opens on an ambient intro, then two clean, driving dub techno tracks, and closes on a slower, melancholic broken-beat electro highlight)** - **Album:** [**Shed – Rave Echoes**](https://open.spotify.com/album/6u9jjhBAt0b7iSxT6JxxN6?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(diverse techno and breakbeat album, ranging from breaky synths on Double Scoop, to a melancholic sound on Taking You Home, to groovy techno on Loot 25)** - "It’s kind of a rave record, but it’s from the perspective of a 50-year-old raver. It’s easy to listen to. There are no hard breaks, no frustrating vocals and no cheesy things. It’s about just having a good feeling and letting go. It’s like a rave from the couch." – Shed - "It’s melancholic, but it’s not nostalgic. I don’t want to have these times back. That time of my life was cool, but it’s done. I still like the romantic feelings I have about those days, and I still love the music, but I don’t want to be young anymore." – Shed - Track: [Inland Knights – Amber Gambler](https://open.spotify.com/track/48285DBGRpKcUaRQEYYl2H?ref=wlxpvn.com) (funky groovy deep house track full of chopped-up Michael Jackson vocal samples from "Rock With You") - Track: [Midland – Without Pause](https://open.spotify.com/track/2DcvId9f7WuBgqWG11KH4H?ref=wlxpvn.com) (a 7-minute rolling house track; Midland wrote and debuted it at his final Corsica Studios set) - Track: [François X – Bound State](https://open.spotify.com/track/1wlIs41ahbKnr8Vzl1T6C7?ref=wlxpvn.com) (lean minimal techno, my fav off his Bound States EP, leans a bit into the groovier side) - EP: [Purple Plejade & Acid Junkies – Djax-Up-Beats: The Acid Trip EP 2](https://open.spotify.com/album/4XPtuBOeXeISEvfd77WiPu?ref=wlxpvn.com) (two long, hypnotic acid techno tracks from the 90s, reissued this year – 14min each, building up a sci-fi rave situation) Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think and please send me cool music (without telling me much about it). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/07/music-26-06.webp) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### music: may 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-05/ Last updated: 2026-06-07T14:48:06.000Z This month I read an [interview with Shed](https://firstfloor.substack.com/p/the-many-faces-of-shed-part-2) about the 20+ aliases he has released under. While some carry personal meaning, many were chosen for fun. His main alias, Shed, was just decided on in the moment at the Hard Wax counter, when they asked what name he wants to put on the record. And here is the story behind Sigg Gonzales: > I got the name Sigg from this television show on the Discovery Channel. The captain of the ship is this American guy with Norwegian roots, and his name is Sig. I always thought he was a cool guy, so I took his name. And because the music I was making had a little bit of a Balearic sound, I decided to add on a Spanish-sounding last name. **It’s all about having fun**, and every time that I release something new from this project, I actually change the spelling or add some letters. So there’s also Sigg Gonzales, Zigg Gonsalezz, Zigg Gonzaless, Zigg Gonzalezz … you get the idea. That reminded me of an [old Autechre interview](https://youtu.be/yuPNwLYrMm0?si=iDJoO0IUuxUKVDOb&t=212&ref=wlxpvn.com) where they say most of their track titles are just in-jokes. For instance, the track "Maetl" is a phonetic spelling of "mate" said in an "exaggerated West Coast / Australian / Scottish accent". I'm convinced that "just having fun" is a very rewarding creative strategy. Just [getting ideas out](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/get-every-idea-out/), [being prolific](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/try-lots-of-things/), not overthinking. But on the other hand, I think about [intentionality](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/were-you-there/) a lot, and throwing stuff out there feels like the opposite of being intentional? I guess where it still works is if the intention lives somewhere else – e.g. in how the music is made. And just having fun can be an intention in itself? But of course there's also the opposite end of the spectrum, where every name is carefully chosen and nothing is accidental – like the Boards of Canada release this month. Here is my listening journal for May, [all tracks on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/225jgfRkHNrAI8q4e1UssC?si=757a8ea7811049f3&ref=wlxpvn.com). ## Gravity - **Album:** [**Boards of Canada – Inferno**](https://open.spotify.com/album/0mu3EvWYfNwBfISSg0q03p?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(just on release day I listened to this album 3x, wow, I love it so much, it's a bittersweet mysterious journey through dark IDM, ambient, shoegaze, hauntology, kosmische, and downtempo; I love the AI (?) vocal chops, riddles (?), uneasy creepy vibe, the paranormal atmosphere; just 100% BOC, many favourites: Prophecy at 1420 MHz, Hydrogen Helium Lithium Leviathan, Age of Capricorn, Memory Death, The Word Becomes Flesh, Into the Magic Land, Arena Americanada, You Retreat In Time And Space)** - Album: [Ana Roxanne – Poem 1](https://open.spotify.com/album/4eLf3APm1Cb4vqmJUnDLpr?ref=wlxpvn.com) (piano and voice, drones, at times soft and hazy, at others dreamy and sad; fav tracks: X, Untitled II) - **Album:** [**Calibre – Tricklemore Sea**](https://open.spotify.com/album/0anX1MSyvGIxfr5wqVuTOd?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(downtempo, ambient, d&b, bluesy – more reflective, slower and intimate than his usual d&b self; fav tracks: Little Blend, Free One, Modest, Bit Broken)** - [Recent interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTayBLLPOO8&ref=wlxpvn.com) with RA: funny where he says he initially dismissed drum & bass as "a drum kit falling down the stairs" - Album: [Yana Pavlova & Pavel Milyakov – Thrill](https://open.spotify.com/album/5cT22hKxdxPxQq6h6mq7lK?ref=wlxpvn.com) (the late Yana Pavlova, with Pavel Milyakov – finished before her death; some tracks in Ukrainian, a rain version of my fav track "Strong-Willed", beautiful new material like running through and thrill, plus a cover of Spiritualized's "All of My Tears") - EP: [MNTH – Silente Esplendor](https://open.spotify.com/album/4JX69Ye0be8NAKiki72cqS?ref=wlxpvn.com) (I love ambient, I love percussion – how much percussion can you add before it stops being ambient? fav track: siES) - **Album:** [**Seefeel – Sol.Hz**](https://open.spotify.com/album/4itsHfW3VFZ0nob3mqMCsf?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(ambient dub, dub techno – spaced out but feels intentional and mysterious, calm but always interesting; perfect background music, with the option to dial up the attention and find deep sound design inside; unfortunately missed them live in Berlin this month; fav tracks: Falling First, Ever No Way, Until Now, Brazen Haze)** --- I have always loved trip hop. I grew up on Massive Attack and can always come back to the genre, but I'd stopped paying attention to new releases. Somehow I always associated trip hop with the 90s. Lately though, I realised a [trip hop](https://www.nts.live/shows/the-nts-guide-to/episodes/the-nts-guide-to-trip-hop-revival-7th-january-2026?ref=wlxpvn.com) [revival](https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/trip-hop-revival-album-guide?ref=wlxpvn.com) has been [happening](https://www.reddit.com/r/triphop/comments/1i2ebf0/trip%5Fhop%5Frevival/?ref=wlxpvn.com), and in May I finally spent some time going through my backlog. Here are a few things I really liked: - **Album:** [**a.s.o. – a.s.o.**](https://open.spotify.com/album/491ULACRrTCXK4ZTPwRCPa?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(one of my favourites here – dim and slow, downtempo breaks, have been listening to Rain Down and Go On on repeat and playing to all my friends in May)** - Track: [6 Underground – White Flag](https://open.spotify.com/track/3bUt4lbTupSz7yIzUxSvE9?ref=wlxpvn.com) (a nostalgic cover of Dido's White Flag – melancholic, hazy, slow) - **Albums:** [**trickpony – Pillow Talk**](https://open.spotify.com/album/0QcgS2BMfwcRHsQg3Y3cR1?ref=wlxpvn.com) **&** [**24/7 Heaven**](https://open.spotify.com/album/4cyKKwiZ9g85rxTj23kfE8?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(hypnotic whispered vocals, dreamy and atmospheric trip hop – very cool sound from Roza Terenzi, Mike Midnight and Maria Korkeila; fav tracks: Angel, Room To Breathe, Ripple)** - Album: [Erika de Casier – Lifetime](https://open.spotify.com/album/5FheaW3Id8fdXnezRcgQ6Z?ref=wlxpvn.com) (smooth, the most pop/R&B thing here; I am not really an R&B guy, but this one is interesting and pleasant; fav tracks: Miss, Delusional) More here: [trip hop playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4nlaxEnKfKVEUx6tHj77RR?si=92875f682319467a&ref=wlxpvn.com) --- ## Orbit - **EP:** [**Dean Grenier – Four the Eight**](https://open.spotify.com/album/04uFbo3vNl4U1Icnp2hA9I?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(dreamy progressive trance, floaty and sentimental, very Martinou / Traumprinz; fav tracks: Dume – ambient intro with crashing waves, 48Amends, Object Impermanence)** - EP: [Tristan Arp – (re)weave](https://open.spotify.com/album/1MwxVbXbImA7hqkJZ6LjmM?ref=wlxpvn.com) (breaky IDM bass, polyrhythmic, jittery, nervous but in a vibey way, with a generative feel; sounds like speeding through a kaleidoscopic mirror maze; fav tracks: Shapeshifting Dub, Forking Paths) - "When I started making this record, my life and the world felt like a maze." – Tristan Arp - Track: [Leod – Untitled 13](https://open.spotify.com/track/22om0XF65M87SwlOvx2Xj5?ref=wlxpvn.com) (lean and groovy techno, stripped down and meditative – minimal but hypnotic; love the whole series – [discovered Untitled 12 in March](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-03/)) Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think and have a nice summer! