Genius #24 - Dec '25

Happy new year, geniuses. This month's GDC has 5 album recs, my Top 10 albums of the year, a mid-depth dive into esoteric synthesizers, AND a show review (when's the last time I was moved by the spirit for one of those??). We are jam packed.

But first, let's navel gaze together for a moment. What an odd year. As I get older, I reflect back and see versions of myself that are both easier and harder to recognize. In the Before Times, I had a very clear vision of what my relationship to art was: I saw myself as a musician with specific stated goals of writing, recording, performing, touring. I wanted to run a DIY record label. I wanted to design album covers. I wanted to quit my desk job and make music-work the only work that I did. "Post-"COVID, my relationship to that changed and I grieved really hard in 2020: canceling tour plans, scrapping recording dates. I didn't jump headfirst into my other work, but I began to put effort into developing a different skill set and trying to figure out how to keep music centered through that.

I remember reading an interview with Laetitia Tamko in 2023 where she mused about trying to figure out if she was actually an artist or mostly just a fan. I can't find the interview, so it's possible that I dreamed it. I wrote that question down in my notebook.. Years later, I still don't know my own answer.

In 2025, I started trying to focus on creative work again. While in 2024, I listened to over 950 unique records, I'm straight-up just not able to listen to 90+ albums a month the way that I had been. I just checked the stats for 2025 I "only" listened to about 700 records. In my head, this is a failure. The Big Number got smaller. (in reality, of course, that's an enormous amount of music). I'm really glad to share the best with my friends & readers. My current plan is to readjust my expectations and plan to check out between 30 and 50 records a month. I'll still make a monthly GDC, but the scrap heap will only run when there's enough in there to ship out.

OK all that said, I'm really happy with my own creative work so far this year:

• Just thrilled to have formed the rock band Chanp with my friends and bandmates Sean & Annette. As you are reading this, the 3 of us are holed up in The Undercroft recording a demo.
• I joined Catherine Savage's band in the spring and played a bunch of shows here in Baltimore as well as in DC -- it's been so rewarding to play out on these compositions. Her debut LP Your American Shore came out in Novembe & it's wonderful, if you haven't already listened!
• Aled and I recorded most of an indie rock EP together at the beginning of the year. There's still a little left to track and mix, but we are planning to wrap that up and put it out next year and maybe play a couple shows. We're calling the project The Power Of Love.
• Jorge visited over the summer and we spent a few nights jamming on some 100% Enemy stuff. I have a feeling that we'll put some more together and put something out soon.
• I had never hosted a website before switching to Ghost in February. It was fun to learn how to send you all emails without it going straight to yr spam folders. I have learned so much about DNS.
• Trying to get back into film photography! Took some pics this summer, got the rolls developed.
• I'm back on my Photoshop bullshit! I made an album cover for Declan Enright, a Chanp sticker (coming to a telephone pole near you!), a show flyer.

• Capitalism - Teensy / M8 Headless
• Album Recs - 5 albums
• Replay - top 10 of 2025
• Garbage Corner - Esoteric synthesizers
• Scene Report - SML live
• Upcoming Shows

Capitalism - Teensy

I set up my Teensy arduino to play Dirtywave's software so I could use the M8 headless from my computer. I think I probably wrote about doing this in a previous issue of GDC, but it's been at least a year since I fired it up & I had to buy a new microSD card to load the software onto.

I've been pretty interested in buying a hardware M8, but it's just too expensive for my budget. I think it would be a great travel friend for the train. When I'm at home I would rather use a big synth probably, but the Teensy & microSD cost me about $50 all told & getting it working was trivial. I recommend checking it out!

It's been a ton of fun to play with. The basic setup is kind of like LSDJ chiptune sequencing architecture, but with a fully featured synth/sampler setup and microtiming options. All of the audio streams off the SD card, so the quality of the sound is really excellent. I don't have any tracks to share, but maybe in the new year I'll get some compositions going & I'll suddenly decide I have enough cash to get the hardware.

