#60: The Symbolism of 60
Making meaning from numbers + an issue packed with great new music
Currently listening to: My Full Name by Madison Cunningham
Hello, friend.
Before jumping into today’s reflection, I’ve got 2 quick reminders/updates for you:
2 weeks until dyschronometria arrives
I’m beyond excited to share my first full-length album with you all. Coming September 5, dyschronometria is one soul’s meandering journey through a timeless city. While the record defies categorization, it delivers a sound that is a potent mixture of experimental electronic soundscapes, ambient atmospheres, industrial field recordings, and electroacoustic rhythms.
Over the next 2 weeks, I’ll be publishing 9 more chapters in the timeless tale of dyschronometria series—a short story accompanying the album, with each chapter inspired by one of the 10 tracks.
Pre-orders are live on Bandcamp (digital and limited edition CD) and you can also pre-save on some major streaming platforms to hear an exclusive single, carnival above the cavern.
Tomorrow: An Instrumental Conversation with Six Missing
On August 8, composer and sound designer Six Missing released his latest album, Without Mind. The album is a meditative, cerebral portal to another plane of existence—that may sound absurd, but it was 100% true to my listening experience.
I was very excited to have a chance to interview TJ Dumser, the man behind Six Missing, and I think it was my favorite interview yet. TJ went into extraordinary depth sharing stories of his musical background, the creation of the album, his production process with modular synthesis, and more.
The interview will be published as part of my Instrumental Conversations series tomorrow (August 23) at 10 AM EST, so get ready for a really fun weekend read paired with a full listen of Without Mind.
Hello again, friend.
60 issues. 60 seconds. 60 minutes.
We humans are funny in the way we make meaning from numbers—pure units of measurement, data, logic. 60 is one that is loaded with meaning, primarily due to its role in telling time in sexagesimal (base-60) systems like ours.
60 feels like an ending. The end of a minute. The end of an hour.
Don’t worry—this is not the end of this newsletter, if that’s what you were thinking.
Just like how 60 is hopefully not the end of a life, though it used to be for many when lifespans were shorter. Now, it can signal the age of retirement, though that’s getting later too. In China, 60 is a special birthday because it means you’ve experienced the full zodiac of 12 animal years 5 times, with 5 connecting to the 5 elements (Wuxing—wood, fire, earth, metal, water).
We see so much in numbers, even within a single digit.
So why is 60 so special? If you google the symbolism of 60, you’ll find articles connecting it to ideas of family, completeness, abundance, universal karma, divine balance—and that’s not to mention the plethora of biblical references to the number 60.
Can one number really hold all that meaning? Numerology is an ancient belief system that has been held across cultures, religions, and continents for thousands of years.
In music, there are tons of numbers like beats per minute (BPM), time signatures (eg, 4/4), and chords (eg, major 7 chord). The number 60 can refer to the middle C note in the MIDI protocol, or 60 BPM, which means 1 beat per second—when connected to a human heartbeat, that feels even more meaningful with a perfect heartbeat-per-second rhythm.
Again, we see some essence of perfection, completeness, and balance in the number 60. When I’ve worked on meditation music in my own practice, I tend to go for that 60 BPM sweet spot. It just feels right, in the way that 60 just feels complete or balanced to many of us.
Typically, I don’t read into numerology much—angel numbers and all that. But there’s something about 60. When I played tackle (American) football at age 12, I wore the number 60. I never wore it in any other sport I played, but it was just sort of given to me. I had forgotten about it until just now.
There’s something about 60…
What number resonates with you? Why? Why do we see such deep meaning in numbers? How do numbers play a role in your music?
Let me know in the comments, friend. Thank you for sticking with me through 60 meaningful issues of Hum, Buzz, & Hiss.
The Living Music List
Hello again (again), friend. I hope you enjoyed today’s reflection and keep an eye out for any special numbers of yours today. Speaking of numbers, I have a number of new releases below for you to check out. (Okay, that was bad.)
Happy listening.
Ambient
FIRST 3:
Lauluja Kiville by Pyhä Vuori (album / drone, minimalist) [Independent]^
Finnish ambient artist Samuel Laukkanen makes his debut as Pyhä Vuori with this 6-track album of minimalist, experimental drone music. It’s deep and quite eerie at times, though there’s also a lingering cinematic quality about it, like it could score the scenes of a slow-burn noir film. There’s a motif of something like a marimba or xylophone across a few of the tracks that adds a mysterious flare to the mix too. All in all, a pleasant and intriguing little debut from Laukkanen, especially when listened to with good headphones.
the places across the water by amble (album / ambient piano, field recordings) [Home Normal]
Australian pianist and composer Aaron Gleeson takes his first turn on Home Normal as amble in the (barely solid) form of the places across the water. These piano improvisations are delicate and somewhat melancholic, gently raising memories of many kinds from the lower half of my mind. The flashes of the past are made slightly clearer with help from the subtle noise of the field recordings providing texture behind the piano’s substance. This is a record that one can blink and realize its over, simply because they completely lost themselves in it almost without realizing. That isn’t to say it’s ignorable—in fact, it’s so enthralling despite its tender, unobtrusive nature that you’ll remember every moment of listening to it like it was a decade ago.