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/06/music-26-05-signup.webp) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### music: april 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-04/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:21.000Z Writing this listening journal has been the biggest thing I've done for building my music [taste](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-taste/) in years – more than the previous few years of just listening to music passively. The exercise of writing down what I like and articulating why, even in a few words, forces me to actually pay attention. Looking back, my music taste has had many such phases. As a teenager, I used to breakdance and I joked with friends that we were computers that turned sound into movement, and every dancer had their own "algorithm", their own way of hearing the music and interpreting it in movement. We were bored by dance schools, where everyone copies the same "algorithm"; instead we spent hours making up our own moves and styles. That was a super fun time of very careful listening that built my taste. I had many other such periods, as a kid when I played the piano, or when YouTube launched and I started making, cutting, remixing and uploading videos with soundtracks. There are many ways of engaging with music (or anything else). Writing stuff down is just one of them. Here is some of my April in music. [All of these (and more) on Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1UkJm2tdHOaCxMXmpYazPI?si=6851657acc3d4cb8&ref=wlxpvn.com) # Grain delay - Track: [Voice Actor, Coni, Rune Kielsgaard – Life's a mess](spotify:album:5Tbt50YXi2WmnrX3s8zTK7) (new Voice Actor release, dreamy artsy ambient pop, spacey and mysterious) - Track: [Jonny Nash – Smoke Rings](spotify:track:51Zmeoly6CMVFwqHps8068) (balearic ambient jazz, i don't usually like saxophone that much but this is smooooth) - Album: [Carlos Ferreira and Dasom Baek – Unbalance](spotify:album:0wqqfuuZYPNrb5SLuWXpXk) (very unbalanced album (in a good way), free experimental improvisation, guitar, electronics and wind instruments; the first half of the first track didn't catch me and I almost dropped it, but then I caught my balance and I finished it) - Album: [Heathered Pearls – Window](spotify:album:5cneG4fNgiSTkrEnCyrBSg) (warm drifting ambient techno, very aligned to John Beltran, who I've been listening to a lot lately after his Canada release; fav tracks: Soft Lock (wrote about it in [October](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-25-10/) – "cosmic ambient, soft and spacious"), Earth Ultra, Zero Repeating) - **Album:** [**John Beltran – Ten Days of Blue**](spotify:album:7Iu7AebzbDqz6IQoJfTkcr) **(5/5 ambient techno classic from 1996 – Beltran described it as many happy accidents but it feels very intentional; emotional despite being so minimal, dreamy and meditative, could listen to this on repeat anytime anywhere)** - Tracks: [Appleblim – Crow Crag](spotify:track:66Rc8UjM0sX4kxIhRRUdvj), [Globule](spotify:track:2KdJY8WmhLr2CRV3OXZb9F) (ambient with beatless weight, drifting and flickering, very much aligned with the John Beltran style – this glassy sound is totally my vibe right now) - Track: [Oneohtrix Point Never – Dim Stars](spotify:track:4uXMT0xoObBj422bkwOnXv) (ethereal glitch, atmospheric, a bit surreal – ambient but not ambient, meditative but not meditative; lives up to its title) - his Marty Supreme score was easily the best part of the movie; wild that the film got 9 Oscar nominations and not one of them for best score - Album: [The Detroit Escalator Co. – Soundtrack \[313\]](spotify:album:2uT6QSslnjHgiHT7juLssy) (weightless, atmospheric ambient techno classic from 1996 – same year as Ten Days of Blue; a love letter to Detroit built from sampled street sounds; fav tracks: Gratiot, Force, The Inverted Man (Dreaming)) # Overdrive - EP: [Donato Dozzy – Hypno Trance](spotify:album:44H07kyr7rOUvoCLMBsSQh) (Hypno Trance 0 is slow, heavy and groovy, like a dance; Hypno Trance 9 is nimble and energetic, like a run) - Track: [Nikos – Spine](spotify:track:6RvPHz98N864ElMcaIZX6y) (trancy, energetic, flowing well – the kind of thing I'd put on for a night drive; nice and clean) - Track: [Terrence Dixon – When Stars Remember](spotify:track:1V57xrYTbh0yX7MwmQq7jC) (detroit techno, quite minimal – but if you listen to it long enough it becomes very meditative and groovy through repetition) - "If you stick with the same layered tones, and repeat it over, after a while your brain changes it on its own; you hear a lot of things" – Terrence Dixon - Track: [DJ Nobu – Mudita](spotify:track:4rdFoxj1GXuYmE0dArOSXn) (distorted, gliding guitar that enters halfway, restless pulsating drums, tense – not your typical DJ Nobu track) - **Album:** [**Xylitol – Blumenfantasie**](spotify:album:10nHSPjnaJXh4SB89xVAjU) **(dreamy jungle leaning into IDM, light, drifting, airy, like the title suggests; fav tracks: Blumenfantasie, Melancholia, Mirjana, Sudwestwind, Lights)** Thanks for reading (and listening)! Let me know what you think and have a nice May. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/04/april_music_26-1.png) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### letter to a young songwriter URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/letter-to-a-young-songwriter/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:11:10.000Z I recently read [Letter to a Young Songwriter](https://visakanv.com/1000/0152-letter-to-a-young-songwriter/?ref=wlxpvn.com) by Visakan Veerasamy, and many parts resonated with what I've been writing and thinking about recently. Here are some quotes: > Strive to be prolific. > > Notice I didn't say 'aim to be great,' or 'just have fun'. Both of those are stupid directives, because they're overly vague. And trust me, the two most frustrating things you can get caught up in are "Will I be great? Am I good enough?" and "Am I having fun?" You have a far greater shot at tasting greatness and fun if you simply write as much as you possibly can, and then some. I keep coming back to this. In my opinion, being [prolific](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/try-lots-of-things/) is underrated – the more you try, the more fun you will have, the more you will build your style and taste, the bigger a target you become for luck. You can (and should) just do things. > Avoid trying to be original; learn other people's songs instead. > All great artists start out producing derivative work. There's no other way to learn! > "At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo." – Paul Graham, [Taste for Makers](http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html?ref=wlxpvn.com) Every thought I've had is based on something – an inspiration, a conversation, an idea I absorbed somewhere. Nothing really comes from nowhere. Originality might not be about creating from nothing, but about experiencing a lot and [remixing](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-curation/). > **Consume content extensively and thoughtfully.** > > **This goes back to connecting the dots. Watch lots of movies. Read lots of books. And this is maybe the most important part – write down your thoughts about them. Try to capture them in song, if you like.** I had just written about this! [Taste](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-taste/) is something that develops through exposure and evaluation. You consume something, then pause and ask yourself: do I like this? Why? Why not? Consuming "extensively and thoughtfully" is the same idea. > Have some records of what you thought about things at a certain time in your life. The main reason for this is so that you can look back at them years later and see how much you've grown and changed as a person. I think that's very fundamental to appreciating life, and music, and expression of any kind. A blog is a great way to do this. Notebooks and recordings are fine, if you're shy. (Nothing beats publishing stuff in the public domain, though, because you get real feedback from real people.) I am a huge fan of writing down what you think about something at a certain time. > I especially recommend reading biographies, and reading about how your favorite artists talk about their creative processes, but always **make sure you spend more time creating than reading about creating.** --- Here are some more highlights from the letter: > Creativity is just connecting things, and to connect things you need two things – a bunch of dots to connect, and the habit of attempting connections. You won't get them right all the time right from the beginning. Nobody does, and there's reason to believe that you'll never quite improve your batting average. You can only just step up to the plate more often. So collect as many dots as you can, and mess around with connections as much as you can. Tinker. Make a mess. Clean it up and start over. – Steve Jobs > Intelligence is the ability to enter a new field and to ask thoughtful questions – Well, what about this? What about that? What if we reversed it? To get good at this, you just need to turn things around and over in your head as much as you can. Take things apart, put them back together. Over time you'll notice that things aren't as opaque as they seem. – Bill Gates > If you're not creating, you're decaying, you're dying, and you're going to start feeling sorry for yourself. ### music: march 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-03/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:23.000Z I love ambient. But for most people, it is just background music – something you put on while working or falling asleep. Ambient can be more than that: it can be deeply engaging, physical, emotional. It can take you on a journey and sharpen your attention. That is how Brian Eno composed his ambient music: to *"accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be *as ignorable as it is interesting*."* In the 90s, there was a whole scene built around ambient (the [Bureau of Lost Culture podcast on Telepathic Fish](spotify:episode:6WcSwKzeVO3pCta0GMpOPk) is a great listen on this), with dedicated listening events where ambient became the main event. People lying on mattresses in decorated warehouses, projections on the walls, tea instead of alcohol. Over the 2000s and 2010s, ambient got absorbed into wellness culture and mood playlists on streaming services. Ambitious ambient was drowned out by generic stock music. But it seems that ambient is having a comeback, and [listening events are mushrooming everywhere](https://firstfloor.substack.com/p/the-ambient-events-moment-is-real). > "In some ways, *ambient music* *has become pop music.