Love me some Tom Waits, his spoken word pieces are some of my favourites of his works. What's He Building In There is a classic. Have you heard the Glitter and Doom version of 9th & Hennepin? Very cool different take on it.

Hey, thanks for the suggestions!

9th and Hennepin- well that was certainly a song. spoken word with jazz behind it? not terrible, i was passively listening to it though so i didn't pick up all the lyrics. it was... good i guess? I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it to be quite honest. The poetry (or what I picked up from it) fits the theme though, which leaves me starting to question if I even knew what I was looking for when I made this post.

Black Coffee album- fallout vibes like crazy, good album for that but idk if it quite scratches the itch i was looking for. Like, it sort of does but doesn't at the same time, if that makes any sense? Either way I'm definitely keeping this one in my back pocket for when I (inevitably) crave pretending I'm in the fallout universe again.

bohren and der club of gore- didn't know what pieces to pick from the artist so I went with the most recent album pushed (patchouli blue). I really really like it! Definitely giving "solving a brutal mystery vibe," the entire album. Quite the moody piece of work, I'm definitely going to check out more of their works.

Here's the playlist, I didn't listen too far into it, but the first song of the first video is precisely the genre of vibe I'm looking for. Thanks for linking the playlist, that's exactly the vibe I'm looking for!

I'm not against Japanese jazz. Every single one of the followup links on that page require me to sign up for. From the 30ish seconds of a few songs that Tidal let me listen to, it sounds more like a groovy version of the noir jazz I'm looking for, but then again it's hard to tell with only 30 seconds of 4 minute songs.