Microtonal MCU, Unique Meme, Bad Music
Hello. We recommend three things, as we do: a critical review of viral “microtonal pop” music, the sensory-historical compression in interpreting and experiencing media, and a consideration of the taxonomies of “badness” in music.
Recommendation: Maddie Ashman - “Dark”
Maybe you’ve come across the viral “microtonal pop” videos of Maddie Ashman. This started to appear on my social media feed months back: a young London composer/performer wearing Meredith Monk styled braids playing expressive, but contrived-feeling bits of classical slide guitar and microtonal vocal runs in a series of viral videos. Sort of interesting, sort of unsettling; but I think polarizing, without question. Her recordings and videos read alternately as a kind of cynical academic music gimmick for progressive TikTok, or as a sincere innovation within the music-theory-friendly corners of pop/folk music. For me, the microtonality is both irritating and fascinating. I’ve been thinking and writing about the relationship between “serious music” ideology and vernacular culture for quite a while (essays on Jacob Collier, Joshua Kyan Aalampour). And while Ashman’s music is, really, much better than these, it stands against a general backdrop of intellectually defeated academic impositions of high theoretical music concepts into a vernacular form.
Ashman’s EP Her Side has some special writing and performing on it, and lends a gentler touch with microtonality than does the viral single “Dark.” Throughout the EP, just intonation is subtly employed in a handful of passages - creeping into the back of dense harmonic textures and distorting context in certain moments of well-handled suspense. However, the tonality is most pronounced as it appears and reappears in the best and most impactful moments of formal and emotional climax, as if hitting the conceptual “overdrive pedal.” The elements of sophistication and musicality which drive the form up to these points deflate under the pressure of an obsessive microtonal proof. And this gesture wouldn’t feel so unsettling if it wasn’t so recognizable in its calculation.
It’s hard for me not to psychoanalyze this as a kind of apology for the failures and insufficiencies of all music, as a whole: as if the teleology of serious music (and its unique access to the deeper physical realities of sound) alone can ultimately transact with the proper and progressive liberatory moves, in a world of otherwise intellectually embarrassing, indefensible popular music. Regardless of Ashman’s general and private beliefs about music (which I have no question are much more nuanced), her particular emotional formalism treats microtonality as a kind of magical mystery blanket to throw over the unsightly sincerity and personalism of music. Its calculation feels less like a device to elevate the mystery of its musical moment, than to obfuscate and render the musician under a gauze of intellectual significance.
Really, this is a familiar and relatable position that resonates within a decades-long dispositional drift with regards to the gestures and systems employed in contemporary art. Here, the techniques or signifiers of “microtonality” don’t disrupt, augment or establish some aesthetic coherence, as much as they territorialize a “high” concept in relation to the optimized cultural economics of the contemporary composer/performer. Ashman’s music, and the object of my criticism therein, is nowhere near in scale to the soulless hypercomplexity of Jacob Collier’s baby einstein folk/jazz, and is lightyears in sophistication and sensitivity beyond Joshua Kyan Aalampour’s psychotic classical LARP; but even as I admire the talent and intentionality within (the mostly, algorithmically invisible portion of) her output, it feels probably more salient to take the time to identify and criticize the aspect of her thinking on this ideological spectrum, than those more egregious examples. Even in more artful hands, within this cynical creative psychology of the 2020’s, “microtonality” (and other similar symbols of elite music systematization) sinks into a sad state of memory and projection, where music theories become the elaborate masks for fan-fiction costumes at the “serious music” panel of Comic Con.
We are free to await and enjoy an infinity of spinoff series, as more and more generations of music students find themselves tasked with the problem of reinventing the intellectual properties of the 20th century. But the “End Game” in a LaMonte young extended cinematic universe is neverending: he already drew a line and he already followed it. I don’t think that’s what brought us here.
—Alec Sturgis
Recommendation: Woody Guthrie - “Dust Cain’t Kill Me”
Shortform video frequently appeals for the deep particularity of its subject matter. I am describing “esoteric” or “niche” meme content, not TikTok restaurant reviews. We enjoy the memes that we enjoy because they surprise us while appealing to our mental model of the world.
When one of these videos is of quality, it takes just a moment to comprehend its arrangement of words, sounds, and images despite their cumulative resemblance of few other things on earth. You watch it and you get it. The vibe transmits. One rarely processes with concentration. For whatever reason, this type of audiovisual information requires little energy to receive.
