Stuff From the Microsound List

I’m a happy subscriber to Kim Cascone’s microsound
discussion list. I get the list in digest format, as it’s fairly
high-traffic. But the discussion and recommendations, both musical and otherwise, are worth sifting
through the lengthy digests.

If not for microsound, how would I have found Null
Pointer and his wacky art-project Quake mod? And on the audio
side, the list pointed me to Stephan Mathieu’s the sad mac live at mutek 2002 and further
downloadables from minimal electronic record label 12k.

But, quality links or not, those unfamiliar with the list and the genre ask, “what the hell is
microsound?” The best way I can describe it (and these genre things are tricky and pointless) is to
say it’s “post-IDM,” in the same way that one refers to “post-Rock.” Post-Rock is shoegazing music,
as arty and academic and rock can be.

Similarly, if IDM is our “classic rock”, then microsound is IDM’s successor,
though less for shoegazing than art-gallery soundscapes, armchair post-postmodern philosophy, maybe
even programming (as long as your code comes out minimal). Microsound is one of those expansive
genre definitions that appear so often in the electronic music world, claiming artists past and
present and ready to swallow up those to come. But, with communities like Cascone’s list, this
expansiveness is a positive invitation to participation.