“Work is so never-ending, Rihanna had to repeat it five times in a row”
September 12, 2016 1:03 PM   Subscribe

 
Here's what I swear by:
Ryuichi Sakamoto - BTTB and Playing the Piano
Final Fantasy - any of the piano collection albums

Not particularly cool stuff. No vocals, just piano, often meditative but never so slow that nothing is happening. No major surprises. Perfect for me to get serious work done.
posted by naju at 1:19 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Here's a spotify playlist for the ones that are available.

Missing is Frank Ocean's "Endless" and Merzbow's "Electronic Rainbow 2."
posted by synthetik at 1:22 PM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Nice idea for a list, and I imagine there's incredible diversity on what people want. The music that helps me focus is textured, eclectic electronic music like Four Tet (Pauses or There Is Love in You) or Flying Lotus (especially Cosmogramma). Too much repetition and I zone it out, but the constant change gives me the same feeling that working in a coffee shop does, enough of a background that my brain doesn't come up with its own ways to distract itself. Although it was really weird to go see Four Tet live and have this niggling feeling that I should be programming.
posted by Schismatic at 1:24 PM on September 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Soundtrack albums seem to come up a lot amongst writer friends of mine, with the Tron 2 sound track being a reliable fallback for a couple of people.

Right now I listen to the A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night soundtrack a lot while working.
posted by Artw at 1:24 PM on September 12, 2016


The Rolling Stones - Slave

DON'T JUDGE ME. IT WORKS.

Less embarrassingly, the entire album Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis. A lot of Miles's stuff from the late 1950s makes for great working music.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 1:26 PM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Philip Glass score to Mishima got me through every term paper in my college career.
posted by incomple at 1:28 PM on September 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


I wrote so many college papers to the soundtrack (composed of ragtime and early blues recordings) for Terry Zwigoff's excellent documentary Crumb. Since it's gone out of print and doesn't seem to be available on any streaming services, I still keep the CD and mp3s around for those infrequent all-night writing and/or coding sessions that pop up from time to time.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:39 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Miles Davis's electric period - In A Silent Way, On The Corner and the remix album Panthalassa;

Any early Wim Mertens - The Struggle for Pleasaure, Maximizing the Audience, individual pieces like The Fosse or Often A Bird. He sings in a made-up language.

The Smiths' compilation Louder Than Bombs, something I know so well that I have no trouble working through the lyrics.

Also the first Orange Juice album, You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, which has lyrics and they're great, but for some reason I can tune them out.

Any Owen Pallett.

Any Orbital, with a preference for "Belfast", "Chime" and "Desert Storm".

That Black Sea from the OP is doing it fairly well for me today.
posted by Frowner at 1:40 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mohnomishe was so vital to completing my dissertation that it got a spot in the Acknowledgments.
posted by googly at 1:41 PM on September 12, 2016


Purity Ring.
posted by terretu at 1:55 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Lately, I've been getting some good mileage out of bvdub’s White Clouds Drift On and On and the soundtrack to Meek’s Cutoff
posted by Going To Maine at 2:02 PM on September 12, 2016


It's hard to go wrong with Brian Eno's instrumental albums.

I also like to loop SFX ambience tracks from this site. The "Winter Woods," "Lively Cafe," "Medieval Library," "1940s Office," "Strangers on a Train," "Overland with Oxen," and "Age of Sail" tracks are all effective ways to reset the local brainspace.
posted by Iridic at 2:05 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Tycho's Dive accompanied me on permanent repeat for a long time, while creating the first prototypes of a current product. Both his albums come highly recommended. His mixes are good too. And he features a lot of artists on his site.

