From martin burbridge Sent Fri, Apr 3rd 1998, 17:21
From martin burbridge Sent Fri, Apr 3rd 1998, 17:21
spacecake wrote: > > At 12:41 PM 4/1/98 -0500, you wrote: > > >well i'd agree on the caution side, not everyone is going to be bowled > >over by 12+ mins of enya vs squarepusher. > > i've listened to it again and its more like squarepusher vs orbital :-) that's valid and also far kinder ;-) > >sounds horrible doesn't it, > >but i couldn't stop playing the thing like a bastard for about 3 weeks. > >i don't think it sounds anything like "hard normal daddy". > > ok i admit that the EP is enjoyable and has a sense of humour. > part of the reason i was being sour with this record is that it > sounded so different over real audio on the warp site. actually it sounded > really really good over ra, kind of like a dnb version of the phoneica EP... whee here it is again - glorious ra lo-fi, can make all sorts of stuff sound more interesting, particularly something w/ as much sheen on its sound as this release. ever tried listening to john peel this way? ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/listeningbooth/listeningbooth.html ) its sometimes hard to tell the guitar bands from the electronic ones. maybe ra-fi could be the next big sub-genre. > >you might as well state that all techno sounds the > >same as its based on the same beat. > > i'm probably going to get kicked off the list for this but... > it does. at least to the untrained ear... that's > why none of these pop listening mush-heads can't even distinguish > between techno, trance, and house. it's all just 'techno' to them... > ...or wrose 'electronica' <hawwwk, spit spit spit, ugh!> exactly. despite idm/electronic music's inventiveness from the mid '80's onwards its usually been tied to some form of regular dance beat. layers of other rhythms, and building sounds gradually and texturalising the sound itself have been a few of the techniques used to add listening interest within this framework, but to a lot of people it still sounds like that thud-thud heartbeat, and that's all they hear. i also find it easy, despite appreciating the many subtleties going on, to see that side of it myself. while a restrictive format can often lead to great music, for instance in minimalism, i find an exhilaration sometimes in (apparently) limitless possibilities. squarepusher's drumming, in the way it flows rather than loops, is to me a release from the restrictive format of any given beat. and no its not random and yes i can dance to it, if i can be said to be able to dance to anything, which is debatable ;-o. i also think tom j makes it perfectly obvious that with or without machines he would be a shit hot drummer and bass player, which is where he leaves the rest of most of the wierdbeat scene behind. many of their skills being more keyboard/computer oriented (no i'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong in this). amon tobin would appear to be a notable, tho' not lone, exception to this (lazy) blanket quibble. but it's early days after 10 or so years of regular-beated electronic music, of course there will be teething problems, i just find the possibilites fascinating. i get ticked off w/ the dead'n'buried, not as good as squarepusher let's get back to safety comments that are prevalent in many posts on this list. (not the one i am responding to now - i might add) > >so although squarepusher has certainly made me wince w/ the use of > >prog/fusion elements that "children at play" wallows in, this has an > >altogether more epic and smooth sound than tom j's stuff. > > funny, the 'prog/fusion elements' which TJ incorporates into > his tracks is exactly what i dug from the beginning... > maybe that's why the Max Tundra EP seemed to sound so much like > him... sorry, being an aging bastard from the punk rock wars (never mind the acid house wars) i was left w/ a keen sense of hatred for the wibbling that passed as intelligent music in the mid '70s. "hard normal daddy" sent my prog-sensers off the map when i first heard it. aarrghhh! testament to its sheer awesomeness is the fact that it won me over, despite my bigoted preconceptions, and even got me exploring fusion to some extent. this is kinda relevent to the "difficult listening" thread, that some of the most durable music i listen to (order of 10+ yrs) sounded pretty horrible when i 1st heard it. some stuff clicks straight away, and i get a lot of enjoyment from it and it may still be required listening 18 months later, but i can't think of a single long term laster that didn't piss me off in some way on the 1st listen. maybe its something to do w/ the revelation like feeling (road to damascus stuff here) i get when the ugly duckling turns into the swan that leaves an indelible mark. > >more over the top than sound of any new ground being broken. > > i'll drink to that. peace. and why not. -martin