Album Recommendations

Loris S Sarid - Ambient $ (self-released, Nov '25)

the record is called "ambient dollar sign"

Ambient $, by Loris S Sarid

12 track album

Loris S Sarid

You ever sit with dread in a spa? Too much humidity, people keep smiling menacingly at you, there's a sense of wellness but at the same time all of life has been removed from the place. Loris S Sarid's latest is maximally comfortable, with little bouncing synths – then a voice appears and invites you to imagine more and more streams. One hundred streams? One million streams. Five million streams. The possibility of "Infinite Browsing" is on offer for you. The album closes with a disdainful nod to music-as-commodity YouTube culture with a track titled "What's In My Bag." If the music wasn't excellent, the whole thing would be silly, but I think LSS really nails it. Reminds me a lot of the most recent Tim Hecker album, whose "Living Spa Water" was just as lively, reflective, and hateful of modern algorithms involvement in ambient music.

Jessica Moss - Unfolding (Constellation, Oct '25)

spooky & sublime viola ambient

Unfolding, by Jessica Moss

6 track album

Jessica Moss

Scratchy and textural, featuring Moss' live looped viola & vocals. Moss is also of Silver Mt Zion & Black Ox Orkestar, so the anarcho roots are bona fide. Moss mostly self-recorded at home and overdubbed at the legendary Hotel2Tango, so the pieces feel personal and intimate. The viola is recorded so lovingly as to become hyperreal. Meanwhile, Moss' vocals come piped in thru all types of effects. The record opens with 2 pieces that build and grow with loops, the first more searching and the second a little more lively with contributions from Tony Buck. The rest of the album is a liberation suite, with each track titled "no one," "no where," "no one is free," "until all are free" – and the final movement is quite affecting: a choral piece of multitracked vocals repeating the mantra in full.

nabeel [نبيل] - ghayoom [غيوم] (self-released, Jul '25)

high-volume slowcore

ghayoom - غيوم, by nabeel (نبيل)

8 track album

nabeel (نبيل)

Just straight-up good alt rock with an anthemic weight to each song. Vocalist Yasir Razek's vocals & harmonies luxuriate just barely tucked into the bed of bendy & fizzy guitars and satisfyingly heavy drums. The elevator pitch has to include that nabeel's lyrics are in Arabic, wistfully pleading questions about identity and place and memory. The project was started by Razek, who immigrated from Iraq to the US as an infant – all of the music videos and album arts are pieced together from photos and home videos of his family back in Iraq. Really wonderful stuff – if you're looking for something with a ton of emotional heft to it but with no melodrama, this is truly it.

Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Mercy (Backwoodz, Nov '25)

gritty hip-hop with great lyrics

Mercy, by Armand Hammer & The Alchemist

14 track album

Armand Hammerericsublett

So glad to get a sequel to the incredible Haram. It's wild to compare the differences between the 2: Haram's sounds glistening and liquid compared to the earthy grit of Mercy. Dark drumming, gritty piano samples, 70s rock sounds – occasionally broken up by a glassy flute or a double-octave up vocal sample. MCs ELUCID and billy woods are in top form, with too many great lyrics to quote. Rhymes about 3d printed guns in gentrified public schools, specific references to Brooklyn barbershops, European architectural projects in Zimbabwe, etc. woods line on "Glue Traps" maybe best demonstrates the way that the duo tackles the personal & political: "It's hard to get out of bed when there's glue traps behind the stove / Bulldozers in the olive grove / soldiers switching to civilian clothes"

Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer (Warp, Nov '25)

glitchy electronic compositions

Tranquilizer, by Oneohtrix Point Never

15 track album

Oneohtrix Point Never3sidesinasquare

I was a little apprehensive about a new OPN album! The past few years has seen the project shy away from the glitchy found-sound ambient works and more towards his work as a film score artist. But this was a really wonderful surprise, since it pretty effectively straddles those two modes. To write the new record, he had a bunch of old Max patches from his early days rebuilt, the resulting instruments bring a classic OPN sound, but upgraded to feel less like a duct tape operation. The album opens with smaller snippets of samples in abstract compositions, but as the record progresses, there's more and more drama. Later tracks "Storm Show" and "Rotl Glide" bring a ton of movement.