Good music, cool dude.
posted by Satorian at 2:07 PM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Much like Schismatic, I listen to textured electronic music while I work (Cosmogramma is excellent). But I don't mind repetition at all. My longstanding favorite working music is The Field, either Looping State of Mind or From Here We Go Sublime. I love the music so much that listening to it repeatedly, all day long, is no problem. But I know it so well that I can concentrate on work.
posted by TemporaryTurtle at 2:14 PM on September 12, 2016


Gotta Get Up - Bottle Rockets
posted by jonmc at 2:21 PM on September 12, 2016


A friend got me hooked on Toumani Diabate and Ballake Sissoko.
posted by ChuraChura at 2:25 PM on September 12, 2016


Ice cream truck music on a loop. Makes my lizard brain think a treat is coming.
posted by blakewest at 2:54 PM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Leonard Cohen - Songs From A Room
Radiohead - Kid A
Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
Tom Waits - Closing Time

I've written so many essays to these albums. There's something about them that just works but I suspect this type of thing will just be vastly different for each individual. All of our brains are wired differently. What one works for one, probably won't work for another.
posted by Fizz at 2:58 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Very timely because I actually used Rihanna's Work to get me in gear today.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:06 PM on September 12, 2016


Also on askme.
posted by nat at 3:18 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Daft Punk - Alive 2007 is one of my Power Albums too. Something about it just gets me going.

My other Power Album is Sparks - No. 1 in Heaven. When that drum fill hits and the bass starts in "Tryouts for the Human Race", I am ready to kick some ass.
posted by SansPoint at 3:58 PM on September 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Bill Evans, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings (the murmuring and silverware clinking is perfect) -- unless it's raining and I'm working somewhere with a window, then the only answer is Nina Simone -- unless I have to stay up late, at which point my lizard brain reverts to my college all-nighter standbye, the soundtrack to The Last Waltz.
posted by sallybrown at 4:12 PM on September 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't have a single sure-fire work aid... although high on the list would be the catalogs of several Constellation label artists (primarily GYBE and Do Make Say Think). But other things that did the job for sustained periods of time included Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach (both recordings, although mostly the second one), Tycho's two albums, Nobukazu Takemura's "Assembler/Assembler 2" and "Sign" (which is an hour long EP). Nujabe's "Hydeout Productions" compilations.

And then there are some airchecks that I know like the back of my hand by now, like Coldcut's Breezeblock mix, Massive Attack's Essential Mix and Portishead's Essential Mix.

A couple of Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies, Fuxa's early EPs, and of course Earth.

I guess I need a lot of variety in my monotony.

Lately, though, I've been listening to Boiler Room a whole lot. Hours and hours and hours and fucking hours of live DJ mixes (and an increasing quantity of really impressive live concerts and art music in variety) and mostly consistently high quality. If there hasn't been an FPP about this organization, there should be. So it's mostly a matter of finding something that best splits the difference between the tweedly-deedle and thumpy-thump as suits my mood at the moment, and we're off for an hour or two, about the longest stretch of time I can manage between work distractions anyway.
posted by ardgedee at 4:19 PM on September 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I actually prefer Boiler Room’s Upfront mixes, but the institution does fine work.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:25 PM on September 12, 2016


Lights Out Asia has some wonderful albums for meditative, mostly-wordless work music.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:11 PM on September 12, 2016


Instrumental prog rock/space rock works best for me: Ephemeral Sun, Vietgrove, or The Future Kings of England. The music engages my brain just enough without lyrics to shatter by fragile focus.
posted by Ber at 7:18 PM on September 12, 2016


I have a massive Spotify playlist called Heads Down, Thumbs Up that started with me asking people what they listened to when they needed to go "heads down" on work. I later discovered some recent movie scores and modern classical compositions that I added on. I can't promise it's the greatest list ever, but it works well for me.

("Heads down, thumbs up" comes from an American childhood game.)
posted by dw at 8:06 PM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


The A.V. Club staff did a nice Q&A about this, though my personal favorite suggestion (the Outlander-themed yule log with music) does not appear to exist anymore.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 9:04 PM on September 12, 2016


Lately it's been all Kendrick Lamar for me.
posted by lunasol at 12:42 AM on September 13, 2016


It's interesting that the suggestions in the article and most of the suggestions in this thread are entirely geared for people getting work done sitting at a desk. I work in a warehouse and spend a lot of time picking things up and putting them down again and loading vans up for delivery routes, and my music selections would be entirely different. Much more of a focus on DJ mix albums and electronica, stuff with a flow that is intended to get your body moving while keeping your brain occupied enough that it keeps your body moving, with enough interesting stuff going on that you don't really notice the passage of time while you keep your body moving. Junior Vasquez, Chemical Brothers, stuff like that.
posted by hippybear at 1:23 AM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I start a paper, I put on the theme to Murder, She Wrote.

