From Brock Suter Sent Tue, Oct 27th 1998, 00:32
From Brock Suter Sent Tue, Oct 27th 1998, 00:32
I love you to pieces, chris...and I was going to keep my mouth shut this time around so as not to hurt anyone's feelings (like I usually end up doing), but one again I'm going to interject my two cents. zimbo wrote: > this time electric company and lexaunculpt played separately.. which i > think worked to their advantage -- though last two times i saw them play > together (kuci and spaceland) they did come up with some rather brilliant > collaborative moments (and much criticism from folks on this list). > > i hope they decide to play together at some point in the near future. I strongly disagree. IMHO, alex's music is for the most part extremely delicate and exquisitely programmed where Brad's live stuff is impulsive, spastic, overbearing and unstructured. It just doesn't seem to work for me. As for 'brilliant collaborative moments', alex is mainly playing pre-sequenced tracks off his computer and occasionally playing a melody or doing some effects tweaking, where as Electric Company consists of Brad abusing a bunch of un-sunk up noise makers. The parts I disliked the most of them playing together is when alex would have a nice little tune going and out of no where this big 'swooppppppppppxxxxnonxonxonxoxnoxnxonere' would come flying out the speakers at about 30 times the volume of everything else. Nice collaboration... > electric company was the first performance i saw (kraig grady played as > well, but i missed him). this time around, brad seemed to play a "slower > set" than when i saw him with oval/jim o'rourke. i found it quite > enjoyable -- though a number of folks i was at the show with were not that > into to it. I found it odd that the majority of the IDM contingent there (including zimbo too!) all ended up in the lounge area less then half way thru brad's performance, yet the theater remained quite packed with extremely 'hip' people for the whole set, most of whom left immediately afterwards. Then when alex went on, the place was mostly empty! > "electric company seemed to be too much in the middle of noise and beats. > i kept wanting him to either go more structured or noisy.. but not > in-between." > > i have to agree with this, except that i rather enjoy that effect of > electric company... perhaps im just an audio masochist and enjoy music > that makes me feel on edge and disoriented. but whatever, to each their > own :) i could compare the feel of it to the farmer's manual, vvm, > phthalocyanine type stuff that folks recently have had a backlash against. After last night, electric companies live performance has, in my opinion, joined the ranks of dj spooky (doing his little 'deconstruction' bit), phthalocyanine, the mego guys live and alec empire (when he's being a dick). This exclusive group, IMHO, are people doing noisy shit that doesn't make any sense to me and take what they are doing way too seriously. If they could only laugh about it when people say that it's bad, then I wouldn't have as much of a problem. But usually their answer is 'you just don't have the intelligence to understand what I do', which is a joke. > can't wait to see him perform again. I can...but I must admit, seeing him live twice (plus playing records and dats at KUCI) has made me want to find some of his CD's to find out if it's just his live shows that aren't to my liking. > lexaunculpt was next -- and, yes. the hype is correct.. alex is the shit. > very good tweeky beat driven stuff (very hip hop inspired). dont know > what else to say about it.. other than he looked cute laying in his calvin > kline type pose while performing. a very good, non suprising set from > alex (he's always one to perform a solid set). I agree 100 percent. Alex's performance was wonderful as usual. One of the songs he played almost brought a tear to my eye. I've been listening to his music for quite some time and have seen him play live 7 or 8 times...he never ceases to amaze me with the depth of his talent. On of the cool things is that his live setup is constantly changing. This time around he had nothing but a laptop running midi to his K2000, with everything coming out the one unit. Other times, he's also got his desktop computer running audio, effects units, a mixer and other gear. The first time I ever saw him play, he even had a friend along with a electric guitar (albeit extremely effected), a portable CD player with a CDR he made with dozens of small 'snippet' tracks (ala the gescom minidisk, but months before) and a ton of other strange stuff in the mix. Here is someone who's not afraid of trying out new shit and different methods of achieving his goals...and all the while, everything still ends up sounding great. Keep up the good work, kiddo. :-) peace out, brock