* That statement that would have struck me as patently absurd 10 years ago." – Chris Zaldua There are more and more listening-focused gatherings around the world: in museums, galleries, bars, DIY spaces and in nature. I am here for it. This feels underground, and like a new golden window for ambient events – the moment where these gatherings start appearing, but haven't been discovered by the mainstream yet. Enjoy them now, before they get overcrowded, before they become performative, before influencers starts posting about going to ambient listening sessions and record themselves lying down. Right now it's still people who genuinely care about the music, and that's when it's best. Anyway, here is my listening journal for March. [All tracks on Spotify](spotify:playlist:34eYghjjPvOtIVPLmsUUI1). # Static - **Album:** [**Brian Eno – Thursday Afternoon**](spotify:album:6AKF0REZoFiXMorWDpSiZt) **(61 minutes of gentle, peaceful ambient with soft piano playing; listened to it twice this month since discovering it)** - Track: [KMRU, Fennesz – Blurred](spotify:track:3Gn8ZpND7Oi82D8aK9mZs9) (KMRU's synth drones meeting Fennesz's processed guitar, a rising tide of sound, hazy and shoegazey) - Tracks: [Nueen – 4U](spotify:track:4YpKhEbv1Ruowt7GQBNhtu), [To Eve](spotify:track:15Gjk3u55QAcvRBvVf5wja) (lush, calm, cosmic, shimmering ambient, atmospheric and peaceful) - **Album:** [**Hilary Woods – Night Criú**](spotify:album:3K7rM1AulxmE0HxwnF7aFU) **(dark ambient, dreamy, ethereal, melancholic, a bit folky, slowcore – mixed by Dean Hurley, David Lynch's sound engineer; fav tracks: Voce, Faults, Endgames, Brightly)** - Track: [Max in the World & Kroba – My Life Is A Bubble](spotify:track:05Vz7spk6ksIbehWytKA9U) (slow-mo ambient house with saxophone and clarinet over a dubbed-out groove, dreamy – not sure about the sax on its own, but together it sounds cool) - **Album:** [**Placid Angles – Canada**](spotify:album:6cGzQRiqEMZlOYNCP6PZHF) **(a very diverse release, between ambient, dream pop and breakbeat, very emotional, at times downtempo – beautiful pads, UK garage rhythms, hi-fi and detailed, lush and cinematic; John Beltran alias; fav tracks: I Want What I Want, Tides Alternative, Wildfire)** - *"That's what I tried to bring back with Canada – I wanted it to feel like the '90s."* – John Beltran, [Tone Glow](https://toneglow.substack.com/p/tone-glow-210-john-beltran) # Dyno - Tracks: [Mattias El Mansouri – Disintegration](spotify:album:5EK1Almpq7o84FoGCEn8qL) (simple, not much going on, long intro, Traumprinz-like emotional deep house slowly building up – if you need more action, check [Do You Have a Guestlist?](spotify:track:4W2Aa6GN4GouRgMpyc4E1J), very very good!) - **Albums:** [**Voices from the Lake – Voices from the Lake**](spotify:album:0UGa7ReS7TOWxO7ufHqABw)**,** [**II**](spotify:album:3fW5Ir9IAsxLihvfEGhAue) **(genre-defining ambient techno – the self-titled release was RA's Album of the Year in 2012; II arrived 13 years later and holds up beautifully)** - *"It's made for a forest. If you are in a forest, and you watch all the plants, they will always be in the same place. But every time you see them, you will spot something different."* – Dozzy, [DJ Mag](https://djmag.com/features/how-voices-lake-reshaped-ambient-techno-donato-dozzy-neel-interview?ref=wlxpvn.com) - Track: [OK EG & Priori – Serpentine 1](spotify:track:3C7sm8HDkTCwlRqMpvnBke) (ambient techno, fast but weightless – hypnotic pulse, very precise, gives me *Lola rennt* vibes, someone is running somewhere; at the same time dreamy) - EP: [Paul Claude – Burning Blue](spotify:album:3b7C4MlxvFKzcEfEQ8vYF6) (every track takes a different direction – "Shifting Functions" and "Focus" are groovy techno, "August Evening" builds on melancholic pads and broken beats; the title track leans trancey, maybe a bit cheesy, but it works) - EP: [Sam Goku – Yulun](spotify:album:3Q6MoG5n6nhiBRPIiUumML) (percussive but warm prog house, sunrise energy, cool release) - EP: [Carré – Hibiscus](spotify:album:4Jk7n0K4XsI4uTszog8X6s) (140 dubstep, sharp and murky at the same time; not usually into dubstep but this is nice) - **Tracks:** [**Leod – Untitled 12**](spotify:track:0W9W0VSTv22uEWl1hXF39S) **(reduced one-bar techno loop, still very hypnotic and groovy;** [**Untitled 04**](spotify:track:3f5GBsXdQtdLC6yAXzjUsT) **is even groovier, has a vocal sample, was a big summer 2024 track, played by Four Tet, Daphni, Jamie xx, Ben UFO and many more)** Thanks for reading and listening. If any of these thoughts or tracks stuck with you, I'd love to hear about it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/03/music-26-03-2.png) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### thoughts on taste URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-taste/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:25.000Z Recently, there’s been an active online discussion about **taste**, especially in the context of AI. The argument goes like this: when anyone can build or generate anything, craft is no longer the hard part. It is deciding what is worth making in the first place. Intuitively, that seems right. But it's also vague. What even is taste? Do people mean personal preference? Or a sense for quality? Or rather an understanding of what other people will like? Part of the confusion is that taste has different meanings. ## Personal taste Personal taste is what resonates with you as an individual. The music you play, the films you watch, or the clothes you wear. I don’t think personal taste is something you "have". It develops through **exposure and evaluation**. When you come across something, and then pause and ask yourself: Do I like this? Why? Why not? What about it works for me? What doesn’t? – That pause matters. A lot of people consume, but don’t evaluate. They listen, watch, scroll, buy, travel, but never stop to notice what they are drawn to **and why**. For those people, experience builds up, but taste doesn’t develop along with it. And even when people do evaluate, it can go wrong. You tell yourself you like something, but really it's because your friends and family do, or because it signals the right things to your followers. You replace evaluation with imitation. That's borrowed taste. Building taste, and learning the difference between what you actually like and what you think you like, is hard. ### Taste as judgment? I think taste is not only preference, it is also a form of judgment: the ability to tell when something is well made (even if it is not fully to your personal taste). I may not want to wear something or listen to a certain album, but I can still see when it is well done. This is where taste overlaps with literacy. The more you understand a medium and its vocabulary, the more you can see. Certain differences stop looking arbitrary and you begin to notice why one choice seems lazy while another feels precise. The more literate you become in a medium, the better your judgment gets. Not your preferences, but your ability to identify quality. ## Social taste Social taste is completely separate from personal taste. It is what a group, community or subculture considers tasteful or embarrassing at any given time. Some of it is based on personal taste of individuals and generalizable – people tend to prefer symmetry, proportion, harmony. Those are objective preferences of a group. But a lot of it is a social construct – a set of arbitrary rules a group agrees on, often for reasons that have little to do with quality (like fashion; [Scott Alexander writes about this well](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/friendly-and-hostile-analogies-for?ref=wlxpvn.com)). When someone says "that person has no taste," they usually mean that person is breaking the local rules. (Sometimes they mean the person really has *no personal taste*, but that is not a defensible statement to make from the outside and therefore I don't think people really mean it). ## Taste as an obstacle Taste should deepen enjoyment. But sometimes, as you start developing taste, you face the opposite problem. Here are three examples I can think of: 1. Taste can become a way of looking down on other people for their choices. Someone puts on a track they love, and instead of just listening, you hear "bad taste." It stops being about quality and becomes about status. 2. Taste can also make you more self-conscious. Once you know enough about a field, you stop just choosing what you like and start thinking about how your choice will be read by others. You are no longer listening to the music you want. You are choosing the album that makes you seem like the kind of person who would listen to it. 3. Taste can also narrow enjoyment if it becomes too rigid. If your taste is so developed that you can no longer enjoy a simple pop song or a cheesy chorus, then your taste limits you. ## Taste, curation, and attention While writing this, I realized how closely taste connects to curation and attention. In that sense, this feels like a continuation of my previous two posts [thoughts on curation](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-curation/) and [were you there?](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/were-you-there/). **Curation:** I think curation is one way of building taste. Choosing, saving, omitting. Each act of selection sharpens personal taste and judgment a little. **Attention:** But that only works if attention is there. Taste is not built through exposure alone. The same activity can either deepen taste or leave it unchanged. It depends on the quality of your attention. --- If taste is becoming more important, what does that mean in practice? **For me it means experience and evaluate. Be honest about what you like. Develop your judgment. And most importantly, make sure your taste is actually yours – not something you absorbed from a feed, a scene, or a trend.