mvuent

Void Dweller
obviously dj hype was god tier too, didn't think anyone would take that post as a declaration of war

but no one in that era (let alone since) was quite like gerald. he just had a really unique yet effective twist on the era's sound. shambolic and colorful. sounds circling the stereo field like debris caught in a telekinetically controlled tornado. basically his grasp of audio animation was better than any other producer from that era, and unlike the later metalheadz/source direct school of audio animators he had a sense of humor (he was obsessed with sampling robocop).
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yeah, electronic music is mostly very granulated these days. There are people who do it astoundingly well, Autechre for instance, but the whole sound design craze needs to fade out, I think. Not that granular synthesis isn't amazing, cos it is, but most people don't use it to its full potential.
This is like what bliss said in other thread innit

Landed has some good stuff on it but yes Can did decline precipitously

it's partly cos they went from recording on a 2-track, very artfully indeed, to using a 24 track studio or something of typically mid-late '70s ampleness. succumbed to the syndrome I call "Seventies stodge" where there's all these layers but the economy and focused attack of earlier music by the same band has gone.

The Who's Quadrophrenia is a classic example of stodge syndrome.
Dean blunt said in an interview somewhere about how poverty of choice is so useful, cos it forces creativity.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
you can make all kinds of sounds with it but there's this underlying homogeneity, a dry coarseness, like they're all made out of sand. it ruined "sophisticated" electronic music basically.

I wouldn't say it ruined so much as the avant-garde became a victim of its own success. Remember that a lot of these composers are/were in a tradition we all here have cursory knowledge of. Parmegiani and co. were engaging with European high art music, especially the variations from the romantic period to the modern. So for them the binary between acoustic and electronic is not so sharply demarcated.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
This is like what bliss said in other thread innit


Dean blunt said in an interview somewhere about how poverty of choice is so useful, cos it forces creativity.

Uh, that's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying we need melodic content, but without kitsch harmonies. the new Low record is a good demonstration, it's megopop/MoMPop for the masses. Albeit from aging (once) indie rockers, so go figure.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
they're weird because they're famously pristine/clinical but also really aware of the magic of old imperfect recordings. they love a lot of the old guys like Ussachevsky and Dockstader. so particularly in NTS Sessions you get these weird tracks that somehow sound granulated and 1000 years old at the same time.

Yes exactly. Sound design is very powerful, but not as an end in and of itself, which is where deconstructed club fails. One needs architecture and geometry.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Uh, that's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying we need melodic content, but without kitsch harmonies. the new Low record is a good demonstration, it's megopop/MoMPop for the masses. Albeit from aging (once) indie rockers, so go figure.

If Peter Reberg isn't seen as the greatest pop innovator after the beatles and Stockhausen I have failed in my mission and I deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered.
 

woops

is not like other people
maybe someone can provide a useful definition of sound design? any music production or recording involves designing a sound
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Right, gotcha chief. I read what you said to be about over complexity in music as z tendency ("sound design")

Oh no I think a lot of sound design music is compositionally too simple. The revenge of the posh trustafarian punks, where the consumption of the product, not its interpretation matters.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yes exactly. Sound design is very powerful, but not as an end in and of itself, which is where deconstructed club fails. One needs architecture and geometry.
"Architecture and geometry" that's like deep and wide huh.

I think deconstructed club failed cos none of the "original" tunes were as good as thd remixes/refixes. At some point you have to outgrow your influences and it just hasn't happened. As soon as these people try to make their own proper tunes, and you compare them to stuff from 20 years ago, they've no chance
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
maybe someone can provide a useful definition of sound design? any music production or recording involves designing a sound

I'm not talking about music production but recording yes. I.E: that Chino Amobi and Rabit record, it sounds like the sound fx for a film or a visual art product. As composition it doesn't stand.
 

catalog

Well-known member
maybe someone can provide a useful definition of sound design? any music production or recording involves designing a sound
What Im talking about is endless tracks on a time line that can be tweaked all sorts of ways so that if you are in a nice posh studio with good speakers you can hear all sorts of sounds coming in and out from everywhere but it's got no zip to it as an mp3 in the car
 

catalog

Well-known member
I'm not talking about music production but recording yes. I.E: that Chino Amobi and Rabit record, it sounds like the sound fx for a film or a visual art product. As composition it doesn't stand.
A lot of the sketches are really good, but there's no bigger project, or if there is, it's a bit hollow, so nothing goes anywhere
 

catalog

Well-known member
These beautiful sound machines were built and a few people mastered them and now you've all these emulators of them in a screen based environment so it's like they're doing endless triangles inside a circle. You keep scratching about but you never get out the circle.

The paradigm needs to change somewhere
 
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