There’s a video that shows two screenshots of someone listening to Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads on Spotify. First they listen to “Dust Cain’t Kill Me,” then they listen to “Dust Pneumonia Blues.” Overlaid text says: “I love this album but WHO chose the order of these songs.” One of the top comments says: “Mf listening to the first album 😭😭😭,” which is very funny.
It takes about four sentences to describe such a video meaningfully in written language, but just a moment to comprehend with the eyes and ears. We are prompted to compare two media formats and their relative velocities, which we might think about in terms of informational compression or attentional resource consumption. Linear development versus all-at-onceness. According to neuroscientist Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle, we predictively model the world in order to reduce surprise, act on it accordingly, and then update the model to account for improbabilities that contradict previous model-states. So, I’m wondering: is such a video surprising – in the probabilistic sense – or not?
This week, we recommend the first album.
—Alexander Iadarola
Recommendation: Skrillex - SOMA / Junior Varsity - Ready - EP
We at 2020MG are generally interested in a lot of “bad music.” Speculating on bad music is like the Moby Dick of musical thinking—we chase it, hunt it—are terrorized and haunted by it. In love with it. Bad music is almost a myth to me. It’s a death knell for my own musical reflection. A stoppage. I often want to imagine the worst possible music. What could that be? When I start to imagine it, the worst possible music starts to emerge as some of the best possible music. I guess I don’t know what bad music is.
More generally, within the context of recommending music, I think it’s important to listen to and recommend bad, shit ass music. It’s like asking a friend to try some gross food, just for the thrill of it. Without trying to recreate a philosophical argument between aesthetic objectivism or relativism, I’ll try to elucidate what I’m saying in a roundabout way.
I currently maintain a set of musical aesthetic values that feel generally futuristic, optimistic, and at-times contradictory. I enjoy zeitgeists and whim-oriented musical moods, and can’t shake that historical, aesthetic, idiomatic, and technological musical breakthroughs are still possible. I appreciate the clashing and confused perspectives many hold about and around music today—often divorced from participatory frameworks outside of the production of subjectivity through capital or consumption. Still, they are entangled in nuanced, desire-laden flows that feel mystical, romantic, emergent. Overall, I’ve found value in the devaluation in music. I appreciate artifice and its mechanics and tactics. I enjoy the process of deception within the perception of sound—recounting sound-experiences after-the-fact when music becomes warped and cobbled with weird adjectives, narratives, and opinions. I believe in how sincere irony can be; and, I believe in how ironic sincerity can be. I also often find it annoying to quibble over questions around authenticity, while also getting blasted by music’s possible authenticity. It’s all a bit of a mess.
This doesn’t really help in identifying what bad music is. Bad music can feel besides the point for me—but at the same time the point.
I’ve been listening to Skrillex’s new album SOMA this week. A lot of the analysis I wrote a few months ago on seeing Fred again… in NYC applies to Mr. Skrillex in a more “first wave” sense. He’s evolved quite a bit over the last 15+ years. Plenty of people think his music is bad—his name almost has the “Nickelback stink,” steeped in irony and overreaction in either direction. In 2026, his music is pretty normal; yet, there are still some surprising moments within his monstrous production and over-octane bass. SOMA has a Brazilian flavor. This makes sense given that’s where a lot of things are happening and evolving in electronic music right now. I’m sure I’d be thrilled to hear it IRL. I got a kick out of listening to it this past week—not particularly moved or excited, nor disgusted. His music feels like the equivalent of eating fast food for me. Enjoyable for sure—high calorie, easy, probably bad for me.
In contrast, I also tried to listen to this band Junior Varsity’s new EP Ready. I didn’t particularly like it, although I thought about the production a bit. The album epitomizes the “youth mode” aughts-era trend that’s become vectorized through plenty of recent up-and-coming duos and groups. I was trying to imagine this music, and the pull toward some of these aughts-era sounds, as referencing the abandoned adolescent inside each millennial heart. It actually made me feel really sad. The track “Radio” leans fully into Phoenix and Whitest Boy Alive. To listen to this overly rendered nostalgia-bait is also probably bad for me. Psychologically, bad for me.
But would I call either Skrillex or Junior Varsity bad music? Not really. Maybe they are bad examples of bad music. Plenty of people can’t stomach either example—for varied and different reasons. But I guess I can.
—Nick James Scavo