Upcoming January albums:

• Jazz synth wizard Craig Taborn is releasing a trio album on classic jazz label ECM with cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Ches Smith – should be a good combo! Dream Archives is out on 1/16.
• New age ambient queens Julianna Barwick (vocals & synths) and Mary Lattimore (harp & effects) are releasing a collab record! Their collab on Barwick's 2020 album was my fave of that record, so this should be so nice. Tragic Magic is out on InFine records on 1/16
• Jazz guitarist Julian Lage returns with a record featuring John Medeski. Scenes From Above is out on 1/23 via Blue Note Records.
• California pop-punk heartthrobs Joyce Manor are returning with another likely <20min full length. I Used To Go To This Bar is a great album title & is out on 1/30 on Epitaph.

Replay - Top 10 of 2025

I don't have anything really to add to what I had already written – all of these got written up in previous months, so enjoy a small snippet of what gave each of these records staying power over the course of the year for me.

10. FACS - Wish Defense (Trouble In Mind)

Fantastic post-punk album with inspirational guitar playing & some very satisfying production. I believe this is the last album ever recorded by Steve Albini. I love the way every instrument sounds, love the downer lyrics, this is a keeper.

9. Imperial Triumphant - Goldstar (Century Media)

The avant-garde black metal band's jazz era themes and songwriting maneuvers are heightened to the maximum, this record is sickening in its excess. This record feels very much Of Our Time to me.

8. UE - Hometown Girl (self-released)

One of the best sounding records I've heard in a long while, just in terms of the quality of the lofi reflections. Sweetly melancholy, a perfect winter record. There's almost no info out there about this one, which keeps it intriguing to me.

7. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Mercy (Backwoodz)

woods and Elucid perfectly foil each other thru The Alchemist's mix of murky and glassy beats. See more above.

6. SML - How You Been (Int'l Anthem)

See below for a longer write-up, but just a great blippy synthy jazz record from the LA quintet. Some moments of true clarity & cohesion – everything bubbles over just right.

5. Los Thutanaka - Los Thutanaka (self-released)

An absolute trip of a record! An artistic demonstration of the cyclical nature of the past and future from the Bolivan-American sibling duo. Uncategorizable mix of ambient, traditional South American music, crunchy guitars, chopped & screwed hip hop, complete with DJ tags all over the place and bizarre vocal chops.

4. Yalla Miku - 2 (Bongo Joe)

Listening to this makes me feel like a dignified cosmopolitan, but with a mouthful of khat and wielding a molotov. Multicontinental kraut rock with anticonsumerist lyrics in all sorts of languages.

3. Barker - Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)

The perfect electronic album for me. Consonant "songs" with a mix of work in the computer's fake world & real reverb recorded live in the studio. Off-kilter dance music, but still danceable kind of.

2. Σtella - Adagio (Sub Pop)

I've listened to this basically non-stop since it came out – a perfect pop album with just the right amount of aching. Every time I have had a song stuck in my head this year and haven't been able to figure it out, it's been one of these tracks.

1. YHWH Nail Gun - 45 Pounds (93 AD)

This is the record that I put back on as soon as it ends – 21min of "why didn't I think of that??" Every song sounds kind of the same & it's a little "we have Liquid Liquid at home" but who gives a shit? The vocalist sounds like he's choking to death on his own lyrics. The guitar is like a funhouse mirror that's melting. Those are real rototoms.

Honorable Mentions

There are a handful – I loved the Cross Record album. The Beths record is great. That N NAO album Nouvelle Langage is way under-appreciated. I listened to that Lifeguard album a lot and same with the claire rousay/More Eaze collab. Nadah El Shazly's album produced by 3Phaz was cool. I didn't spend enough time with the Editrix album.

Garbage Corner - Banana Cable Synths

Earlier this month, I went to see Suzanne Ciani play her Buchla at Le Mondo in Baltimore & I decided to learn what the deal is with these weird banana cable synths. I was going to write about the show, but the SML one took over my brain.