** It also means not letting taste work against you. The point is to enjoy and understand more, not to perform for others or look down on them. Choose actively instead of drifting along with whatever is put in front of you. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/03/taste-1.png) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ## Open questions (for another post or discussion?) - So, some people say that when execution gets cheap, taste becomes the differentiator. But is that true? When photography arrived, people said the same thing – the machine does the work, all you need is an eye. And then photography became its own craft. Will the same happen with AI? - Does taste in one domain make you more likely to develop it in others? - Is "guilty pleasure" just a phrase for when your personal taste and social taste conflict? - If you can't articulate your taste, do you fully have it? - How much of personal taste is really "mine" and how much of it is just social taste that I have absorbed? - Can you build taste without building snobbery, or is some amount of exclusion built into taste itself? - Are tastemakers just creating new group codes that others follow? - What is the relationship between taste and originality? - If execution gets cheap, taste matters more. But does cheap execution also erode the conditions under which taste develops? ### boosting ambition URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/boosting-ambition/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:28.000Z > At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. *Tyler Cowen from "*[*The high-return activity of raising others' aspirations*](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/10/high-return-activity-raising-others-aspirations.html?ref=wlxpvn.com)*"* **Most people are more capable than they think.** But for whatever reason, they hold back. Maybe out of fear, or habit, or comfort. Or because thinking big might make them seem naive. Often, all it takes for someone to think bigger and push harder is one person pointing that out. This happens to me constantly – at work, in sports, relationships, side projects – because I have people around me who push me. It costs them nothing. **Surround yourself with people who raise your ambition. And be that person for others!** --- **Related conversation** > People are, for various reasons, afraid to think really big. One, it seems overreaching. Two, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work. As an outside person, I'm like an instructor in some fitness class. I can tell someone who's already working as hard as they can – all right, push harder. It doesn't cost me any effort. And surprisingly often, they are capable of pushing harder. A lot of my secret is just being the person who doesn't have to actually do the work that I'm suggesting they do. – **Paul Graham** ### music: february 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-02/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:30.000Z My February covered a wide range of genres, releases and artists – from dreamy ambient to chunky house or loud gqom. But what brought me the most joy (and kept me thinking a lot) was IDM (ambient IDM in particular: I discovered Yeong Die's new release Uncapturable, which is strange, cool and weird). And I have been trying to understand why IDM resonates with me. The two things that come to mind are **surprise and ambiguity**. IDM stretches electronic music in very intelligent (!) and deliberate ways. It is very fragmented, seemingly chaotic, irregular, glitchy. It seems unstable, but everything is on purpose. The sounds are crafted, even though they might appear random. But as a listener you never feel safe. You cannot listen and move on autopilot, knowing when the next break or chorus will drop. You have to be on guard. And often it is emotionally ambiguous. You don't know what you are supposed to feel. I think I'm drawn to that. I value surprise – in music, in books, in films, in travel, in relationships. And IDM surprises me all the time (among other genres and cross-genre artists). > Good art does things that we didn't predict in some way. It has an ability to surprise or teach us something new or maybe view something in a different light. And this is kind of what separates good art from craft. – Tyler Hobbs, Code Goes In, Art Comes Out Electronic music has become very formulaic (like art/media/social media in general?), and it is so rare to be surprised. I also like ambiguity. I like when things hold multiple ideas at the same time – even contradicting ones. Music that is sad and playful at once. Films where you're not sure who to root for. People who believe something strongly but stay open to being wrong. When something doesn't tell you what to feel, you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to engage with the material and cannot passively consume. I think that is (sometimes? often?) more rewarding than clarity. I need to explore this some more, but in the meantime, here are some tracks from February: ## Alignment - **Album:** [**Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick – Tragic Magic**](spotify:album:1Y2iL8AjADwMh1EMMnKaQm) **(harp and voice ambient, soft, cinematic, dreamy, fav tracks: Melted Moon, The Four Sleeping Princesses, and Rachel's Song – the Blade Runner cover)** - Album: [Purelink – Faith](spotify:album:4QJJWfZ6RR9HDb7jfXkbAM) (fav tracks: Rookie – ambient, dreamy, dub-like space with Loraine James vocals; Kite Scene – dubby ambient techno, fleeting, percussive, aura of calm) - **Album:** [**Yeong Die – Uncapturable**](spotify:album:1ZEz0YfeMrlRdJRPpPgsEX) **(IDM ambient, playful, daydreaming, every track sounds completely different – new age, experimental, weird and cool and wonky; fav track: Hyper Efficient)** - Track: [lucra400 – Chimes](spotify:track:6kHGJNEknAdBTX2Lpf3ZCt) (ambient IDM, downtempo, glitchy wind chimes; great rec from S.S.) - **Album:** [**sora – Re.sort**](spotify:album:0gmoU3UdCGhMi1L9WqGQE9) **(ambient IDM, playful, tropical vibe, vibrant, chimes, hazy summer dream, as pleasant as glitch can be – a cult classic from 2003 that I only discovered this month; rec from S.S.)** - Track: [Tangerine Dream – Green Desert](spotify:track:4gyVqc6qrbg9hcPrltI4SX) (psychedelic rock / kosmische, slow, long intro, 20 min journey, reminds me a lot of Pink Floyd – Tangerine Dream helped define early Berlin electronic music) - Album: [Anthony Child – of the Beginning](spotify:album:6n2MTdD3MimyjExnRtsmZr) (ambient, glassy drones, ethereal, meditative – vivid and colourful in a way that contrasts sharply with his techno alias Surgeon) - **Album:** [**Dialect – Full Serpent**](spotify:album:4CFZabXaKn45WSG1W8aLIL) **(IDM, ambient, chopped high-pitched vocals triggered throughout, what sounds like birds, reminds me of glitchy gameboy sounds from my childhood)** - Album: [J. Albert – Return to Sender](spotify:album:21pwViYX2HV20YeIMmzlk0) (ambient dub techno, murky, restless) - Album: [JakoJako – Tết 41](spotify:album:3mg7MMxPgW4s72IeE0Dx6i) (beatless but rhythmic, modular sound, vibrant, gleaming and playful, fun, warm, bright, full of field recordings from Vietnam and Tết – the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture, marking the arrival of spring; fav tracks: Kumquat, Gió) - **Track:** [**Lamin Fofana – Obscure Light (Decomposition)**](spotify:track:2mEo7Omo9jJ3eRA853V6se) **(kosmische ambient with rhythmic energy, like the calm before the storm, very cool)** - Track: [bambinodj – Carrier](spotify:track:2niq2cIbpX6TQQw6gKSxv8) (balearic trancehall, shimmering autotune, reminds me of amapiano, sun-drenched and floating) ## Takeoff - Track: [ex\_libris – Running Out](spotify:track:6eHNhAXH6ZxoQPASUolLmV) (dubby downtempo house, percussive, ambient dub, acoustic percussion, old school bboy stuff somehow) - Track: [Al Wootton – Glorias (Drums Version)](spotify:track:05M0AwfQQeLnf8PsjdX69D) (congas, vocals, samples, birds – sounds spiritual, spacious; a tribute to the International Brigades who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War; honestly not sure what to call this – folk techno? folk dub?) - Track: [bvdub & East of Oceans – We Remembered When We Danced](spotify:track:2C7cbZ9gxZAof4fHGwfw8i) (ambient opening with reverby vocals, morphs into jungle breaks, then switches gears to 4/4 ambient techno – very atmospheric, 18 min journey; both aliases are the same person – bvdub is abstract ambient, East of Oceans is breaks – and they come together nicely in this track) - **Track:** [**Baltra – Never Let Go of Me**](spotify:track:2IxPD80hhWrq9mwYYW8ge7) **(lo-fi house, Traumprinz vibe, melancholic grainy vocal loop of the track title, cowbells, acid line)** - Track: [Emily Jeanne – Wet Skin](spotify:track:0T6GY2QtbLhnQ1ObejsRR1) (psychedelic dub techno, polyrhythmic, twitchy, echo, read that it sounds like "rushing water through an underground cave system" and I cannot unhear that, atmospheric; the whole release, Call of the Sea, is worth checking out) - **Album:** [**Mr. G – OG Retrospective**](spotify:album:3SyE1VHZkzkpoMSlO3mANV) **(chunky groovy house, with keys, with gospel, with lots of energy – a 23-track celebration of 25 years of Mr. G; finally sat down with this in full and it's really good, so many killer tracks; fav tracks: Mmmm, Lights, Hear me Out, Daily Prayer)** - **Track:** [**Fort Romeau & Gold Panda – El Fantasma**](spotify:album:1hKrasHK5FDOw0CwGtwOtl) **(fast ravey dub techno, vocal chops over synths, nocturnal, very locked in, not euphoric, just serious)** - Tracks from: [State OFFF – Hard Currency](spotify:album:4dL3cNP2eXRuV0IbdCDm9k) (this release combines "Durban's gqom, São Paulo's funk, Baltimore club, London's basslines"; not my usual territory, but this sounds cool, very boisterous, loud, chaotic; fav tracks: eGroovini, Right!, Toma) Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing tracks and thoughts! