There have been some high-profile deaths lately, but none of them punched me harder than this one.

Gilbert continued to be positive throughout his cancer battle. “I have my crying moments where, like everyone, I have to let it out,” he said. “But I like that we can turn it around into something positive… It’s always been just to inspire and grow a community of people that want to go to our shows and smile and have a good time.”

I've had Listen Up! on constant rotation this year. The entire album is wall-to-wall positivity and encouragement, keeping my spirits high even if things seem bleak.

Life will kick you down Be sure of that But stand up, grab it's throat, and yell, "you've met your match."

Turns out Cor64 also has covers of Ken's Theme (from Street Fighter 2) and the Rocky IV Training Montage song, so I guess I found a new favorite band today.

Can you imagine a better gig than touring the country playing live covers of Nintendo 64 soundtracks?

I’ve been listening to music regularly since I had gotten my first walkman in my childhood. I had always been a boring mainstream pop person. Before the internet and mobile phones I listened to music for long commutes. But I think this is the first time in my life I am listening to music – specifically jazz – at every opportunity. I can listen to it while reading or writing because I listen to non-vocal jazz. In fact, I think it helps me focus more on these cerebral activities because it puts my mind in some sonic bubble.

[...]

Listening to jazz: it soothes my brain. I don’t really understand why. Is it because the brain needs to focus on the music and hence it stops existing in chaos? Is it because the brain has a primal connection to music? Is it the invisible math that inherently exists in music?

Same for me, but lately, it's been punk music. Specifically, upbeat pop punk music with optimistic lyrics.

Further, I'm getting more aware of what music works for me in different contexts. When I'm doing computer work¹, I need music that's more like jazz or lo-fi. When I'm doing housework, punk is the ticket. When I am lifting weights, I need aggressive rap.

Also appreciate the recommendation for "This Is Your Brain On Music", gonna put that book in the queue!

Saw this on Noisy Deadlines, had to give it a go.

Introduce yourself with five albums that have shaped you:

1. Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998)
2. The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America (1995)
3. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (2013)
4. The Rezillos - Can't Stop The Rezillos (1978)
5. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere (2006)

I spent several days on vacation thinking about this, but ultimately I scrolled through my janky, vibe-coded music library page and went with my first instinct like Ariadne.

If you end up doing something like this on your own blog, please let me know!

Before running all of these tests, I actually did this the old-fashioned way. With pencil and paper and thinking. This entire project was inspired by putting Blonde on an 8-track and from experience, I can tell you this is a hard problem. The trouble is, I can’t tell you how I did it. There’s some human heuristic I used, definitely not an algorithm, and I can’t write it down. This seems to be what humans in 1977 who gave a damn did too. This is not what the dude making the Sublime 8-track did.

So I can’t tell you how to do this without testing all possible permutations, but human intuition can get pretty close. This sort of thing has shown up in other fields, like Foldit, an online ‘let humans perfect protein folding’ game. Classical computer algorithms can only get so close, and humans watching these classical algorithms got frustrated when they saw a solution the computer didn’t. Humans can see stuff that classical algorithms can’t. And now there’s a dozen Nature publications to prove it.

But now we have LLMs. They’re also a black box, and if you throw enough tokens and context at them, they’ll out-perform humans. They won’t be able to tell you how they did it, either.

This isn’t a victory for humans over algorithms or LLMs over humans, or anything like that. It’s just a fact that a dead and derided music format left behind a benchmark where human intuition beat classical methods that wouldn’t be in a textbook for a decade after the work was done. And half a lifetime later, LLMs would outperform humans for reasons we can’t really inspect.

So that’s something.

This was such a cool experiment and a fascinating head-to-head comparison of LLMs vs. human in the esoteric domain of "8-track music production".

I jumped head first into the punk/metal pool this month. Here's what's been bumping on repeat for me lately:

Less Than Jake - Anthem

I remember a friend of mine (whose birthday is today, ironically) playing this album in his basement on repeat as we tried to 100% Super Mario 64. Good, clean ska fun. Most of the albums on this list contain songs that I haven’t really listened to, but while chopping up the tree in the back yard these last couple weeks, I’ve had time to immerse myself. And I gotta say, listening to the lyrics of “She’s Gonna Break Soon,” I found myself with a literal lol.

Neck Deep - Life’s Not Out to Get You

I was working out of a Starbucks near my parents house this week and listened to this album the entire day while coding. I reached out to them in the morning to see if they wanted to grab lunch, and sure enough, an hour later, we were at Snuffy’s Malt Shop where my dad peer pressured me into eating a malt. The album whales too.

Mumford and Sons - Prizefighter

My Current Vibes playlist contains albums for every mood, and this album fills the mood for “Sunday morning.” There are a couple of songs that hit right when I need them: Alleycat asks: “’Is this all there is?’ What do you mean, is this not enough for you?” Clover reminds me to “slow down.” Cannot wait to see them again this summer!

