June 29, 2026: Coding At The Club

I love discovering new music, and this may be some of the newest music around.

 

A few weeks ago, one of my various social media algorithms spit out a video from Switch Angel. I was instantly impressed, and as I watched more of her videos and dug a little deeper into what was happening, I became even more enthralled.

 

The system Switch Angel and other similar artists use is called Strudel. It is described as a "Web-based environment for live coding algorithmic patterns, incorporating a faithful port of TidalCycles to JavaScript".

 

Here's a great video that shows the coding process as a song is built.

 

Switch Angel does live shows and streams, coding the songs in the moment with a projector that shows the code in action. Here's one of my favorite examples, a live session from the New York club Elsewhere. There is a bit of NSFW language at the end, so take that into consideration if you are jamming to this in certain company.

 

Unsurprisingly, my algorithms took me deeper down this rabbit hole after I showed a bit of interest. Another artist that popped up quite a bit was DJ_Dave. Then I found a collab video.

 

DJ_Dave has a great video showing a more traditional DJ set using coded music, which includes a few Switch Angel songs.

 

One of the most exciting things to me about all music is that it is made by humans, and this is no different. If you have a mind for code and songs, you can get information about Strudel here, and someone has posted Switch Angel tutorials here.

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