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/03/music-26-02-1.png) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### music: january 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-26-01/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:33.000Z A year ago, David Lynch passed away. I recently came across this quote: > "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same – the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds – every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. **Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things.** *– David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish* The same is true for music. When you listen, you don't receive a finished object – you participate in it. Your thoughts and memories and moods add a layer on top, and the work becomes partly yours. I wrote about the concept of [listening as creation](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/were-you-there/) last month. With that said, here are some tracks from January. Go out and create. > I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange. *– Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks* ## Red room - **Album:** [**Area 3 – View**](spotify:album:4TbPXiSTy8ddsM5Ni80I2a) **(cloudy ambient, modular textures, meditative downtempo; fav tracks P-plunky and Deep Seek)** - Album: [William Basinski – *Melancholia*](spotify:album:2942iMljVSFpfxH8lJaCZr) (sad, blissful, haunting – one of those albums you know will stay with you for a long time) - Track: [SSIEGE – Drama Lover](spotify:track:2BGzfW8ogIhxHtjSXPWKB9) (loopy warm ambient, brief but sticky; also check Fata Foresta!) - Track: [Dali de Saint Paul & Maxwell Sterling – 5](spotify:track:2ebyX5uVF8cgSHZMStq759) (whistling, strings, meditative, new age-y; from Objekt's ambient set, weirdly (?) this worked for me) - **Track:** [**Voice Actor & Squu – dYn**](spotify:track:1kThYUqjuek5zWBKhub902) **(ambient-ish experimental pop, hazy, pulsing, grainy sketches)** - Track: [Micå – Echoes of Blue](spotify:track:211eWiQT7YqygnSAgqNC0Y) (ethereal, airy, ambient keys – maybe too fluffy (?), but I kept it in) - **Track:** [**Martinou – Paean**](spotify:track:7E6b9rpVfGvRVcy7KFhx5R) **(deep atmospheric ambient, Traumprinz energy, peaceful, like drifting through an easy dream)** - Track: [downstairs J – Soft Tissue](spotify:track:0dinzP2eosAQUXAlq6ZBCR) (atmospheric trip hop with dub elements, slow, heady; via the same Objekt set) - Track: [Elori Saxl – It will be gone](spotify:track:7wsLUmHLhrs74IfLvr2dil) (analog synth meets saxophone, contemplative) - Track: [Caterina Barbieri, Benedik Giske – Alignment, Orbits](spotify:track:3jNC3jInwASrXxGV9s2IaC) (arpeggiated electro-acoustic sax, trancelike, astronomical, such a cool collaboration) - **Track:** [**Mikkel Rev – LM8182**](spotify:track:3pxLPM0hty58V5S4GtElBD) **(mysterious, atmospheric, from an album exploring ambient-trance boundaries – this track leans ambient, very very cool; also check Journey Beyond for more trance and less ambient)** ## Roadhouse - **Track:** [**Joy Orbison – Hyph Mngo**](spotify:track:2BTjb4H2FLh2e5zx3nI6Ul) **(landmark track from 2009, post-dubstep, Pitchfork 9/10, elegant pads, wish to hear it on loud speakers one time, crazy to think that this was Joy Orbison's debut and it is just such a massive track)** - Track: [Paul Rogers – Krafty](spotify:track:28Ki5eWLxtrv2bLzLPqaCe) (progressive house, builds slowly and steadily, big beaty break in the last third; shared by a close friend, thanks E.K.) - Tracks: [Blocks & Escher – Charm / All That Glitters](spotify:album:2vdFdQBPS2TxrEPiUr1sZ7) (cinematic drum & bass, long intros, soft pads, strings, guitars, vocals; Charm is 11 minutes but time flies when you're moving) - Track: [Tal Fussman – Sea of Blue](spotify:track:6yHPoOhIsSI9oefmuySvS1) (house, rolling groove, high energy, built for the dancefloor) - Track: [Dold – Horizon (Mikkel Rev Motion Mix)](spotify:track:2HXEuvNAZnB5VmcfLVF7yH) (the original sits at the crossroads of ambient, IDM, electro, loopy techno – this mix adds clear trance motion) Thanks for reading, listening and co-creating! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/music-26-01-1.png) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### motion: january 26 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/jpg-01-26/ Last updated: 2026-03-29T15:03:47.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8333.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8663.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8479.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8478.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8755.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_9059.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8899.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/IMG_8869.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/DF3EE071-A0BD-4D35-A090-D397637A5541_1_105_c.jpeg) ### music: december 25 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-25-12/ Last updated: 2026-04-04T06:35:41.000Z **Happy New Year.** May your year be filled with curiosity and discovery. December felt long at first, then suddenly short. Now I'm starting 2026 with fresh energy – wanting to be more [intentional](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/were-you-there/), [creative](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/get-every-idea-out/), and [prolific](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/try-lots-of-things/). I recently wondered whether it's worth creating something that has been created before, discussing a topic that's already been covered or writing about something others have previously addressed. If I can add a new insight, definitely; but even when I repeat what others have said, I think it's still valuable. I can add my own perspective, and that makes it new. As Ted Chiang puts it: > Whether you are creating a novel or a painting or a film, you are engaged in an act of communication between you and your audience. **What you create doesn't have to be utterly unlike every prior piece of art in human history to be valuable; the fact that you're the one who is saying it, the fact that it derives from your unique life experience and arrives at a particular moment in the life of whoever is seeing your work, is what makes it new.** Enjoy these tracks from December. ## First snow - **Track:** [**Other Joe – Flawless**](https://open.spotify.com/track/5fx3MhjX6c2KQlDUV2acDt?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(warm ambient, IDMish, intricate drums, dreamy)** - Track: [funcionário – o caminho da estrela](https://open.spotify.com/track/4sIrGVuFylPWtRzuYk5EDO?ref=wlxpvn.com) (ambient, sparkly, going to change my alarm clock to this, very cosmic) - Track: [Telefon Tel Aviv - Fahrenheit Fair Enough](https://open.spotify.com/track/43eLl2gwEr0fgbFgS11uOh?ref=wlxpvn.com) (early 2000s IDM, intricate and romantic, downtempo structures, classical-electronic warmth) - Track: [AT-XYA – Dreamo (feat. James K)](https://open.spotify.com/track/1A2sNhUw5KNfxd4tJUMFjp?ref=wlxpvn.com) (shoegaze dream pop, synth textures, nostalgic futurism) - Album: [Moodymann – Black Mahagoni](https://open.spotify.com/album/224OuhZ1LThmaYGhD8ikq6?ref=wlxpvn.com) (holiday vibe, the closest to Christmas and NYE you can get, without stepping into the commercial vortex of Mariah Carey etc) - Album: [Jonny from Space – back then I didn't but now I do](https://open.spotify.com/album/0uHx3mTUw4Ve3oTfRBBgUv?ref=wlxpvn.com) (downtempo dub, half-club half-ambient, soft breaks for late nights and early mornings, idm'y, also I love a cool, poetic album title) - fav tracks: Hearing Colors, Slip, Run it - Album: [Various Artists – Virtual Dreams II: Ambient Explorations in the House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999](https://open.spotify.com/album/47QH9uMKRjEbbAyjpOPJe3?ref=wlxpvn.com) (Japanese listening techno, spiritual, meditative) - Across the EU/UK, ambient techno emerged as a by-product of rave – chill-out rooms, comedown music. In Japan, "listening techno" was central to the scene from the start. Not a response, but a key part. This compilation captures that parallel evolution – meditative, headphone-friendly techno that was never secondary to the dancefloor. ## Midnight sparks - Track: [Barker – Reframing](https://open.spotify.com/track/0gRPbCjHQ3B5R7LnYdxdJg?ref=wlxpvn.com) (drifting ambient trance, harmonic motion, modular sound, night-time driving) - Track: [Davis Galvin – "Naming It"](https://open.spotify.com/album/5yfLSeZ98ktnsJaGpq9mJt?ref=wlxpvn.com) (dubby house, cloudy textures, late-night warmth) - **Album:** [**Irini – lost in dreams**](https://allpossibleworlds.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-dreams?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(Traumprinz is back, finally had time to listen to those three hours of trance and dub snippets, nostalgic, hypnotic, dancefloor daydreaming)** - fav tracks: my father, gb3am, when somebody makes you sad, too lost in love, concaved, durch die nacht?, days of the cocoon? - Album: [Cousin & Priori – Fly in Amber](https://open.spotify.com/album/2AxIuysrol1DlsjFyY5OPL?ref=wlxpvn.com) (deep dub techno, hypnotic and alien, textured) - Set: [DJ Metatron aka Traumprinz - This Is Not (Giegling Mix 07)](https://youtu.be/hiAkdoETqNA?si=2cRgg7pZXCgRJpev&ref=wlxpvn.com) (Giegling-era deep house, warm sunrise soundtrack, coming back to this from time to time) - Set: [Luke Vibert at Waking Life 2025](https://soundcloud.com/wakinglifeportugal/luke-vibert-at-waking-life-2025?ref=wlxpvn.com) (user comment: "can't believe they published the uk banger buffet", time machine back to Praia) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/01/B3F1C14F-3.JPG) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### were you there? URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/were-you-there/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:35.000Z I have always thought of creation and consumption as opposites. Creation felt meaningful, while consumption felt hollow: it is more satisfying to cook than to order food. More fun to take photos than to scroll through someone else's. I found it weird that I consume so much and produce so little – and I always tried to tip the balance. But then I encountered a phrase that didn't make sense: "listening as creation." How can consumption also be a creative act? --- ### Mindful consumption When you listen, you don't receive a finished object. You shape it by engaging with it – layering memories onto melodies, reading meaning into pauses, filling gaps the artist left open. The work becomes partly yours. The same applies to reading. To viewing. To any engagement with art. The observer participates in the work. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2025/12/the-artwork-1-1.png) --- ### Mindless creation But working through this, I realized something else. The creation vs consumption axis isn't as important as I thought. Consumption can be creative. And creation can be empty. You can produce without creating – one-click generation, reposting without thought, churning content with no personal investment. This matters now more than ever. Soon anyone will be able to generate a song, an image, a story – with a single click. When high-quality outputs can be produced instantly, the finished object loses its importance. What still feels meaningful is the process behind it – the intention, the constraints, the iterations, the story of how something came to be. Rick Rubin puts it simply: > "We tend to think of the artist's work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world." People have always cared about how things are made. But AI accelerates the shift. The question "what was made?" becomes less interesting than "how was it made?" and "why?" There's a more useful distinction than creation vs consumption. --- ### Mindful vs mindless Not all consumption is equal. Scrolling through feeds is not the same as reading a book. Background music is not deep listening. Passive consumption is to true engagement as hearing is to listening. **And mindless creation mirrors mindless consumption. One produces without creating. The other consumes without engaging.** Thoughtful creation and thoughtful engagement both resist automation. They require attention that cannot be delegated. *Examples for creation:* - *Mindful, like writing, curation, journaling, sketching, crafting, cooking from scratch* - *Mindless, like prompting (one-shot), reposting* *Examples for consumption:* - *Mindful, like deep listening, focused reading, slow travel* - *Mindless, like algorithmic background music, scrolling* Curation is a favorite example – it blurs the line between consumption and creation. When you assemble a playlist, you're not making the songs – but the arrangement creates meaning that didn't exist in the individual pieces. The same activity can be mindful or mindless. It's not what you do – it's whether you're present. --- ### Art is making choices Mindfulness, in this sense, means making choices. Mindlessness means delegating them. Sci-fi author Ted Chiang puts it this way: > "Art is something that results from making a lot of choices. \[...\] When you are writing fiction, you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; \[...\] a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices. \[...\] The image might be exquisitely rendered, but the person entering the prompt can't claim credit for that." By that definition, [curation is art](https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-curation/) — it's a collection of choices: what to include, what to omit, what order, what context. --- ### Were you there? In a world saturated with generated content, the scarcity shifts. It is no longer skilled output. It is attention. Deep listening becomes a form of art. Not because it produces anything visible, but because it requires the same thing creation does: presence, attention, the willingness to make choices. The question isn't "did you create or consume?" It's **"were you there?**" ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/03/were-you-there.png) Subscribe for more :) Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. ### get every idea out URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/get-every-idea-out/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:38.000Z > The way to live is to create. Die empty. Get every idea out of your head and into reality. It's easy to lose yourself in consumption. Creating is the opposite – the more you make, the more you discover what's inside you. Here are some more quotes by *Derek Sivers from "*[*How to Live: Create*](https://sive.rs/htl23?ref=wlxpvn.com)*":* > Embrace what's weird about you, and use it to create. Never think you need to be normal or perfect. Flawless people don't need to make art. > Imitate your heroes. It's not copying because it won't be the same. Your imitation of anything will be unrecognizably warped by your own twisted perspective. Most creations are new combinations of existing ideas. Originality just means hiding your sources. --- And by the way, creating doesn't have to mean only art. I view company building as deeply creative and fulfilling. > To create is to bring something into existence that wasn't there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam. What you make doesn't have to be witnessed, recorded, sold, or encased in glass for it to be a work of art. *Rick Rubin from "The Creative Act"* ### music: november 25 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-25-11/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:41.000Z **November felt heavy and quiet at once.** Work filled most of it, but music filled the spaces between – processing, reflecting, sinking into sound. I was lucky to spend a day in Utrecht for Le Guess Who and thought a lot about listening – deep listening, immersive listening, social listening and listening as creation. More thoughts on that later. For now, some highlights before December swallows them whole. ## Floating - [**Florian T M Zeisig – *Planet Inc***](https://open.spotify.com/album/3SvCzUZxQWFMGWOBT9y9mH?ref=wlxpvn.com) (space ambient, weightless dub, late-night drift) - [**Alva Noto – *Xerrox vol 5***](https://open.spotify.com/album/0nXbVpD63ylK8ZfrdELwlb?ref=wlxpvn.com) (cosmic ambient, 20-year series finale – sounds copied and transformed until they become something new) - [**Lia Kohl – *Normal Sounds***](https://open.spotify.com/album/5ppFu62P59Zd5ELs3YNzLP?ref=wlxpvn.com) (field recordings that made me want to go outside and capture things) - [**Donato Dozzy – *Magda***](https://open.spotify.com/album/5VDhlo398SCiqC5XSoPUDl?ref=wlxpvn.com) (half-ambient techno, named after his aunt, inspired by the Adriatic – modular, building energy) - [**J. Albert – *I want to be good so bad***](https://open.spotify.com/album/3mJ460Zhr7HDy4Egq3ggTZ?ref=wlxpvn.com) (murky dub techno, Basic Channel DNA) - [**The Allegorist – *From Birth Until Death***](https://open.spotify.com/album/1HtaZoAFSYWsO8RAGeO5mA?ref=wlxpvn.com) (industrial-ambient, poetic song titles, field recordings from Grunewald) - [**Pavel Milyakov, Yana Pavlova – *the thrill***](https://open.spotify.com/album/6j9VvJR0hOF6F0GQOyDy3N?ref=wlxpvn.com) **(dreamy, melancholic ambient; their album** [**Blue**](https://open.spotify.com/album/2G2NMMqNJFhxQb3JWOROeR?si=8prbsqQeRR-FI8zXXAtpkg&ref=wlxpvn.com) **is also very cool)** - [**Brendon Moeller – *Blue Moon***](https://open.spotify.com/album/2o8SU0wNo8JIUoWa8bulUj?ref=wlxpvn.com) (dub techno meets drum & bass – warm, sunny, 90s intelligent d&b energy) - [**Verses GT (Jacques Greene & Nosaj Thing) – *Verses GT***](https://open.spotify.com/album/312yGi77egGyM5mx9eCyRa?si=s8pfdYmVS7iRS6GjssbBgw&ref=wlxpvn.com) (ambient-leaning electronic, club-adjacent, perfect for night driving) - [**Carrier – *Rhythm Immortal***](https://open.spotify.com/album/4G3ayf2HUKdykT2taYqw33?ref=wlxpvn.com) (alien dub minimalism, fractured, full of empty space) - [**Stars of the Lid – "Requiem for Dying Mothers, Pt. 2"**](https://open.spotify.com/track/7m2iqOIBuCT0XvMkv4wYNv?si=d86fd569bcc546ee&ref=wlxpvn.com) **(one of the saddest ambient pieces ever made)** ## Moving - [**Anthony Naples – *Scanners***](https://open.spotify.com/track/6rSeRzqfG1M4cOSSryyHuB?ref=wlxpvn.com) (minimal but chunky house, high energy – especially [**Night**](https://open.spotify.com/track/6rSeRzqfG1M4cOSSryyHuB?si=ce72c4f4dac44d6f&ref=wlxpvn.com)) - [**Drum Club – "Sound System"**](https://youtu.be/G4DpVlUNohk?si=-t-oRkJAho3x8APA&ref=wlxpvn.com) **(long intro, groovy sample, slowly turns into trance meditation, the best track I found in a long time)** - [**Caldera – "Spiral Path of Joy (Skii Mix)"**](https://open.spotify.com/track/68jiuzMGkI6Ec7vxY1EufD?si=6dd28d0de12b419a&ref=wlxpvn.com) (heady techno at 160bpm, somehow still organic and quirky) - [**Silvio Ecomo – "Standing (General Midi Remix)"**](https://open.spotify.com/track/0iLpHOtenOCc82VRM69Y7f?ref=wlxpvn.com) (nu-skool breaks, ravey, 2000s bboy battle nostalgia) - [**Binary Algorithms – "Sub-Periphery"**](https://open.spotify.com/track/00y8acmrjNlqQXADj2bjCI?si=ff546da7e8104f5c&ref=wlxpvn.com) (sci-fi electro/IDM, colorful, bright) - [**Buttechno**](https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XbQUkFYWthjpAPp96lHWt?ref=wlxpvn.com) (Pavel Milyakov's alias – crazy jungle, dub techno, groovy chaos, especially the track "hypno") ## Three highlights from Le Guess Who 2025 (Saturday) [**33EMYBW & Li Jianhong**](https://leguesswho.com/lineup/33emybw-li-jianhong?ref=wlxpvn.com) Deconstructed traditional Chinese instruments through distortion and noise in Pieterskerk. Li Jianhong used something like a Theragun on the guitar strings – creating chaotic, vibrating textures. Witchy and very gloomy (but cool). [**Adrian Younge**](https://leguesswho.com/lineup/adrian-younge?ref=wlxpvn.com) Full band: trumpets, saxophone, drums, bass, vocals. Soul and funk with Brazilian threads. Everyone on stage strongly vibing, the band moving as one whole. "Sirens" (from *Something About April*, sampled by Jay-Z) was very recognizable and clearly the peak. [**Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force**](https://leguesswho.com/lineup/mark-ernestus-ndagga-rhythm-force?ref=wlxpvn.com) Multiple Senegalese percussionists layering interlocking polyrhythms into one hypnotic groove. Ernestus's minimal techno aesthetic lives in the spacious production. Happy vocals, viral energy. --- December will be slow – shorter days and more reflection. But it is not over. Thanks for reading! ### i know URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/i-know/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:43.000Z **Someone sends you a track you've already heard, or shares a link about an article you read yesterday, and you respond: "I know."