Currently listening to: Godmode by Nine Inch Nails
Hello, friend.
What do you listen to when you need to lock in?
I’m at my office in Manhattan—18th floor, a small sea of computer stations. Among them, you find me: headphones on, double screens ablaze, fingers flying across a clackety old keyboard.
An unexpected fire drill at work. Not alarms in the building, but an emergency response to a client’s extensive comments on a slide deck we’ve been developing. High stakes.
Another team member is out. Can I sub in and handle it? It’ll take the entire day. Let me clear my calendar.
As I work through the changes, the world around me dims. My vision tunnels in on my cursor, each mouse click bringing me closer to completion of my task. I sift through the tens of tabs open on my browser, cross comparing data, sorting through the muck, processing the key information, translating it into copy and actionable instructions for the art directors.
I’m wired in.
Every 12-16 minutes, I check the clock. The day is speeding by like the taxis down 18 stories on the streets of this bustling city. Every 8 minutes or less, I check my messages. A ping from my partner, from my direct report, from my supervisor. Group chat thread, email, email, email. I see it all in my peripherals, ignoring the noise for a period of time until I systematically clear the notifications to maintain order.
I am making progress. There are only 13 pages in this piece, but each of them is dense and requires careful consideration, rewrites, rearrangements. I jump on calls to workshop ideas with the Art team. Let’s design a new graphic here, adjust the contrast there. How can we fill this space? How can we make this all fit on one page?
I’m assessing, processing. What is the story flow? Where are the necessary footnotes? What’s the key takeaway?
I’m wired in.
It’s coming down to the wire now. I’ve got one last meeting before EOD, and one page left to address.
I pause, go to the large conference room—it’s our whole agency calling in from various offices and remote locations. I crack open a beer—it’s 4:30 and this is one of those team camaraderie affairs.
The meeting takes place. They announce the winner of a weekly trivia question: how many members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are there? Around 11,000, I had remembered when they asked the day before—a tidbit I somehow picked up while watching the Oscars the prior weekend. I win trivia and some sort of voucher I can eventually turn in for a gift card when I have enough of them.
The meeting ends. I briefly chat with a coworker from a different department and his boss whom I’ve never met. We talk about movies and awards. What was that one about that thing? I answer. Oh yeah, it had that one older actor, what was his name? Stellan Skarsgård, I say.
We politely bid each other goodbye. I return to my desk and replace my headphones. I take a deep breath.
I finish the edits on the final page. Even though it’s after hours now, my boss calls me just to check in, aware of the day’s toil. We both vent a little and feel better. We have a plan for Friday to ensure all of this resolves and we can meet our deadline by Monday morning.
I hang up, close my laptop. I open another—my personal. I have another meeting at 6 for a personal project. Given the timing, I stay at the office, posting up in a conference room.
At 7, I finally pack up to leave. The office is mostly empty now, save a handful of people. I wonder what deadlines they’re working toward that they’re here so late. One of them is a guy I saw when I had first arrived this morning just before 9. He had already been at his computer, headphones on, typing away. I half-laugh to myself, thinking about him sitting at his desk around the clock—never sleeping, never leaving, always wired in.
The Living Music List
Hello again, friend. I hope you enjoyed today’s reflection—and I hope you’ve had a productive week. I also hope you don’t stress over work too much. Life is too short to break down over slide decks (talking to myself here).
I find music helps when deadlines are close and my fingers are tired. Here’s some new music for your headphones when need to get wired in (or maybe zoned out).
Happy listening.
Fortune by dreamwarper (album / drone) [Independent]
We all get by with a little help from our friends, don’t we? Missouri-based ambient artist dreamwarper agrees! Fortune is anything but a solo effort, with most tracks being born out of collaborations with fellow artists—it almost feels like a new Studio Obscura compilation with dreamwarper as the master curator. But interweaved are indeed a healthy handful of solo tracks which demonstrate dreamwarper’s drone capabilities, meshing lush pads and spaced out frequencies that advance and recede like celestial waves. All around, it’s a super chilled out collection that lasts a couple hours—somehow perfect for both a workday morning and a sleepy afternoon.
