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Galen Tipton’s wildly imaginative approach to electronic music treats sound like silly putty. We find out how MPE, spectral plugins and AI speech-enhancement software shaped the mind-boggling brain scratch
Deep down in TikTok’s digital abyss lies a treasure trove of strange, unearthly, and brain-tickling sounds; a warped, bizarro realm, populated by alien sonics, otherworldly textures, disembodied vocals and imaginary instruments. Welcome to the weird and whimsical world of producer Galen Tipton, who is pioneering an experimental new sound called ‘brain scratch’.
Tipton’s work explores the phenomenon of ASMR through the lens of experimental electronica, collaging synths, samples, field recordings and MIDI instruments together in music that alloys the aesthetics of hyperpop, IDM and video game soundtracks with the improvisational anarchy of free jazz, the sonic curiosity of musique concrète and a generous sprinkling of cuteness and whimsy. Brain scratch has found an enthusiastic reception on TikTok, where Tipton’s music soundtracks viral clips you might find on the r/oddlysatisfying subreddit and has amassed close to 1.5 million likes. Tipton’s album brain scratch, self-released in May, collects 20 of these songs.
Brain scratch is a wildly imaginative marvel of sound design. Tipton’s Bandcamp page tags the record as ‘fairy grunge’, a phrase which perfectly captures the music’s extraordinary texture: heavy but soft, like a weighted blanket. At times, listening through the album feels like bathing in a hot-tub full of strawberry milkshake; sticky, sweet and slightly overwhelming. Most of the songs on brain scratch are under two minutes, and only a handful stretch above three. These are bite-sized nuggets of sonic satisfaction, capricious curiosities that whizz past your ears before you can even figure out what you’ve just listened to.
We spoke with Galen Tipton from her home in Ohio to find out how the new album was made, hearing about how MPE, spectral plugins and AI speech enhancement software shaped the mind-boggling sound of brain scratch.
1 Tell us more about ‘brain scratch’ as a style and its core elements? What do you think drives its popularity?
Galen Tipton: “The core elements behind the sound are essentially music I made back in my early days of taking music seriously, around 2015. I was very inspired and interested in the formlessness of early Arca music and the sound design of SOPHIE, while having a heavy interest in nature aesthetics and folklore, ASMR and field recordings.
“To simplify the thought process as much as possible, I wanted to combine all of these interests into something both accessible and experimental, partly as a reaction to a lot of selfserious and inaccessible ex