** People do this all the time. It feels automatic, almost reflexive. But what are you really saying? "This is not news to me." It's an ego move, a status signal that you're already informed. It shuts down the conversation. Don't do this. Create connection instead of competition. This doesn't mean pretending you don't know something. When done respectfully, saying you're familiar with something can move things forward – it lets you skip the surface-level exchange and deepen the conversation. "Thanks for sharing" shows appreciation. "I saw that too – what's your take on it?" invites dialogue. "I especially liked the section about X" creates engagement. There are some exceptions where "I know" helps. For example, if someone's launching into a long explanation, you can save everyone time by saying you're already up to speed. (*But to be fair, it's also good practice to ask "have you heard of this?" before diving into explanations.*) Every response trains people on what to bring you. If you give them a good feeling about having shared something with you, they will keep doing that. ### music: october 25 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-25-10/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:46.000Z **I had been waiting for it most of the summer.** The Venice Biennale Musica closing weekend, curated by Caterina Barbieri around the idea of "cosmic music" as the generative power to create new worlds. Three days of experimental performances across Venice. The weather was beautiful, and I had spent most of October preparing, listening more intentionally, reaching for music that demanded attention – less background, more focus. Here are my favorite performances from the festival: ### Venice Biennale Musica [**FUJI|||||||||||TA**'s *Resonant Vessel*](https://www.instagram.com/p/DQj6BTtDON1/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fweb%5Fcopy%5Flink&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D) was my favorite performance of the festival. Air pumped into water tanks reminded me of old sci-fi sound-effects – think *Alien* and *Blade Runner*. He wrote sound calligraphically, where small gestures changed everything. Later he bowed metal surfaces, then sampled and looped the results. The sounds FUJI|||||||||||TA created were unique, unlike anything I'd heard before. I could easily imagine a beat layered over them, driving people to move. Everything flowed together – it was improvisational and at the same time precise. Very impressive. [**Morgana**'s *Before Darkness Gated Us*](https://www.instagram.com/p/DQj6kFyDFEi/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fweb%5Fcopy%5Flink&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D) reminded me of Autechre's live performances, but with more signal failure and less beat. Digital glitches and stutters caused everything to collapse. Sometimes a beat nearly formed and people began to nod, but it collapsed into static again. Glitch and noise left no references to hold onto. The mood was intentionally uncomfortable, which seemed intentional. The tension between craving rhythm and being denied it created its own energy. [**Moor Mother**, **Aho Ssan**, **Simon Sieger**, and **Aquilles Navarro** performed *Shinkolobwe*](https://www.instagram.com/p/DQj7inpDAha/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fweb%5Fcopy%5Flink&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D), charged with anger from the first moment. They took everyone on a journey – to the Shinkolobwe uranium mine in Congo, to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, through radiation sickness and death. People stood completely still. The air felt thick with shock and terror, which erupted into free-jazz chaos and explosions of sound. I never thought a human voice could do what's usually reserved for visual media – **Moor Mother** painted scenes and made you feel the weight of history in your own body. The audience was shaking. A few more performances stood out. **Sunn O)))** was overwhelming in a different way – purely physical, waves of sound travelling like an earthquake. Earplugs couldn't stop the pressure hitting your body from all sides. **Agnese Menguzzato** created calm, pulsating sequences through guitar, the whole thing feeling interstellar. The **Kamigaku Ensemble** built a layered sound that evoked the Shepard tone effect: tension rising forever, without release. **Enrico Malatesta** drew astonishing range out of just two cymbals and violin bows. **Lucy Railton**'s cello held single pitches for minutes, each note shifting like a tide. And **Ecco2k**'s ambient dreamy DJ set closed things out softly. ### Recommendations Beyond the Biennale, I listened to more music from my backlog and these releases stood out: - [Kuma Cove by Luke Wyland](https://open.spotify.com/album/5pC90fY5SKhuWMUjcjKbTh?si=GB9p-Vi0Tv23cB5P44ljOQ&ref=wlxpvn.com) (ambient, minimal, improvisation-based) - [Ephemera by Fergus Jones & Perko](https://spotify.link/Humilrg0yXb?ref=wlxpvn.com) (ambient, trip-hop, dub techno; "Heima" with Huerco S. and James K is especially good) - [Essene by Al Wootton](https://open.spotify.com/track/6d6o3h8S2G0NJ19RIFhItz?si=12c56b6ddc9c4a4a&ref=wlxpvn.com) (dub with tricky rhythms, hand drums, and weird distorted vocals) - [Soft Lock by Heathered Pearls](https://open.spotify.com/track/5nlTjiWEW8Uyb6FYGuI6cl?si=62a60205401f4ece&ref=wlxpvn.com) (cosmic ambient, soft and spacious) - [Zaume by Only Good Dreams for Me](https://open.spotify.com/album/1dBsq81X9uD1ieATzIGT27?si=mm-7m55%5FRTOVsijG0DW3PA&ref=wlxpvn.com) (dreamy, melancholic ambient) - [The Absence of Being by Raica](https://open.spotify.com/album/28bARFWqdLLjsxUnQOEikz?si=Kuvxm%5FKzSueQVilKDlAoLg&ref=wlxpvn.com) (patient, grief-filled synthesizer music; a love note to her late son and mother) - [Biotope by Valentino Mora](https://open.spotify.com/album/3uOWcTELAl6ClULAOs4SXI?si=BGzGDLPeQkGzT%5FidL1ytkw&ref=wlxpvn.com) (dub techno, heavy, atmospheric, slow) ### try lots of things URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/try-lots-of-things/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:49.000Z ***"Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions."*** That's Paul Graham's advice for ambitious people who don't know what to work on yet. I think this applies to your career, but also to art, creativity, hobbies, personal development in general. Be curious, explorative, experimental. Here are some more quotes from that essay titled "How to Do Great Work": *"Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new."* *"When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved."* *"You need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious."* *"Some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields." You can't connect dots you haven't collected.* *"Curiosity is the key to all four steps in doing great work: it will choose the field for you, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice the gaps in it, and drive you to explore them.”* I think being curious and prolific at the same time combines to a superpower. ### thoughts on curation URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/thoughts-on-curation/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:51.000Z Lately I've noticed I'm both consuming more curated recommendations and curating more myself. Building playlists, choosing what to share, collecting inspirations. Here are some rough notes on curation. --- ## Curation is back Information used to be scarce. Someone had to find it, gather it, present it. Curation mattered because access was hard. Then the internet arrived. For a brief period, search worked well. Growing up online, I didn't think I needed curators – my mouse and keyboard were enough. That changed gradually. WordPress made everyone a blogger. Instagram turned everyone into a photographer. YouTube gave everyone a video channel. Creation became easier, barriers kept dropping. And now AI generates content from simple prompts. We're circling back to relying on curators, but for different reasons. Not because information is hard to find – but because there's too much of it. The rare thing now is a trusted eye that points you to what's worth your time. --- ## Curation is creation Curation itself is a form of creation. When you assemble a playlist, you're not just collecting songs – the whole becomes something new. The arrangement creates meaning that didn't exist in the individual pieces. A DJ reading the room creates something beyond the individual songs they play. A gallerist choosing which pieces to show makes a statement through contrast and omission. A bookshop owner choosing inventory shapes what ideas reach their community. Order matters. So does space between items. So does what you omit. --- ## Curation and remix Curation often has a remix element. Even pure selection carries your commentary, whether you intend it or not. The way pieces sit next to each other creates meaning. You add a meta-layer just by arranging. But it's a spectrum. At one end there is pure selection – choosing existing things and arranging them. At the other end is transformation – taking those things and modifying them into something else. Collages, edits, mashups all start with curation, and then go further. The more you tamper with the original, the more you become a co-author. --- ## Creation and remix? (This is the most philosophical part) Every original thought you've had is based on something. An inspiration, an experience, a conversation, an idea you absorbed somewhere. Nothing comes from nowhere. We're constantly remixing inputs from everything we've seen, read, heard, felt. Is everything we think, create