Listening: Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube (w/visualizations)
Info
Following up the FM soundtrack of Light Crusader with a new original compilation of FM music from the fine folks over at the Sexy Toads And Frogs Friend circle, who skipped volume 12 and went to volume 13 (unless volume 12 is in the works and this one just came out first, or unless volume 1 2 was actually volume 12 too??). This one is the latest of their albums themed after game/computer sound sources, following up ones for the NES’s 2A03 chip and, of course, their MIDI album from two years ago. The contributors here all used whatever gear they felt like using, so there’s a wide variety of FM sound sources present: hardware synths, software synths, chiptune trackers, you name it and it might be on this album in at least one track!
This is a standard STAFFcirc compilation, which means there’s a random assortment of jazz fusion, prog, EDM/IDM, microtonality, cuteness, weirdness, sick ass sound design, I end up writing the same post every time there’s a STAFFcirc release because the collective has musicmaking sensibilities like these that show up every time and I enjoy the result every time. There’s even yet more special guest composers this time! This is like the fourth time this has happened recently.
The first special guest composer is Hiroyuki Mizuno, a really cool guy who I’ve been meaning to get into seriously for years and have yet to (I even have some of his soundtracks all ready to go!). His FM credentials are that he’s been writing music for the Sharp X68000 since the late ’90s, both standalone original compositions and covers as well as game soundtracks for the indie developer Jitensyasougyou. His music that I have heard has been pretty dang neato, a mix of interesting sound programming, Metheny-esque jazziness, and general weirdness.
The other guest composer is John Chowning, the guy who invented FM synthesis. 
I guess a couple of unique things I could point out about this album are, well first off there are two tracks that are explicitly telephone themed, and as the #1 appreciator of telephone noises in music I was very happy about this. The other thing is that there were two tracks that you could more or less describe as just streams of cool individual noises without having a “song structure” per se, and that was fun. (There’s also a third piece, “Flapjack Muscoid” by agargara, that uses just a single audio channel, but it switches quickly between instruments to evoke polyphony in a way like ZX Spectrum music and channel-limited tracker music do.)
Recommended tracks:
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“Fragmented Memories” (Tancla) was intentionally unmelodic, nicely atmospheric and bendy
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“Lotus” (Hiroyuki Mizuno) gets jazzier as it progresses
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“CREPUSCULAR ACTIVITY” (Chimeratio) reminds you that maybe the things that come out at twilight aren’t necessarily friendly
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“The Road to a FreqMon Master” (cubenoy22) is pretty goofy, the composer even described it as “goofy” in English in the middle of a block of Japanese text
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“feel mortal” (jangler) is some proggy microtonal jazz fusion of a kind this artist likes writing
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“As Toneless, As Aimless” (DoricDream) is the longest track on the album by several minutes; the jazziness disguises how it’s in sonata form and gets fugal four and a half minutes in
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