From Che Sent Sat, May 2nd 1998, 10:45
From Che Sent Sat, May 2nd 1998, 10:45
At 01:03 PM 5/1/98 -0700, James wrote: > >B12 trivia: when Electro-Soma first came out, either a music mag article or >a >Warp print ad said B12 made Aphex Twin sound like Kylie Minogue. Err... >yeah. > >I won't write a lengthy me-too, but Electro-Soma is definitely one of my >all-time faves. > >Whether you find the album "boring" might depend on when you first heard it. I heard it right after hearing Biorhythms 1 & 2, Retro Techno, and a bunch of UR 12"s. Kinda like comparing Def Leppard to Led Zeppelin, huh? In all fairness, the Detroit tracks featured mostly 808 and 909 being worked like mofos; while the B12 sounds like R8 samples of 808s & 909s with no dynamics programmed in. To get the R8 to sound as lively as the 808 or 909 (some would argue an impossible task, but Higher Intelligence Agency fooled me) would have taken quite a bit of work on B12's part, and quite frankly, I think they took the lazy way out. You may like the simplicity of it, but my ears tend to filter out repetition pretty quickly (unless it's black dog style repetition - they seem to be the only ones that get it right). I just can't get past the drum programming, which is what I tend to hear first. I'll take drums over melody any day - melody's been done to death, while sophisticated drum machine programming is a relatively new thing. Back to B12. I like the Time Tourist album better - it sounds like a rehash of the 1st album w/ better drum programming, w/ the exception of the 1st track (a Reload ripoff if there ever was one, doesn't sound like anything else on the album), If you like Time Tourist, you'll probably like Electro-Soma, as long as you're not a nutcase about drum programming. Che