What We’re Listening To This Week: March 13, 2026

Each week, the Live Music Blog team takes stock of what’s been populating their playlists and getting endlessly stuck in their heads from the week that was. These can be new releases, obscure tracks in niche genres, or classic albums dusted off due to nostalgia (or because they’re simply awesome).

Enjoy what we’re listening to this week… and listen along with us if you so choose!

The Electric Lucifer – Bruce Hack (1970)

I found this album the same way that I’ve found many of my favorites. It had a really cool album cover, and I decided that I had to stop what I was doing and listen to the album in full. This is all a natural extension of the synth-heavy outsider music rabbit hole that my previous entry sent me down. There is something so quintessentially 70s-experimental about this album. All of the tracks are mesmerizingly strange. Electronic music was still a novelty, and Bruce Haack (who would much later be dubbed “The King of Techno”) was at its forefront. While the synths are at the forefront of every track on this album, the undeniable allure of Bruce Haack’s vocals (and his lyrics) can’t be overlooked. Think of a Jim Morrison-style droning with an electric edge.

All of this is perhaps best encapsulated in the track “Program Me.” Electric drums meet rock organ meet Doors-esque mantras with a cybernetic twist. I also find the lyrics fascinating (“My heart beats, electrically/My brain computes/Program me/I am complicated/Let me be/I am new, program me”). The home computer had still yet to be invented, yet this song is still playing with the concept of the self as a programmable entity. These themes have aged beautifully in the age of AI.

Admittedly, to enjoy this album from beginning to end, you have to have a very high ‘noise’ tolerance. More than once, the songs devolve into digital chaos. At the very least, anyone with an appreciation for electronic music is sure to find the album “interesting” as a historical artifact at the very least.

Top Tracks: “Incantation,” “Program Me,” “National Anthem To The Moon.”

Listen Next: Hackula by Bruce Haack, Space is the Place by Sun Ra, L.A. Woman by The Doors

The Terror – The Flaming Lips

For better or for worse, I’ve been on a massive synth kick lately. Specifically, synths with a sharper edge. While the Flaming Lips are far from an obscure band (though delightfully unusual), The Terror feels like an obscure chapter in their discography. Generally, the band is revered for their energetic benevolence for mankind in tracks like “Race for the Prize” or “Do You Realize.” This album is a stark contrast. There is no warmth, only an electronic soundscape. The mood of the album varies between anxious and antagonistic.

Clocking in at 55 minutes, I really can’t imagine listening to just one track. Invariably, whenever I press play on “Look the Sun is Rising,” I’m strapped in until the end of “Always There… In Our Hearts.” Musically, the melodies are distressed. Lyrically, you get lines like, “Always there, in our hearts/Fear of violence and of death/Always there, in our hearts/There is love and there is pain/Always there, in our hearts/There is evil that wants out.” Surely enough, “Always There… In Our Hearts” is the climactic conclusion to the album. Electronic chaos gradually builds and builds as even the vocals blend into the synthesizers, repeating the apt mantra, “Overwhelms.”

I’ve repeatedly emphasized a vivid unpleasantness that permeates this album. But if you can appreciate a feeling rendered flawlessly in music, this is an album for you.

Top Tracks: “Look… the Sun is Rising,” “Butterfly, How Long it Takes to Die,” “Always There… In Our Hearts”

Listen Next: Embryonic by the Flaming Lips, Kid A by Radiohead, More Light by Primal Scream

Good Arrows – Tuung (2007)

Much like The Electric Lucifer, I never would have discovered this album were it not for the stellar album art. In this case, it was over ten years ago when I was at a used record store in Canton, Ohio (shoutout to The Exchange). I was browsing through the bargain bin and saw the jumbled mess of objects on the album cover, and was surprised to see something so modern among all of the 70s and 80s titles that were falling apart. This was probably the first record that I ever bought that was released after the golden age of vinyl. I immediately bought it ($5) and rushed home to see what I had discovered.

Apparently, Good Arrows is a British electronic-indie-folk album. The tracks all share a somber sing-song quality. Imagine nursery rhymes with British accents and a wide assortment of random objects converted into instruments. The end result is extremely textured. This is most prominent in the percussion, which sounds like an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink jam sesh, but even the electronic elements feel found, with phone dials and feedback. The end result is simultaneously somber and playful, and the perfect soundtrack for a gloomy spring day.

Top Tracks: “Bricks,” “Soup,” “Bullets.”

Listen Next: Dorothy by Diagrams, “Love You All Over Again by Tuung, Amen by Get Well Soon

_{Feature Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Matt}