Most synths don't have patch points. The ones that do are typically in the Eurorack format, where the patch points are 3.5mm holes. But there is another type of modular synth: the ones that use 4mm "banana" cables. These are somehow even more esoteric & even more bizarre than the already esoteric and bizarre eurorack modular systems.

Buchla first pioneered these types of odd synth architectures in his west coast synthesis experiments. Buying a Buchla in 2025 is simply out of the question. That shit costs like $5k just for a basic starter model. Then you need to buy cables & gear for it. Get serious. But there are some modern companies in the same vein with (just barely) more economical options like Serge, Lorre Mill, Ciat-Lonbarde, MengQi, Bug Brand.

These synths tend to eschew labeled knobs for color-codes or glyphs that are up to the player to interpret and experiment with. Most typical synthesizers have obvious inputs and outputs: you press a piano key and you hear sound. An LFO wiggles the pitch. By contrast, many of the banana cable synths have androgynous routing: signals can go backwards and forwards. Audio can be used as a control source, a control source can become the audio (if the frequency is fast enough for you to hear!).

I have come to understand my interest in making music comes from 2 distinct desires:

1. a desire to design games (odd-meter rhythms/polyrhythms, harmonic structures, song architectures, hocketing)

2. a desire to make gestures (exploiting interactions of frequencies, playing with dynamics, moving around a room to find different resonant points, athleticism).

Based on what I've learned, I feel like the banana synth world is probably the freak zone that I belong best in – I'm hoping that in 2026 or 2027 I will get to try one of these out somehow. Maybe by trying to build one of the paper circuits out there.

There are whole communities built around these instruments and the people who gravitate towards these things are such freaks. An odd mix of beautiful open source sharing & antisocial tendencies. For every free synth design given away with a bill of materials, there's someone starting a new company building & selling those same synths for a profit. There's Dischord drama! While researching this post, I found a forum post where someone complained about a build quality issue and the accused company made an account just so they could accuse the poster of lying! It's the wild west, I love it. I live for this.

The synths that use banana cables tend to have volatile structures and outcomes. In this way, the banana cable patching can be part of a live set in a way that doesn't really work with Eurorack – the leads kind of stick out of the synth a little, so patching between points and touching the leads of the cables that are plugged in can cause interactions with the synth and in that way, the performer's gestures become part of the performance.

If it isn't clear from the above, I've been mostly intrigued by the Ciat-Lonbarde line of instruments by Peter B. The Sidrax is has 7 touch-sensitive wooden barres with 7 oscillators where each oscillator can induce modulation in the others in a circular pattern (there is a "chaos" knob that linearly increases this cross-modulation). The Plumbutter (see above) is a drum machine made up of crackly voltages that pop and sizzle – also there's a theremin in there. The Cocoquantus (see PCB below) has a slew of audio input options and uses two 8-bit delay circuits for noise ambiance & looping. Its 5 oscillators live in a section offically called the "Quantussy" which represents a map of the tunnels under the Pentagon. Let's fucking go.

All of these machines are intentionally imperfect, they are typically are not able to be easily quantized to Western 12-tone scales. They have internal clocks that can be influenced by changes in voltage (ie sending a signal to the clock that bends its own rhythm). Getting these to play nicely in a band setting prob isn't going to happen. Best to treat this as its own ecosystem.

In 2026, I think it's time to start dreaming of something beyond the DAW grid. I'd like to free improv over rhythms that are elastic and hard to pin down; play gestural synths that use tunings that are easily influenced. An aveunue towards an abstracted idea of what music could be.

Scene Report

SML @ The Sultan Room (12/13/25)

I wrote about SML's debut, Small Medium Large, in GDC9.5 & put the album in my special mentions for the year, but I think their second album is way more compelling. Five jazz players taking psych rock, afrobeat, krautrock, and ambient influences to a perfect mixing bowl. Seeing how their improvising language works was straight up mind-blowing. I can't get over this group!

SML is a quintet of players based mostly in LA. Each member worth exploring on their own, since each is an accomplished player. The "rhythm" section is made up of synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Booker Stardrum, with "lead" players guitarist Gregory Uhlmann and saxophonist/synth player Josh Johnson. I've written about a bunch of these guys in a few diff GDC issues, since they're all prolific players and composers.