or do just a remix of what we've learned? I lean toward yes. Originality might not be about creating from nothing – it might be about recombination. Which elements you pull forward and which you leave behind. The connections you make between things that don't obviously belong together. --- ## Everyone is curating We're all curating constantly. The books visible on your shelf, the clothes you wear, the songs you Shazam and the playlists you make, the links you share, the photos you post and the ones you delete. Every day you're selecting and omitting, building an identity from endless available elements. But when you don't curate intentionally, you're still being curated – by algorithms optimizing for engagement, by friends and family influencing your choices, by cultural expectations shaping what feels acceptable. --- ## Curation as taste Taste isn't innate – it's developed. When you curate intentionally, regularly, you start noticing things. Connections between pieces you didn't see before. Patterns emerging. What you like, what you don't. > "Personal taste is one of our most valuable assets. When we take time to curate intentionally, we build and nurture that taste over time, in ways that even the most intelligent algorithm never could." > > "Curate inspiration every day. Take even 30 minutes per day to browse a space full of inspirational content and save anything you like (even if you don't know why) into super specific/niche buckets." *–* [*Marty Bell*](https://palmreport.substack.com/p/025-eternal-summer-frank-ocean) Curation builds taste that's genuinely yours. And once you've built it, taste becomes valuable – not just to you, but to others. --- ## Curation as brand You can build an entire brand on curation alone. Many DJs never produce their own tracks – they read rooms, sequence music, create energy purely through selection. In fashion, stores like [Colette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette%5F%28boutique%29?ref=wlxpvn.com) and [Kith](https://eu.kith.com/?ref=wlxpvn.com) built followings through what they chose to stock. The selection itself becomes the product. There are even anonymous curator accounts – [Gorpworld](https://www.instagram.com/gorpworld/?ref=wlxpvn.com), [Nineties Anxiety](https://www.instagram.com/90sanxiety/?ref=wlxpvn.com) – that built massive followings purely through curation. --- ## Curation and trust When you subscribe to someone's taste – whether a newsletter, a playlist, an Instagram account – you're letting them filter your world. Everything they recommend shapes what you see, what you consider worth your time, what you ignore. The economy around curation runs on that trust. You're not just buying a product or consuming content – you're buying into someone's lens on the world. ### music: september 25 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-25-09/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:54.000Z **September was full of busy days and quiet mornings. As summer said goodbye and autumn slowly woke up, I decided this would be the month I become a morning person and use the early hours to think.** Evenings and daytime work blocks were mostly filled with ambient and dub techno. Early mornings, however, with the last summer light fading, asked for something softer. One of those mornings, I was reminded of *Twin Peaks* and started looking for a dreamy sound that sits somewhere between *Twin Peaks*, *Beach House* and *James K*. That became most of my listening in September. ## Playlists - [***Dreamcore***](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3a1QH3AVvLXrJqzqhdiKxJ?si=eab5a5056ead4c0f&ref=wlxpvn.com)*is new and* *collects that soft, reverb-filled morning sound (although it still needs some refinement).* ## Artists I played most 1. [Chromatics](https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tOVIRjlWWfR1RrAxyRqTE?si=zKA9wUKjSgacwAvJiKvVgQ&ref=wlxpvn.com) 2. [Beach House](https://open.spotify.com/artist/56ZTgzPBDge0OvCGgMO3OY?si=seH4NfTvTJqrXqaKQmvnAw&ref=wlxpvn.com) 3. [Angelo Badalamenti](https://open.spotify.com/artist/3Eeb1U0VJTDaFpBHV4DmHl?si=DxZEnE3FST2LJPpRE9o7pg&ref=wlxpvn.com) 4. [Aphex Twin](https://open.spotify.com/artist/6kBDZFXuLrZgHnvmPu9NsG?si=hqRfUh6aQeqikCTvw1Oneg&ref=wlxpvn.com) 5. [James K](https://open.spotify.com/artist/25BObiRSDCMwVrBGIVaLIf?si=ezaYwrSWTaW0XUxRg-xkUQ&ref=wlxpvn.com) ## Tracks - [Desire by Ruby Haunt](https://open.spotify.com/track/6mcfZIZhkEmNkh2ezmecvb?si=ce0d8b7effc346ec&ref=wlxpvn.com) (minimal, nostalgic dream pop) - [Into the Black & Kill for Love by Chromatics](https://open.spotify.com/album/2Fp5KBgyC0ac2oitVlsJhY?si=MopkmreeQDGuQGRGIRzAQQ&ref=wlxpvn.com) (lush, midnight pop) - [Shadow by Chromatics](https://open.spotify.com/track/3sJQGz6WX2YIBaHsH3bRMq?si=c995d3f288a4409a&ref=wlxpvn.com) (100% Twin Peaks throwback, every time I listen to it) - [#7 by Aphex Twin](https://open.spotify.com/track/5Y98R18mTx06sAuefOLZDr?si=9fcfcd1286524c60&ref=wlxpvn.com) (dreamy; perfectly fits the David Lynch idea of *"the most beautiful thing, but dark and a little bit scary"*) - [Master of None by Beach House](https://open.spotify.com/track/3stWWPN41byqp8loPdy92u?si=6f127b22c8a94a20&ref=wlxpvn.com) - [Wildlife Analysis by Boards of Canada](https://open.spotify.com/track/1XZdwzd8DTDvkjVc0eJ9BI?si=b214117ed0cd471b&ref=wlxpvn.com) (short, but strong album opener; also, Olson from that album is great) - [heart held by marine eyes](https://open.spotify.com/track/36cPSm8bZSvnVHp0rqla87?si=5e8dd9461c52453f&ref=wlxpvn.com) (gentle, ambient, soft field recordings and vocals) ## Venice Biennale Musica 2025 - In October I am traveling to the closing of the Venice Biennale Musica, curated by Caterina Barbieri. The festival explores “cosmic music,” not as a single genre or tradition, but as the generative power of music to create new worlds. I am really looking forward to installations by Meredith Monk and Maxime Denuc, and live performances by Sunn O))), FUJI|||||||||||TA, ecco2k and others. - [Here is a playlist inspired by this year's Biennale](https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/listen-to-a-playlist-inspired-by-this-years-biennale-musica-curated-by-caterina-barbieri/?ref=wlxpvn.com) by Caterina Barbieri for Crack Magazine. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/41/b6/41b66770-b7e4-4fac-ae78-6c18aefb4c6a/content/images/2026/03/music-25-09-2.png) ### music: august 25 URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/music-25-08/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:56.000Z ## Playlists - [**Ambient, updated**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/34flrPmHWvxWqlZpbgDfv7?si=c26b65b6dcbd42ea&ref=wlxpvn.com) – added a lot this month, mainly listened to ambient, working my way through some classic albums that I have in the backlog. **note: (+++) is a very good playlist* ## Artists I played most 1. [**Global Communication**](https://open.spotify.com/artist/6YktolrgGPFMwWrmAgf4hu?si=VfyR6RF8Rf22Jc92wKAi7g&ref=wlxpvn.com)(very deep, floating ambient) 2. [**Guy Contact**](https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Xnqn9riXkAVyAwabBYi4F?si=h7vQH22JRA6a7qJ%5F20%5FMOA&ref=wlxpvn.com)(groovy, but also dreamy, cosmic house) 3. [**PJ Harvey**](https://open.spotify.com/artist/12VaqyEhgwDRuFfEqbnrpz?si=I-H4JgsZSrKdiwZtYx5%5FWg&ref=wlxpvn.com)(raw, emotional, poetic rock) ## Tracks I looped - [**14:31 by Global Communication**](https://open.spotify.com/track/31NqxiLbyEYuH2voZoHk61?si=7d2d81640caf4d3f&ref=wlxpvn.com)(yes, it's 14 minutes and 31 seconds long) ## Mixes [**RA.1000**](https://1000.ra.co/?ref=wlxpvn.com) – Resident Advisor’s signature mix series is at its 1000th entry. To celebrate, RA commissioned \~30 hours of new and unreleased sets from dream guests, returning icons, and scene heroes. Although all of the sets look interesting, DJ Harvey B2B Andrew Weatherall looks especially cool. > *"Andrew Weatherall’s first official posthumous mix, and the only b2b DJ Harvey ever agreed to."* ## Other - Learned about the genre called [**dance punk**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21CkWrUQxyHGIZSidaZKvh?si=dfe9b60f4a324efd&ref=wlxpvn.com)**.** It is basically punk energy that you can dance to, funky basslines and drum grooves similar to disco or funk. Punk minus chaos? - I saw [**Autechre**](https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WH1V41LwGDGmlPUhSZLHO?si=4azrACLRTsWspBJtfS4l2A&ref=wlxpvn.com) live in Berlin, and they never let you predict their next sonic move. Just when you thought you had found a rhythm to hold onto, they would glitch it apart. If you tried to dance on autopilot, you would lose the beat because they gave you something familiar only to take it away again. The set demanded full attention; you had to really listen. ### output vs taste URL: https://wlxpvn.com/blog/output-vs-taste/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T10:13:59.000Z When you start making creative work, your taste is better than your skills. You can tell your work isn’t as good as you want. Apparently, that's normal and the only way to close that gap is by making a lot of work. --- *“There’s stuff you love. You’ve got really good taste, but there’s a gap. For the first couple of years you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good.* *It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste – the thing that got you into the game – is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell what you’re making is a disappointment to you; you can tell it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people quit. Most everybody I know who does interesting creative work went through years where they had really good taste; they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short; they didn’t like it. \[...\] We knew it didn’t have the special thing we wanted it to have. Everybody goes through that. If you’re going through it now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, if you’re starting off and entering that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal. *The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work – a huge volume of work.*”*