You get some serious (still tonal) FM design on bass music like this (neurohop, half time, whatever). Unfortunately you also get plenty of people just using the same lame preset-sounding FM+distortion, or wavetable-y fluff.
is a game soundtrack that still stands on its own. Definitely some FM involved. The game is quite good, in large part because of the music.
The Cheetah MS800 doesn’t feature fm.
drums are mostly Roland 909 I believe
Oh, my bad, didn’t know it was exclusively written on that machine. Sounds FM-y to me anyways…
Ok, haha I was so wrong in my assumptions about that record apparently… 
I don’t think it was. Just titled after it.
That’s a great record. It sounds like what I heard but for sure it was before 2008 as the venue they played at in Minneapolis closed in 2006.
This is a great mix of some strange music by Mark Fell (one of the members of SND) I think there’s some good FM work in it too. 
I’m pretty sure Aphex Twin used a lot of FS1R on Syro along with DX11… a ton of stuff used on that album obviously though. Its not exactly easy to pick out what is FM in it also but I sometimes feel like that is when FM is at its best in its almost in that uncanny valley place.
I think Jeff Mills and Robin Hood are also known for using FM and while a bit older I feel like they definitely hit that zone of you not really being sure what you are hearing.
Electric Cafe from Kraftwerk - full of DX7 FM
Ryoji Ikeda
Ryu Umemoto (or any pc98/x86000 music)
Tangerine Dream’s Poland album has nice FM sounds
(love this thread)
I was wondering yesterday if there are any good Christmas / winter-themed songs or albums that are all FM. DX7 seems very appropriate!
This stuff always sounds very Christmassy and very FMy to me:
If you haven’t heard of this guy you need to check out this video. (relevant to the thread because he uses a dx7 in most of his Casiopeia tunes!)
Monolake lots TG-77 stuff
Wonderful story, and told as discreetly as M. Mukayia Minoru’s melodies. Brilliant.
Maybe this old track of mine will open your mind to what FM is capable of?
3 FM operators. All interlinked. And automation.
Shameless plug but all of the synth parts for both of these are FM (Digitone and Microfreak’s 2-op algorithm) so here’s a couple of tracks that I released recently.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that FM doesn’t work for pads and leads but I gotta disagree. Imo the key to breaking out of the dubstep/80’s dichotomy is subtlty.
Resisting the urge to crank your operator levels can make even the most unruly algorithms and ratios sound unique and compelling.
Oh and FM LOVES saturation, distortion, aliasing, bit reduction, etc. Run a simple FM patch through a waveshaper (again practicing moderation with levels) and you’ll get all sorts of musical sounds out of relatively simple patches.
Japanese masters of FM unite on this album, too bad they only made it available for purchase on CD and not digital download. At least check out the second track, one of the strongest.