When I'm drilling into an argument and taking an interlocutor to the dirt, it's all Pursuit themes from Phoenix Wright.
posted by painquale at 2:46 AM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I will forever advocate for dots and loops by stereolab for this purpose. It chugs along, painting in an interesting sonic palette, all the while not demanding all your attention.
posted by umbú at 6:04 AM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]



I wrote so many college papers to the soundtrack (composed of ragtime and early blues recordings) for Terry Zwigoff's excellent documentary Crumb. Since it's gone out of print and doesn't seem to be available on any streaming services, I still keep the CD and mp3s around for those infrequent all-night writing and/or coding sessions that pop up from time to time.


Holy Hannah, Strange Interlude: do you have this? Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country

You'll love it! Comes with an awesome CD... it was so good, I started pulling my favorites from Crumb's curated selection and trying to download and/or purchase more from each musician. It's a treasure from beginning to end.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 8:40 AM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Steve Reich 4 the win! I did a lot of writing a few years back to pretty much everything I could listen to by him. Some pieces worked better than others, but, for me at least, the pulse of the music flavored by the shifting patterns of the instrumentation provided both impulse and variety.

Currently, I've loaded a ton of recordings from the '20s and '30s (and earlier) from all over onto my phone, as I find the sound of those 78s and, of course, the music they contained to be really pleasant to work to.
posted by the sobsister at 10:03 AM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Depending on what needs to get done, there's Seirom, which is drone/ambient stuff: "Istnichtkrieg"... Bandcamp link. Aderlating is pretty good for that too, though it's a bit more soundtrack-like, rather than drone.
Pretty much everything by Muslimgauze.
The Reformed Faction of Zoviet France.
Eno's Ambient series, Especially Music for Airports and The Plateaux of Mirror.
Both albums by Carter Tutti Void.

For cleaning up and washing dishes, etc? TOY DOLLS!
posted by Zack_Replica at 11:12 AM on September 13, 2016


A small follow-up: Pitchfork has just assembled a list of the “fifty best ambient albums of all time”. They’ve also gone ahead and rank-ordered the thing, so feel free to fight. (It’s pretty all over the place to my mind - and any list without Global Communication’s 76:14 on it -hat tip to FACT’s list from 2011- doesn’t begin to know what it’s about.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:45 AM on September 26, 2016


> I actually prefer Boiler Room’s Upfront mixes, but the institution does fine work.

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT THEY DELETED THE WHOLE UPFRONT SUBSITE THIS MORNING while I was working my way through it. Not all the mixes were full winners for me but the Ethiopian Mix by Ethiopian Records was damn near transcendent, and there were no outright clinkers. Thanks for the link, though, that was a few hours of delight there, and a shame its life was so brief.
posted by ardgedee at 5:55 AM on September 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


GOD FUCKING DAMMIT THEY DELETED THE WHOLE UPFRONT SUBSITE THIS MORNING

Fortunately, the mixes still seem to be on the Boiler Room Soundcloud. (That Ethiopian Records mix.) This is also a good moment to remember that youtube-dl works with Soundcloud.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:16 PM on September 29, 2016


Also, the actual mix pages still seem to be up: Ethiopian Records, again. Each page has links to the prior and subsequent mixes, so you can still navigate. I’m betting that the whole thing is a mistake. (Let me also note here that the official downloads from Boiler Room have higher fidelity than Soundcloud rips.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:22 PM on September 29, 2016


(Actually, the downloads seem kind of broken right now, so that might be part of the general upfront breakage going on.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:37 PM on September 29, 2016


> (Let me also note here that the official downloads from Boiler Room have higher fidelity than Soundcloud rips.)

I can't get the official download file (the link doesn't work) but the player within the page controls a Soundcloud file.
posted by ardgedee at 2:50 AM on October 1, 2016


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