Grievous Landscapes by Drones Over Dufferin (album / ambient country, field recordings) [Imaginary North]
While I’ve only had a chance to hear the first of the 4 longform tracks on this new album from Drones Over Dufferin, I’m already hooked on the mix of steel guitar and field recordings taken at Joshua Tree. Melodic and pastoral, this release still appears to be ambient enough for me to include here—I don’t even really care because Twentynine Palms Highway is everything I want in an ambient country track (and does genre even matter? I must write about that at some point…) Reminiscent of the way Brian Eno used steel guitar on Deep Blue Day or Yo La Tengo’s eternally peaceful Green Arrow, this sound somehow feels like the dry desert, the endless ocean, the green countryside, and the depths of space all at once.
IN THE QUEUE:
Alien: Earth (Original Soundtrack) by Jeff Russo (album / TV soundtrack) [FX Productions]
The Fecund Wood by On Idyl (album / drone) [Passed Recordings]
Monologue by Aiko Takahashi (album / electroacoustic, minimalist) [quiet details]
All Genres
FIRST 3:
Melodia by SODAPOP (album / bedroom pop) [Independent]^
If you’re into the twinkling blend of indie bedroom pop and disco from artists like Dayglow or Still Woozy, then I hope you’re thirsty for an ice-cold glass of SODAPOP. This new album is a rainbow of sound ready to quench your most melancholy moments with its happy-go-lucky vibes. Despite them, the artist explains that there’s a little bit of happy and sad in the melodies that soundtrack the world of Melodia:
“There are a lot of major 7 chords on the album—for the non-music folk, that’s like playing a major and a minor chord at the same time, a happy and a sad chord at the same time. And coincidentally (or not), that’s one of the main lyrical themes that kept coming up for me, that sort of happy-sad emotion, which I guess I’ve been feeling a lot of this past year. Whether it’s nostalgia or desire or how someone makes you feel or the color purple.”
DIMENSIONS by Michael Künstle x Matteo Pagamici (album / contemporary classical) [Independent]^
The hook of DIMENSIONS isn’t that it’s an album of imaginary film scores, but that it goes beyond traditional orchestra composition to utilize the full range of instruments together as if they were a synthesizer. The 2 composers, who have both done various works for film, collaborated to record what became a sort of “musical travel diary” they recorded at Abbey Road with a 92-piece orchestra. They wound up “writing parts for each individual instrument, composing delay effects, LFOs, white noise, and more, which they then played live, completely analog.” The results are tangible—it still holds that same grand emotion and natural fluidity of a live orchestra scoring a film, but there are little audible quirks throughout that differentiate it from anything I’ve heard an orchestra accomplish.
Baby by Dijon (album / R&B/soul) [R&R/Warner Records]
I wrote briefly about Dijon’s raw and real songwriting back in February, but beyond his writing, he is one of today’s most intriguing producers. He’s had a hand in albums by the likes of Bon Iver, Justin Bieber, and Charli XCX. He’s been compared to one-of-a-kind musicians like Frank Ocean thanks to his unique approach to sound that often features bombastic, blown-out instrumentation that’s somehow also condensed and harnessed with great care. There’s always a grit—that rawness I mentioned—but there’s also a vibrant shine, especially evident on tracks like Yamaha or Rewind. This album already honestly feels timeless—like it could soundtrack a blockbuster bildungsroman film or be heard through the brick walls of a 50-person Brooklyn indie venue.
IN THE QUEUE:
Bugland by No Joy (album / shoegaze) [Hand Drawn Dracula]
Bury the Key by TOPS (album / soft pop) [Ghostly International]
Free by Kid Cudi (album / pop) [Wicked Awesome]
Guitar by Mac Demarco (album / singer-songwriter) [Mac’s Record Label]
GUSH by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (album / electronic) [Nettwerk]
DUMB by Emma Louise & Flume (album / experimental electronic pop) [Independent]
Starlight Divergence by Torus & Danny L Harle (album / electronic) [XL Recordings]
Music List Reminders: Bold and ^ denote reader-submitted work. Bandcamp links provided for every record that is available on the platform. If an album is not on Bandcamp, YouTube or other streaming links are provided. List format: Title by Artist (release type / genre or subgenres) [Label].
One More Thing: $99 Discount at SoundMorph
A friend of the Hum, Buzz, & Hiss community, koyl, shared in our Discord that the company SoundMorph sent out a no-strings-attached $99 discount code via their newsletter. SoundMorph makes a variety of sound effect libraries and software, and you can easily get 1 or 2 products for free with this discount. I just picked up their DUST synth plugin and I’m super excited to dive into it.
Here’s the coupon code (hopefully it’s still live!): SoundMorphCash99
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
Afterword—Let’s Get In Touch
Are you an artist, a label owner, or a member of the press? Want to share an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com or join our Discord Community. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/electronic/experimental.
thanks for including qd38 Aiko Takahashi 🙏