Hey pals, we did it. We survived Q1 2026. Hope your growth objectives have been met and you executed your restructuring actions focused on reducing non-billable labour costs. Like-for-like sanity is down along with a decline in cognitive debt due to AI, though we expect increased efficiency with our reorganization into AI-based pods. All titles are gone: you are all pod people now.

Employees not submitting to their new pod-based role will be ranked and yanked and made redundant during the next Performance Summary Cycle. After which you can die, I guess, for profit stability reasons.

Workers who fall for ‘corporate bullshit’ may be worse at their jobs, study finds | Business | The Guardian

Littrell used results from the four studies to construct and develop the “Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale”, a tool for researchers and practitioners to examine the causes and consequences of receptivity to bullshit in organizations.

“The people that are the most susceptible to the corporate bullshit tended to choose the worst solutions to those problems on a consistent basis,” Littrell said.

Well, there’s a good summary of the current AI frenzy. Corporate bullshit being pushed by fascist eggmen with zero introspection and Epstein billionaire tech dipshits who are DMing each other towards market collapse while trying to reorient all politics and culture around warehouse datacentres dropped in underprivileged communities. Already surrounded by sycophants they entrench themselves deeper in the bubble with agents that do their job, or at least that’s what brown-nosing tech reporters say uncritically, yet simultaneously we’re led to believe their roles and salaries are essential. As thousands of Reality Labs workers were laid off he bought a $170 million dollar Florida house.

It’s too bad that the Musk vs Zuckerberg didn’t happen because in combat sports there’s always a slight, very slight, chance for the funniest thing ever occurring.

More than anything these particular times can put to rest the idea of the “rational market.” Tech stocks are inflated at unsustainable levels for companies with no meaningful growth, and markets go up and down severely at the whims of late night Truth posts by a geriatric huckster. Bombing universities and journalists doesn’t register for stock traders, but pump and dumps about fictitious talks (x) turn their eyeballs into cartoonish moneybags. Maybe a pivot to weaponry will help our stock price.

The USA is insolvent, Israel is increasing its ethnic-cleansing in Lebanon while it legalized the death penalty at home for Palestinian prisoners (and celebrated it with champagne in the Knesset) (x). Under these dark skies it’s a good time to:

Listen to some ambient music.

Ambient is a broad label these days. While I do listen to a lot of beatless, noise driven ambient, often in the background, it generally doesn’t rank on my yearly replays and best-of lists because of the lack of good hooks or memorable moments. Not to say that it’s forgettable, it’s not, or that it’s quiet, power ambient is a thing, it just doesn’t get my dopamine triggers as much as something four-to-the-floor, beat driven, or over-engineered sound design. Such as it is, here’s some very ambient recommendations from Q1 2026:

FLAUin dark hours, your colours glow their brightest, by aus + the humble bee

Chalybeate began as a document of a month-long stay by Tokyo-based producer aus in Ikaho, a historic onsen town in Japan, during the autumn of 2024.

Working from field-recordings captured inside multiple ryokan baths, aus synthesized the subterranean movement of the onsen's with local details: the bubbling of source water, the hoozuki (lantern plants) and furin (wind chimes) placed at each ryokan (inn), and the surrounding insects and birds. Rather than portraying Ikaho as a landscape, the recordings trace the town's respiration.

Music to take you to a quiet relaxing warm soak in the countryside, far from the humming of the data centre generators.

KMRUBy Absence

KMRU has been prominent in this space, and prolific, for almost a decade now. Every album is worth checking out. His latest album, Kin (including a collab with Fennesz) features a “noisier palette of sounds encompassing distortions reminiscent of the sounds he would muster from in his youth when playing guitar.” The standout for me is the 20 minute drone and crescendo that ends the album.

christina vantzouObservations, Edits, a Cure for Restlessness

The 20 minute long second half of the album The Reintegration of the Ear | christina vantzou:

To truly listen is not a passive gesture but a radical, embodied act of attention. Christina Vantzou’s The Reintegration of the Ear offers a slower presence: one rooted in care, intimacy, and reflection. An act beneath language. Through this reintegration, the ear becomes a quiet form of resistance.

Q2 ambient outlook has a new collaborative album with Felicia Atkinson scheduled, coming this April.

LawrenceRedwood

With the fourth part of “The City Of Tomorrow”, Lawrence continues his collection of miniatures, acoustic pieces and ambient works. The series is dedicated to Berlin’s modernist neighborhood “Hansaviertel”, built in 1957, the place where most of the tracks were recorded.

If 20 minute tracks are too much for you, Lawrence’s “The City of Tomorrow” series is a collection of small vignettes that pass you by like stops on a tram.

quiet detailsThe Lichens Plot Their Revenge, by Deadbeat

Canadian dub-techno legend, Deadbeat, slows it down, adds field recordings, and aquatics, to create a deeply textured album for the UK’s Quiet Details.

A journey of hypnosis and textural bliss - vast subs meet glittering highs, held together by lush and vivid synthetics. Scott’s huge technical skill brings all these elements together in a beautifully elegant way, creating a vibrantly chromatic world that’s mesmerising at every step.

quiet detailsGaseous, by Appleblim

Also from Quiet Details, an album that “is a collection of places between states…” by original dubstep Skull Disco co-founder Appleblim. Deadbeat and Appleblim’s albums definitely wear their dub-esque influences on their sleeves with deep sub-bass and reverb. “Liminal Tides” has the most beat-driven music out of all the recommendations here but on the above Gasesous you get lost in a sea of clouds. 

Quiet Details reporting a solid Q1 2026 with four quality albums already.

LINEonto a path of darkness, by CINDYTALK

If Appleblim and Deadbeat are established, Cindytalk is downright legendary having created post-punk, industrial, and ambient music since 1982. After all that time Cindytalk hasn’t slowed down: she’s released not one but two albums so far this year already! That’s Q1 growth mindset.

I don’t know what’s coming in Q2 though I see some beautiful new music on the horizon, created by people, with intentionality, and craft, and imperfection. Billions could be spent to support their creation. Instead we get missiles and bombs.

Sometimes,