The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation

I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral came across KTIM while I was cleaning out my garage¹, and I fell over myself to add this album to current vibes. It turns out that particular song combines elements from several other songs on the album. I dunno, I used to dog on myself for enjoying emo, but 38 year old Tim ain’t got time to dog on hisself anymore. I’m in my emo era.

Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance

I played an unreal amount of Madden ’04 as a kid, and that’s how I discovered Thrice. I think this album is classified as “post-hardcore”, but there’s hints of emo and pop-punk in there as well. So many of these songs bring me back to high school.

System of a Down - Toxicity

Again, brings me right back to high school. We’re working towards converting the garage into a music zone; as soon as that’s good to go, I’m gonna fill it with a drum kit and play this album front to back. Terribly, but enthusiastically.

The Rezillos - Can’t Stand the Rezillos

If I had to pick a number one album right now, it’s this one. Still makes me chuckle thinking about discovering this one from a “What’s in your Bag” segment at Amoeba Records with Tony Hawk. My favorite song right now is ​(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures​, which makes me think of my wife every time I hear it.

Pynch - Howling at a Concrete Moon

Another one that’s been on the Current Vibes rotation for a couple years now. 2009 is how I discovered this band, but there’s really not a bad song on this album. Some of these albums are useful for processing how depressing our world can be, and Pynch has a natural ability to write lyrics that speak to finding your way in spite of the hardship. Put another way: listening to this album makes me feel less lonely.

Pynch - Beautiful Noise

This album is less cynical than its predecessor Howling at a Concrete Moon while maintaining the relatable storytelling. I get Post-Punk / New-Wave stuck in my head a lot.

New Found Flory - Listen Up!

I’m so glad these boys are still rocking as hard as they were back in high school. The lyrics in this album are chock full of uplifting messages (​Laugh It Off​ reminds us to not take life so seriously, You Got This is self evident, 100% reminds me of the ‘Do The Thing’ theme of this summer).

Kisses - The Heart of the Nightlife

I burned this album to a CD-R back in college and listened to it constantly. It was another one that came across KTIM and it’s filled in the spot for “music to groove to while doing housework”.

I Prevail - Lifelines

I got to see my nephew play baseball last weekend. These 10/11 year olds have ​walk up music​. Can you believe that? The high school one town over just got a jumbotron. Freaking wild. Anyway, someone’s walkup song was Chaos and I had to Shazam it. This album reminds me of ​Hybrid Theory​: a genre-blurring record with screaming and melody, metal and electronic. I guess it’s “metalcore”.

The Cords - The Cords

Music that sounds upbeat and positive with depressing and hopeless lyrics is extremely compelling to me. I know I’ve said this about this album in the past, but I was hooked on this jangle pop album from the first 8 bars. October is my current favorite jam (“It’s not that it’s gone, it’s just not the same as it was” hits hard).

Cheekface - It’s Sorted

Similar to Pynch, I listen to this album and feel less lonely. ​Popular 2’​s observations about everyone being the unwitting stars of several Ring camera movies makes me snort laugh every time I think about it. I also frequently get I Am Continuing to Do my Thing stuck in my head. Excited to see these guys in October!

blink-182 - ONE MORE TIME...

Everything I wrote about New Found Glory’s new album applies to this one. ANTHEM PART 3 continues to be the theme for 2026.

The Beths - Straight Line Was A Lie

Everything I wrote about The Cords and Pynch applies to this gang as well. I saw them perform around my birthday last year, and I still often think about how the backing vocals aren’t actually Elizabeth, but rather the boys singing falsetto. If I were going to be in a band, I’d want to be a drummer for a band like this. Or The Rezillos. Or Cheekface. Or The Cords. Or System of a Down. Maybe blink, if I practice a lot.

If any of these albums or descriptions remind you of other albums, shoot them my way!

Well gang, I think we can call it a day. Nothing's gonna top this.

This profile on the Fire in the Mountains Festival is a must-read.

I’ve been sinking deeper into a rabbit hole of punk, but this article made me want to move laterally toward exploring metal.

Tangentally related: I was browsing Apple Music the other day and saw they remastered Dethklok’s original album.

Tracking every single song I listen to seems to be a habit I built a long time ago and can't seem to shake.¹ My tracking tool of choice continues to be last.fm.

I recently stumbled across this site that downloads your entire history of tracks and presents the data with some seriously fun charts and graphs.

You can look at mine if you aren't a last.fm user yourself. I could stare at the race chart all day.

And tonight, the category is: covers that go hard.

These madlads are back in the kitchen throwing down hard to perhaps my favorite System song.

How dare they. How dare they.

My daughter is gonna go nuts for that alto sax solo.

Of course that song won a Grammy this year.

From that first strum in Tema de Guile, I was hooked.

Edit:

I woke up this morning and the algorithm delivered me more SFII content, this time in the form of Japanese jazz fusion.