Flat Tire, Ear Procedure, Millennial Text-Sound

2020 Music Group

May 08, 2026

This week, car tire cadence discourse, ear nose and throat discussion, and literature review of the millennial text-sound mileau.

Recommendation: Flat Tire, Mark Fell & Drumming GP - “Intra”

I have a flat tire. So I’ve been driving around looking for the exact right one. It’s a special kind of tire it seems: even when it is flat, you can still drive on it, and I have been. This is pretty incredible. I went to the first shop and left and came back and the man told me to go down the street. I went there. He said go down further down the street. The third man said he could have it by 5PM. That is good for me.

I’m wondering this week about what elements of consistency allow for a tire to persist even in a state of total deflation. Is there some form with the wheel that can’t be compromised? Is there an inner inflation beyond the external tire that allows it to remain intact and in a navigable state?

I’m listening to Mark Fell & Drumming GP’s 2018 “Intra” today (“computer generated rhythm for microtonal metallophones, performed by Drumming Grupo De Percussao, at Fundacao de Serralves, 2017), in contemplation of this type of circular interiority. The percussive synthesis of metalophones mirrors an internal consistency of the wheel, the hubcap, and the arrhythmic period of layered minor percussive phrases feels like the oblong exterior of a broken circle in motion. I suppose I’m celebrating and recommending that today.

—Alec Sturgis

Recommendation: Suicide - “Love You”

My ENT and I get in arguments. They are friendly arguments and they are productive. He says he doesn’t mind. He wants to know how I feel about getting my sinuses microwaved. That sounds good. I need to get an x-ray first and then we’ll meet again and argue in a few weeks.

I originally scheduled this most recent visit because my left ear felt muffled and dull, in addition to the usual congestion symptoms. I couldn’t hear well. After the visit, the inner ear started to feel submerged, and then it started ringing. First the frequencies were high, and then they got lower. On Sunday the sound and pressure intensified to a degree that made me nervous.

I fast-walked to urgent care and underwent a peculiar procedure. It felt very DIY but it was very effective. The problem ceased immediately. I was then able to hear in a way that I haven’t heard in years. Music sounded unbelievably full. I got off on Delancey Essex and was overwhelmed by sonic detail. I forgot sound could do some of these things. I had been wondering if I loved music less than I used to.

—Alexander Iadarola

Recommendation: Reflecting on Millenial “Text Sound” Music from ~2017 - 2022

This week, I’ve been thinking about nouveau “text sound” music that became vogue in certain experimental music circles spanning roughly 2017 to 2022. Throughout this time, noise, DIY, or computer musicians were compelled to use text, speech, and spoken word, alongside concrete sampling techniques and concept-forward compositional structures. It was a time where Fluxus and post-Cagean music history seemed active in informing the production of new digital music—where the “word score,” as it was expanded upon by La Monte Young’s famous Composition 1960 #10 (which stated simply “draw a straight line and then follow it”), created explorative reciprocity between text and sound. Text was used as an expansion on identifying, scoring, and signaling sound, while sound was often conceptually tied to the use of text. The frame of musical composition was one of total possibility. During the late 2010s and early 2020s, there was a clear focus on unveiling histories of experimental music—from the word scores of Dick Higgins, La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, to Annea Lockwood & Allison Knowles’ Womens Work (such as Knowles piece “Proposition” (1962), which stated “make a salad”).

Our recent past’s obsession with 20th century experimental music history showcased a collective enthusiasm in the speculative space of text representing sound, and vice versa, as a unique moment in the development of digital music. Both text and sound cast into the invisible, as formal units of simultaneous legibility, uncertainty, speculation, and loose representation. Digital music’s ability to produce or sample any possible sound created a novel frame for musical production, actively considering the reciprocity of text and sound. The accessibility of digital audio workstations and software also fast-tracked ways of composing and utilizing text—text-to-speech generators, vocoders, sampling, voice actors, etc. were paired with abstract sonic backgrounds. These sounds demanded context; and, many reached for formal or at least paratextual strategies found in the history of experimental music. The years of 2017 to 2022 were also a high-era of “flat memes”—memes specifically focused on a straightforward image and text relationship. Much of this category of experimental music produced during this time was uniquely in conversation with an imagistic memetic compositional framework. Plenty of us were in fact actively producing memes related to experimental music; or, we used them overtly in the promotion of shows, music, albums, and more. While this culture is absolutely still present, it’s more forwardly evolved into short-form video in 2026. Today, to meme about niche music in the way we were doing almost ten years ago seems … wrong.

Right before this time, in September 2016, I conducted an interview with the late composer Alvin Lucier, who passed in 2021 (whose work I am sitting in a room is foundational to this discourse), and Julie Martin, director of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), the nonprofit organization co-founded in 1966 in New York by artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman and engineers Billy Klüver (Martin’s late husband) and Fred Waldhauer. Through Lucier’s inimitable, profound stutter, he told an amazing story about John Cage and David Tudor. Midway through his story, Lucier’s seriousness deepened. He recalled that “all of my composer friends were trying to get their pieces performed by the Boston Philharmonic, while Cage and Tudor filled up their cars with electronics and drove out in the snow.” He told the tale solemnly and with humor. Referring to Cage and Tudor as “these guys,” Lucier pushed on about “Tudor with all his wires, [how] things didn’t work… [how] 10 or 11 people were in the audience… [how] they were traveling through snowstorms, playing their own music while my friends were waiting to have their pieces performed once in their lifetimes.” As he recounted his admiration for the two, his story halted. He recalled the poet and Fluxus co-founder Dick Higgins, proclaiming that he knew, before anyone else, how important these two musicians were. Lucier mused, moved to tears at the thought — “How Dick… how he knew that they were something… How did Dick have the insight?” During the interview, Lucier held his hands to his face and broke down in tears, still blown away how anyone could have.

From 2017 to 2022, the “DIY” and “underground music” communities found a lot of momentum and context within mid-20th century experimental music history—appreciating the simultaneous academic seriousness, free spirited playfulness, true experimentalism, and heartfelt authenticity found in Lucier’s story about Cage, Tudor, and Higgins. Many of us found something like this on the internet—a place where you could both joke around and find serious scattered evidence of this history, forming a brief slant rhyme with a DIY basement show or busted suitcase electronics tour.

The appetite for this musical history seems reduced in 2026. I’ll try to write more on where this text sound dialectic could go in future issues—there’s plenty more to explore there. I’ve also included a little selection of releases that form a snapshot of this 2017 - 2022 era in time below:

Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher: “Stockhausen Syndrome” (2021)

Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher - “ISSUES (What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth)” (2022)

Die Reihe - “Vocoder” (2017)

Die Reihe – “Tragedy In A Sense Is A Kind Of Psychic Flavor Of This Loneliness” (2020)

Jeff Witscher - “Surviving Sound Music” (2019)

Asha Sheshadri - “Interior Monologues” (2022)

Asha Sheshadri - “Looting Index” (2020)

Network Glass - “Twitch” (2020)

Max Eilbacher - “Metabolist Meter” (2020)

Daren Ho - “Videologue 2019” (2020)

Nick James Scavo - “100% PERFECT DEEP LISTENING” (2020)

Matt Carlson - Are You Interested in the Reunion of Winners? (2022)