Canton Becker's Electronic Music Noizums

Lush harmonic techno, giant chords and a persistent beep to the beat.

The other day my kid had me listen to this haunting Tool track Faaip De Oiad which samples a phone call made to Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM radio show. The caller frantically relays a bunch of Area 51 conspiracies, and that got me to remembering about an afternoon in January 1998 when I […]

Moody thick drum ‘n’ bass. Starts off with almost classical/orchestral elements, then the drop, then a little more banging. Lots of arpeggios and melodic content.

This was the third track in my one song a month project. Here I’m playing around with polyrhythms (3 against 4 against 5 against…) and some nice pure synth tones. It’s in a major key, which is really rare for me.

This was the second track in my one song a month project. The sample you hear in this deep tribal house track is from a wonderful collection of records I found recorded in 1952 — famous anthropological field recordings by Hugh Tracy. More or less, the fellow who introduced African music to white people. This […]

Happy melodic techno. 122 BPM, starts off in a mellow place then gets bouncy and fun. Vocal sample is from Richard Kilmer’s LibriVox public domain reading of The Night Horseman by Max Brand (1920).

I love the album “Chants of India” by Ravi Shankar, and in particular the track that features this chant: asato ma sad gamaya / From ignorance, lead me to truth tamaso ma jyotir gamaya / From darkness, lead me to light mrtyor ma amrtam gamaya / From death, lead me to immortality. Here’s a funky […]

My first original techno track in a long, long while. Lush, layered, moody, epic. Composed in daily 20 or 30 minute stolen workday moments over the course of several weeks. Finished this during a moment in history when 2,000 Pakistanis have died and 20 million are injured or homeless as a result of massive flooding […]

On this very snowy Santa Fe morning and with one week left until the 2008 Winter Solstice, I’m pleased to release this new song for free under a creative commons license. Snow Break is a 92bpm ‘breaks’ piece based around a sampled string melody from a 1960’s Mellotron tape loop. (The Mellotron was the original pre-digital sampler, a […]

Wow this song was a long time in the making. 12+ months? Not sure if it’s done yet — this mix feels a little thick and awkward at times — but it’s done enough to let me move on to some other tracks in the near term. 174 BPM d’n’b, growly nasty bassline, occasional explosive […]