new Booka Shade album

[dogger]

Did I? I actually made a post on one of the numerous ILM threads on Villalobos saying that I thought all of <i>Superlongevity 3</i> could pass for Villalobos tracks and I don't see it to be particularly helpful to single him out as an autuer when it's not like the rest of Perlon (plus Mobilee, Einmaleins, Guido Schneider etc.) aren't doing stuff that's just as bizarre. I said something like "I still think it makes more sense to talk about this music in terms of label aesthetics and networks of producers rather than single artists.

Haven't heard the new Perlon comp so can't compare.

Certainly I feel that there's something about discourse surrounding Villalobos which tends to paint him as an anomaly, an autuer, above and beyond "the scene" rather than a member in it. It's partly justified - his sound is pretty distinctive and as a producer he's at least first among equals - but I think a lot of it is driven by a need to have a hero: Villalobos encapsulates and exemplifies a certain aesthetic that a lot of people can relate to without needing or wanting to engage in european dance music more broadly. Crucially, he's the probably the least "electro-house" producer in the entire scene.

The thing about critical discourses is that they're seductive even when you disagree with them! I catch myself thinking of Ricardo as an "auteur" now, except that I put in inverted commas where others might be happy to leave them out.

Still loving <i>Movements</i> by the way!

my apologies tim! i must have mis-remembered your comments. villalobos /does/ have a distinctive sound, of course, but given that this sound is having a clear influence on, at the very least, the rest of the perlon crew (see, as you point out, superlong. 3 + 4) it's maybe most useful to see r.v. as a pioneer, an "auteur" or even auteur, if you like, but one who is not working in isolation from the rest of the scene (it should also be remembered that he's collaborated with dandy jack, luciano, nikolai etc). actually you could probably trace this circle of producers back to chile in the earl-mid 90's....my knowledge here is patchy but weren't r.v., luciano, dandy jack and senor coconut all involved in a club night there?? which i suppose is a round about way of agreeing with your more eloquent comment: "I still think it makes more sense to talk about this music in terms of label aesthetics and networks of producers rather than single artists."

this is not to downplay r.v's achievement, but rather to affirm that he is not uniquely experimental or interesting, as i remember simon reynolds argued on his blog a while back.

 

[Tim F]

Pier Bucci is from that Chilean clique too I think! And Dinky, although I think she's a bit younger. And one or two others It's quite remarkable, this South America --> Germany connection which has resulted in such percussodelic minimal techno.

Another South American producer i'm really liking at the moment is Gui Boratto, who does stuff for Kompakt's K2 imprint - it's kind of like layered minimal electro-house (not too far from current Get Physical actually) with this subtle but devastatingly effective latin swing to it.

 

[dogger]

Pier Bucci is from that Chilean clique too I think! And Dinky, although I think she's a bit younger. And one or two others It's quite remarkable, this South America --> Germany connection which has resulted in such percussodelic minimal techno.

Another South American producer i'm really liking at the moment is Gui Boratto, who does stuff for Kompakt's K2 imprint - it's kind of like layered minimal electro-house (not too far from current Get Physical actually) with this subtle but devastatingly effective latin swing to it.

sounds fantastic...i'll definitely check him out. the latin swing element is so crucial -- it's what i like most about galoppierende zuversicht's best tracks (e.g. 'erdschuber')....

 

[gek-opel]

I liked the first track on "Movements", excellent micro-trance (or whatever you want to call it) that mix of edits, ergonomic sound design and lush, unabashed melancholic emotionalism... but the album as a whole is a mess, (too many tracks, the best ones never given enough time to sit there and become hypnotic) and worse, a dull mess... the non 4/4 bits are absolutely dreadful, (ie pissing about with pianos and duff trip hop...) and the conventional stuff (which obviously constitutes the majority of the album) just doesn't quite work a lot of the time... lots of the chat on ILM seemed to revolve around comparisons with Villalobos, but that's a complete red-herring really, I mean Booka Shade obviously are obviously extremely familiar with the more minimal end of the modern house/techno canon, but the resemblance on wax is actually for the most part pretty superficial... I wanted gorgeously produced epically melodic micro-trance, but in the end it just sounds like an over-egged pudding with too few ideas and hooks to really function... the tracks which go "trance" (with the exception of "in white rooms"...) just end up sitting on pathetic plastic block synth-chord sections, (the very worst bit of late-trance) rather than building into emotionally resonant glistening synth-colossi (with the cheese factor mitigated, or perhaps complicated, by the delight of the finely tooled textures)... call me a miserable graver then... Anyone know when the new Villalobos album thing is coming out? (ie- the single track thing on Playhouse)?

