chris zaldua

The paywall is now down in case you don’t subscribe to First Floor and you’d like to read it ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Ah yes, the plot of my favorite Verhoeven movie

I end with this amazing quotation from
@glorbis.bsky.social

The Ambient Events Moment Is Real Moving past the trappings of the club and the dated template of the chillout room, a new wave of events is specifically centering vaporous sounds and focused listening.

I wrote an essay for Shawn Reynaldo’s First Floor newsletter about an emerging moment in electronic music events that is absolutely not club-centric.

Best record label of 2025 for me, easy.

Agree with everything said above and also I must add that in general, Bandcamp UX is unbelievably, shockingly bad. So, so frequently it seems the structure and design of the site is built to actively staunch its primary user base at every turn.

Real shit app.

The Fix Is In? DOJ Antitrust Turmoil Boosts Live Nation Bid to Escape Ticketmaster Monopoly Trial As new reporting suggests the Justice Department may be nearing a settlement that could spare Live Nation Entertainment a courtroom...

We are so utterly cooked.

‘… Live Nation’s behind-the-scenes push for a negotiated deal [reflects] a broader Trump-era pattern in which politically connected lobbyists … override … career antitrust staff — fueling the perception among critics that “the fix is in.”’

Lovely read. Super relatable. Lots of resonance.

Separately, going from ‘Tina Pizza’ —> ‘Sold’ was an extremely good decision.

Hi, very glad you enjoyed. Yes, please send to: chris@certainsound.net

Spot on. The absolute truth. This is why I have been saying for years that Substack is a total farce and not at all a solution for independent writers.

Boomer shit

Bay Area duo Phipps Pt. on iteration, collaboration, and psychedelic folk Lovage Sharrock and Jon Leidecker discuss Bay Area experimental music history, '70s French experimental folk music, and the challenge (and the joy) of developing a genuine collaborative process.

I published an interview with Bay Area psychedelic folk duo Phipps Pt., whose album “Songs We No Longer Sing” was one of the best things I heard in 2025.

See the Andreesen-Horowitz Manifesto in case you want to see this thinking literally and plainly laid bare.

This is really good. This is helping me elucidate my deep seated sense that Tech (cap T) is fascist, because at its core, what Tech (the edifice) believe is that All Technology is Good, and humanity is effectively subjugated to it and exists to service the advancement of Technology itself.

Three top shelf bangers. Gonna play at least one of these in the club this weekend, very stoked to hear it at full blast.

Oneohtrix Point Never Again Gonna Listen To That Shit

My kingdom (in the form of social media likes) for anyone who can ID everything from 2hr onto the end please

proangeejaygeewings

aka-Sol at Dripping 2025 spirit journey from Dripping resident aka-sol. Lakeside

I really can’t believe how good this mix is. Slo-mo house, natty rankin digidub, drumless techno, airy jungle, half-time, trip-hop, 90s IDM cuts I’ve never heard.

Honestly reminds me of Coldcut ‘Journeys by DJ,’ same zone.

I think it’s all vinyl if you care about that.

This is true 👇

The root cause is Substack, whose business model atomizes writers and pits them against each other. It’s effectively the Spotify model, but for writing.

Also, to be very clear: You don’t write ON Substack, you write FOR Substack.

Writers on Substack are NOT independent.

Silicon Valley brain 😍😍😍 we love to see it

Datassette is one of the most underrated producers in the biz if you ask me

I don’t really do anything except post my own writing here but at least it isn’t on that website

Unbelievable compilation. Not a single miss among 22 tracks. How?

techies are not only genuinely lacking in knowledge about so many things, they’re unaware that they lack that knowledge, or that that possessing such knowledge could ever be desirable—basically Silicon Valley brain is like a Rumsfeldian monkeys paw joke played on a grand scale

“ambient” music? sorry? dont understand—oh you mean Atmospheric Experience Music oh yeah i get it now

Add to playlist: the mysterious chillout milieu of False Aralia and the week’s best new tracks Somewhere between record label and artist project, False Aralia harks back to microhouse and dub techno with its deep, detailed productions

mask off moment for a dear friend here in San Francisco

he’ll be performing live for us inside the ‘stratus in the void’ atmospheric experience room at Parameter 11, May 14-17, 2026

his excellent records are (and many more) available via @brianfoote.bsky.social ‘s family of labels

Nytimes reheating my leftovers

This Is Not a Year-End List Instead, it's an open-format catalogue of the things that mattered in 2025, plus a lot of excellent records.

Wrote a recap of my year in left-field music. Included are a handful of thoughts (Micro-Essays?) plus mini-reviews of a lot of records that I loved: freak folk, neo-psy, some rap, techno-bass compilations, etc.