F/T/W by S4/ (album / dark ambient, glitch) [Independent]
An email arrives in my inbox. A DIY debut album from an artist in Sardinia. I press play and I’m immediately reeled in by the noisy texture, the glitching electricity of the sound. But are those bird calls blended in? And the synths that seem to constantly be falling, shimmering, and echoing around me. It reminds me of The Twilight Zone, like a shot of a black and white film that starts with the camera quite far away from a subject, then slowly zooms in until eventually, you’re close enough to see beads of sweat leaking out from their pores. All 5 tracks here feel essentially like that. Dark, gritty, ominous, mechanical, hypnotic, calculated. If that sounds like your kind of dark ambient album, give F/T/W a spin and see where you wind up.
Liminal Tides by Appleblim (album / experimental electronic, dub) [quiet details]
My 2025 Ambient Label of the Year awardee quiet details dropped yet another gem of a record this week with Appleblim’s Liminal Tides. If you don’t mind some beats in your ambient, this dubby, psychedelic venture will reward you with a unique listening experience that you can almost feel as if you were holding it in your hand. The lurking, bubbling nature of both Gaseous and Globule remind me of acid rain muted as it collides with my roof, its colorful mist fogging up my window and flecking vibrant particles across the pane. Warmth calls up memories of trip-hop or lowkey DnB that would get me through my subway transfers as I move about the city. This record fits like a glove with today’s theme.
Season Cycle: Spring by Ed Herbers (album / minimalist, ambient piano) [Passed Recordings]
A bonus rec this week: Ed Herbers’ 2026 seasonal ambient series continues with its second iteration. You may recall when I recommended the first—Season Cycle: Winter—back in issue #72 on January 2. Now that we’ve begun to thaw out of winter’s cold hold, there’s a sense of reawakening, reemerging. The world seems brighter as the days grow longer and warmer. Ed’s music follows suit with minimalist piano that slowly, gently dances like a ballerina atop translucent layers of drones. Though brighter, there still remains a sense of waiting, of only partial fullness, which beautifully represents this season’s signature work-in-progress sort of feeling. A shedding of skin, a slow turn to the nearing sun. An expectation. An awaiting.
P.S. There’s a listening party today at 12 pm EDT if you’d like to celebrate the Vernal Equinox with Ed and the gang. RSVP here.
ELEPHANT by Adam O’Farrill (album / jazz) [Out of Your Head Records]
A jazz quartet covering a Ryuichi Sakamoto track? That was the treat that enticed me, but it was all the way at the end of this album of 9 tracks that somehow seems to sprawl across it’s only 50-minute runtime. Thankfully, the whole ride turned out to be a treat. Led by trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, the small group also includes Yvonne Rogers on piano/synth, Russell Holzman on drums, and Walter Stinson on double bass—and, as any great jazz group should allow, each member shines in their own right as much as this is a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts affair. At times hallucinogenic, and at others quite traditional, ELEPHANT is a jazz record that always seems to be stomping forward in rhythm, with O’Farrill acting as the beast’s trumpeting trunk, expressing how much fun it’s having along the way.
Written into Changes by Avalon Emerson & the Charm (album / indie pop) [Dead Oceans]
Finishing our list this week (I know, only 2 albums in this list, but I gave ya an extra ambient rec today!) with something light and bright. This album of indie pop from Avalon Emerson & the Charm finds a sweet spot between an indie band and dancey electronics, wrapped up around her lead vocals that hold one’s attention like the best frontpeople do. The production is quite crisp and satisfying across these tracks, with vocal layers and drum tones carefully considered. Still exploring this one, but wanted to share it right away since it grabbed me so quickly.
Music List Reminders: Bandcamp links provided first when available—if an album is not on Bandcamp, then YouTube, Soundcloud, or other preview links are provided. List format: Title by Artist (release type / approximate genre or subgenres) [Label].
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
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This made my day — thank you for listening and for putting it into words so well. The Twilight Zone comparison is exactly the kind of discomfort I was going for. Fellow "wired in" person here, also headphones on, just on a different continent.
Thanks for including qd47 Appleblim!