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- Prestige Format Picks (⌐ ͡■ ͜ʖ ͡■) 20 June 2025
Prestige Format Picks (⌐ ͡■ ͜ʖ ͡■) 20 June 2025
glitch, space disco, and Jack White
Ryan Ruppe
June 20, 2025 • Read this in about: 6 minutes
It’s music time
get ready for the good stuff
~aesthetic~
This is one of my all-time favorite albums. I’ve listened to it thousands of times to the point that it’s become something of a comfort album over the years. Which is a bit odd for a block-rocking slab of twitchy instrumental hip hop beats. I think you could call this “trip-hop” and though you’d be technically correct, you’d be wrong in my heart.
This album flows so well; it’s a combination of big tracks, short interludes, bits of samples and studio moments, occasional rap features, and one track that’s technically a remix. But start-to-finish it’s in constant motion, no single musical element sticks around too long or feels out of place.
The album kicks off with the absolutely killer End of Biters International which might be the single best beat on this disc. But it flows right into the Diverse feature Plastic which reminds you that this is an album of hip hop beats. Another of my favorite tracks is Busy Signal (Make You Go Bombing Mix), which is really a remix of the Daedalus track Busy Signal, and combines beatboxing with glitched beats in a way that makes my brain buzz. Also worth tracking down is the long EP of outtakes, Extinguished: Outtakes.
this is not a t-mobile ad
A feeling I think is rare but enjoyable is listening to an old album that you’d never heard, and suddenly realizing how many things you’ve listened to previously have referenced it. That happened to me this week when I got linked to this remastered edition of Microstoria’s first two albums.
Microstoria is two Germans (one of them is also in Mouse on Mars) who, in 1995 and 1996, put together these foundational ambient glitch albums. I recognize that “ambient glitch” as a genre is not something that a lot of people would think needs a foundation, but these records are 30 years old and have influenced so much music yet still sound so interesting and fresh. They work great for background listening or deep, focused listening.
I love Lindstrøm’s space disco sound. Where You Go I Go Too is one of my favorites, an uplifting, killer stretch of three loooooooong tracks. But this new one, with shorter tracks, feels a bit like a return to form but it also feels like a step forward.
careful, the cover on Apple Music animates
I heard the hype about this album immediately last summer when people who shopped at Jack White’s Third Man Record Stores started finding an all-white album in a blank white sleeve with a stamp that just said “NO NAME”. I’ve been a casual White Stripes fan since Fell In Love With A Girl blew up in the 00s and I’d heard that NO NAME harkened back to White’s White Stripes garage blues punk, so I’d slotted it into that “I should give this a listen” zone that albums fall into when I’m curious.
But this week I read this article about John C. Reilly convincing Jack White to make a music video of the track Archbishop Harold Holmes and the video mesmerized me, and the song captivated me. Fast forward to today and I’ve had the song stuck in my head all week. It’s my favorite track on the album, though Bombing Out is a crusher and lines from Bless Yourself keep popping up in my head too.
For Playdate nerds only
Orllewin, music maker and music maker maker, has been teasing a new drone (as in, musical drones, not little helicopters) app for the Playdate, and he dropped it today. I haven’t had a chance to mess with it but I cannot wait.
this is an ad:
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