 

[matt2]

I think gek-opel's is the best explanation of why "Movements" was such a disappointment to me. After hearing "Darko," "Night Falls," and "In White Rooms" (which deserves every bit of praise it receives) sometime around February or March, I declared that this would be my favorite album of the year without even hearing the rest of it. Unfortunately, those would be the only three tracks I really needed to hear off the album, as the album versions of "Mandarine Girl" and "Body Language" pale in comparison to the originals and the remaider of the album (excepting "Pong Pang" which is okay) just totally falls flat and builds to nothing. It seems like such a waste and a missed opportunity.

 

[fandango]

I'll admit to finding it a wee bit too derivitive and poppy on the first few listens; Mylo by way of Isolée.

If I could have been that ahem... blunt, I might not have snarfed up the ILM thread so much (I'll take the blame) :slanted:

Is Superlongenevity 4 actually a decent listen un-mixed? I was a little put off by that.

Villalobos encapsulates and exemplifies a certain aesthetic that a lot of people can relate to without needing or wanting to engage in european dance music more broadly.

agree, but

Crucially, he's the probably the least "electro-house" producer in the entire scene.

Wouldn't that imply he should be less accessible to people engaging with this music for the first time?

 

[Tim F]

"Wouldn't that imply he should be less accessible to people engaging with this music for the first time?"

Yes, but I'm not talking about novices Fandango, I'm talking about people who like dance music but don't really want to get into this scene because they assume that ultimately dance music is largely creatively bankrupt in 2006 - the lack of electro-house-isms in Villalobos is a bonus in this sense because it removes the association with "retro" tracky populism. Like, there's a lot of people who object to "In White Rooms" because "it's just trance again".

Whereas with Villalobos, apart from Perlon and tribal house, his reference points are all external to the dance music lineage he's a part of. It makes it a lot easier to say he's doing something radically new.

I had a long post on the thread about neo-pop talking about this distinction - which, for good or ill, seems to have set in motion this endless tendency to talk about Booka Shade and Villalobos together (I agree with gek-opel that they're not really much alike).

Ultimately, more interesting to me than "why do people like Villalobos not Booka Shade" is "why do so many people talk about Villalobos but <i>not</i> Luciano, Pier Bucci, Dinky, Tobi Neumann, Guido Schneider, Anja Schneider, Pan-Pot, Prosumer, Robag Wruhme" - granted of those people only Luciano is as well-known as Villalobos, but, as you say, it's not like Villalobos is going out his way to make his music accessible.

 

[gek-opel]

I think you're right Tim F, in that Villalobos has an appeal beyond dance music, and beyond people who are either aficionados of 4/4 music or simply hedonists in need of a fittingly well tooled soundtrack... Villalobos definitely links in to post-IDM in a way that Electro-house simply doesn't (or not in a terribly straightforward way- certainly it incorporates some innovations of sound design, but in a clean, consumer-friendly manner, under influence from the more obviously electronica-indebted minimal/micro-house). Whilst his 4/4 ethos and definite pan-global rhythm-influence places him outside trad-IDM, a lot of his textures are clearly descended from a post Autechre sensibility, and he himself referenced them, saying something along the lines of "Sound design ended in 2001 with Autechre" or something to that effect (which I think is wrong but interesting none the less...)

 

[DJ PIMP]

For me Villalobos is very polar - either fantastic or fantastically dull.

And a lot of minimal stuff is essentially polite psy-trance with a different (drug) aesthetic. It really strikes me with someone like Pan-Pot; micro-edits in place of changing synth lines... but its doing a very similar shifting switchy textural thing.

The DJ Delicious remix of Marc Romboy's "Body Jack" is my kind of minimal right now. Creatively bankrupt? Who cares when its that much fun

 

[Tim F]

I haven't heard that Romboy remix, but Romboy's "Sl Mirage" is one of my favourite tracks of the year - it's like DJ T's "Freemind" gone goth.

 

[Tim F]

By the way Dogger, the two Gui Boratto tracks to search for are "Arquipelago" and especially "Sozinho", which is marvellous.

 

[matt2]

Have you heard the entire Romboy album Tim? I haven't, but am certainly interested given your love for SL Mirage and my love of all the mixes of Bodyjack.