How You Been, by SML

13 track album

International Anthem3sidesinasquare

It was fascinating to see them live: The band performed for about an hour, playing 6 or 7 pieces. Each piece began with a simple modular synth loop, the other 4 players would listen and then someone would start playing over top of the loop. Then someone else would join. Once there was enough participation, each player would start looping parts of their playing & synthesist Jeremiah Chiu would begin taking away parts of the synth loop. Soon a new sound starts to form, and they would start playing against the looped sounds on stage.

Chiu would often move one of the overhead drum mics and start sampling parts of the stage sound into his synth rig & then re-loop the band's loops. Songs would often end & then their ghosts would re-appear as transitional or interstitial sounds.

At many times, it's impossible to tell what you're even hearing – saxophones & guitars trade notes, the bass & the synths melt together, everything gets percussive & melodic at the same time. At the end of the show, LL asked me "wait ALL of that was improvised?" – if the band aren't rehearsing, they're certainly mind-reading each other.

Small Medium Large, by SML

13 track album

International Anthem3sidesinasquare

What was especially interesting was how different it sounded from the recordings – not like there was a different band on stage, but in the sense of form. The albums are each made up of short snippets of live recordings at shows just like the one I went to. The band would then loop parts and add overdubs to the sound, then the whole thing is remixed and turned into an entirely different sound from what was originally captured.

Seeing SML live is like doing a factory tour of the songs. The live show is jammy, jazzy krautrock – then the album is a mix of plinky ambient, spiky hip hop, often taking one idea & flipping it around until it's turned into something else. Really a remarkable project, one of the more interesting methods of making & recording music that I've bared witness to.

Upcoming Shows

I didn't do a super deep dive for shows in January, sorry!! Bigger show calendar in a month. Come see Chanp & Star Card at The Undercroft!

Baltimore

• 1/10 (Sat) Jivebomb, Gumm, Sinister Feeling, Heavens Die, Bite @ Ottobar
• 1/15 (Thu) shame @ Ottobar
• 1/16 (Fri) Morgan Evans-Weiler @ Red Room
• 1/18 (Sun) Star Card, Chanp, Ragdollz @ The Undercroft
• 1/25 (Sun) Agriculture, Knoll and Sadness, @ Metro

DC

• 1/7 (Wed) Maria Chavez/Shahzad Ismaily/Greg Saunier trio @ Rhizome
• 1/11 (Sun) Clone Row (Ches Smith, Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman, and Nick Dunston) @ Tonal Park
• 1/25 (Sun) PsyOp, Ousted, Pilau, Mass Ego @ Pie Shop
• 1/26 (Mon) Greg Freeman, Golomb @ Songbyrd
• 1/27 (Tue) Sharp Pins, Dim Wizard @ Comet Ping Pong

NYC

• 1/7, 1/8, 1/9, 1/10, 1/14 and 1/15 Ches Smith Quartet (w Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman, Nick Dunston) @ The Stone
• 1/17 (Sat) Shara Lunon, Craig Taborn, Ches Smith trio @ The Stone

Future Shows

• 2/3 (Tue) Dry Cleaning, Yhwh Nailgun @ Black Cat (DC)
• 2/7 (Sat) Cross My Heart (!!!) @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 3/2 (Mon) Machine Girl, Show Me The Body @ Union Craft Brewing (Baltimore)
• 3/4 (Wed) Prison Affair & Snõõper @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 3/20 (Fri) Joyce Manor, Militarie Gun, Teen Mortgage, & Combat @ Nevermore Hall (Baltimore)
• 3/24 (Tue) Evicshen @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 3/30 (Mon) Dirty Three @ 9:30 Club (DC)
• 3/30 (Mon) Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band w/ Rosali @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 3/31 (Tue) Dirty Three @ Recher Theatre (Baltimore)
• 4/11 (Sat) Mclusky, PILE @ Black Cat (DC)
• 4/17 (Fri) Waxahatchee & Mj Lenderman @ The Anthem (DC)
• 5/21 (Thu) The New Pornographers, Will Sheff @ 9:30 Club (DC)