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milesvp | 2 months ago

BTW, if you don't know Benn Jordan, his YouTube content is fire. I happen to be in the intersection of things that he likes to think about, but every video I've seen of his lately deserves front page HN treatment. It is that good.

This one was particularly good, given the technical difficulties of recording low frequency sounds. I can't vouch for his conclusions, but the effort he goes to to record these sounds is crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTvr8L5v8u8

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karmakaze|2 months ago

I realized just how much of a geek and obsessive he is when I watched a video about his analysis and evaluation of reverb effects.

dtj1123|2 months ago

Benn Jordan holds a special place in my Youtube viewing habits, in that he was the influence that ultimately broke my Youtube addiction. I no longer engage with their recommendation algorithm in any way.

You have to respect the integrity needed to use such a hard-won platform to de-platform yourself, in the interests of your audience.

wyre|2 months ago

Was there a video in particular? I admire Benn but haven’t seen any of his videos on the YouTube algorithm in particular.

butlike|2 months ago

Indeed! His content is really good. Unfortunately, I can't find the video right now, but there's one of him recording natural reverb in a tunnel that was really good. A 20 mile bike ride in the dark makes the video very dream like and pleasant.

wvbdmp|2 months ago

He’s also The Flashbulb. Probably some other aliases, too, idk. But The Flashbulb is good shit.

godelski|2 months ago

Acidwolf, Human Action Network, FlexE and his wiki lists some more and might want to check here[0].

I don't remember what website it was (it's probably redacted anyways, but I'm sure he does and others do now) but I remember him once getting joking that someone uploaded his album before he could.

  > The Flashbulb is good shit
For those interested, he has a wide range so it can change dramatically between handles and even within albums. For example look at the difference between Lawn Wake I, If Trees Could Speak, and Lucid Base II on Red Extensions of Me. His earlier work tends to be more glitch. (Acidwolf is less glitch but still trippy) But then gets more melodic like in Arboreal and Opus at the End of Everything. I'm pretty sure I've heard Tomorrow Untrodden (from Aboreal) in a car commercial some years ago (was it Undiscovered Colors?).

I'd recommend trying these. I doubt people will like all but I think these are all approachable and have good coverage.

  - Terra Firma, on Terra Firma
  - If Trees Could Speak, on Red Extensions
  - Passage D, on Kirlian Selections
    - Piano variant on Old Trees (Not on Spotify [1])
  - Precipice, on Piety of Ashes
  - Undiscovered Colors, on Arboreal
  - Three Hundred CC, on Hardscrabble
  - Dishevel, on Krilian Selections
  - Coinage, is this even in an album?[2] Dude makes a fucking song out of dropping coins.
    - Or watch what he does with a fucking straw...[3]
I've been listening to the guy for over a decade now and he keeps producing great stuff. I also suggest listening to full albums rather than on random.

Side note: he isn't anti-AI. As a ML researcher myself I actually generally like his takes. Use AI to better us, not replace us, not further harm (like Flock), and to make it an extension of us rather than to offload. There's a fuck ton of cool stuff that ML/AI can do and I'm really not sure why we're so hyper-fixated on having it create slop. But hey, I don't get the fixation with human generated slop either. There's two paths we can go with this technology. Either we can use it to drive costs down and produce lower quality stuff quicker or we can use it to make higher quality stuff at the same rate (there's a spectrum of course). I'm already frustrated by the low and declining quality of things, maybe we shouldn't just strap a jet engine to the train already moving that direction...

[0] https://www.discogs.com/artist/67855-The-Flashbulb

[1] https://bennjordan.bandcamp.com/album/old-trees-1999-2011

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyIu2-dSNyY

[3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZLPCGEbHoDI