Commander Keen
Active member
Mostly agree w/ all that except for V Delay & Warp. The Four Quarters is his best since Multila and the new Chris Clark is fantastic, as well.
IDM(ish) thread
- Thread starter jasperb
- Start date
Apart from the fact that I disagree with you about Warp (Clark, Jackson, Grizzly Bear, all strong albums), it's not very polite to speak with such condescension about a label where one of the by far most knowledgeable and insightful people around here works.
did not know that. and certainly no offense intended...
the comment may have been overly harsh, some of the new output, like the ones mentioned, are still relatively high-ish quality.
Warp has of course been great, original, influential, "seminal", and has been very important for me personally -- it's just that in recent few years I've been more often than not dissapointed by the label, and only here suggesting that maybe the most exciting new sounds are being produced elsewhere. that's all.
I won't take offense if someone says that my design work is out-dated or if my dj sets are boring, and I'm sure this person won't take it personally when I say Warp has seen better days.
cheers
the comment may have been overly harsh, some of the new output, like the ones mentioned, are still relatively high-ish quality.
Warp has of course been great, original, influential, "seminal", and has been very important for me personally -- it's just that in recent few years I've been more often than not dissapointed by the label, and only here suggesting that maybe the most exciting new sounds are being produced elsewhere. that's all.
I won't take offense if someone says that my design work is out-dated or if my dj sets are boring, and I'm sure this person won't take it personally when I say Warp has seen better days.
cheers
i think idm is a bit of a fallacy really, i don't really think warp rephlex planet mu have at anytime been idm labels although they have had acts that have been described like that.
There are labels that describe themselves as idm and they're mainly american, and have no relationship things like detroit techno, hardcore, jungle, modern electronics and raving etc, their relationship is to warp acts mainly.
i think the squarepusher album wasn't trying to push things but overall its one of his best and listenable albums.
i think analord was great, but with indie or anything, it's the lack of ambition that is one of the factors that have made idm stuff a wee bit boring, at the very least one of the big factors of jackson's record was it was ambitious and indulgent.
zhao's choices are appropriatley very tasteful, there is some great stuff like secret mommy and stuff on the sonig label which bypass the classicist mode, some of the newer mego stuff has that idea too, tujiko noriko, doing her version of j-pop etc..
if anything i think this music needs to become less tasteful, and on one on level it's just become music for other producers to listen to, which is a shame if its not interesting enough to grip you, in a funny way alot of minimal techno is idm turned inside out and bounced along a 4/4 beat imo.
that arctic hospital album is good jasperb, it's funny but merck are a idm label in the way i was talking about really, and their more techno side -label narita is musically much more intriguing and successful.
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MankyFiver
Well-known member
i honestly think the stuff that goodiepal under all his aliases is some of the best music produced especially those goodiebags on v/vm
and id also recommend antony mannings concision and elastic variations
and id also recommend antony mannings concision and elastic variations
wonk_vitesse
radio eros
that's not really what i'm saying really and i don't really understand what you mean there by second hand.
i guess if you mean it's a genre that copies the best of what producers think are the best ideas but then that's any genre really to a point.
but i was just making a point about the differences in us and uk points of references quite often, it's quite a generalisation as alot of the sort of second gen tigerbeat kinda people often had backgrounds in hardcore punk scenes etc. But most US fans of the music and quite a few makers got their references from warpy acts that had been licenced by astralwerks and trent resnor from nin 's label nothing, rather than an immersion in all kinds of british and european dance music and other electronix.
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swears
preppy-kei
The original wave of electronica producers in the 90s were influenced by Techno, House, Ambient, Hip Hop, Electro, Jungle, etc, etc...various styles that could be fucked around with, hybridised and taken off on weird tangents. New electronica producers are influenced by other electronica producers. It's become very geeky and insular.
You are right but all music is like that.
a zillion people copied the beatles without knowing about the music that they were influenced by
a zillion bands copied james brown without...
a zillion people copied kraftwerk...
a zillion people copied afx...
etc.
0.1% of music is new/original and the rest is copying. 1% of music is really inspired, cool, outstanding copying. the remaining 98.9% is shit of course.
also:
I don't think there is much of a line to draw between the "original wave of electronica" of the 90s and techno producers of the 80s. what is carl craig? what about derrick may's ambient stuff? quoth by aphex is just banging techno really. etc.
the newer people i find very weird... i guess it's just my age but i can't fathom how you could get into making dance music and not know about acid house or the fact that techno was invented by black americans (like every other music) or pre-NWA hip hop or YMO or UR.... i suppose it's not even dance music theyre making and i need to get with the times. i suppose when i got into house and techno I didn't know about all the disco and soul and euro synth stuff that the guys who made that were influenced by....
hmmm ok just thinking out loud now, it's probably getting boring for everyone else.....
a zillion people copied the beatles without knowing about the music that they were influenced by
a zillion bands copied james brown without...
a zillion people copied kraftwerk...
a zillion people copied afx...
etc.
0.1% of music is new/original and the rest is copying. 1% of music is really inspired, cool, outstanding copying. the remaining 98.9% is shit of course.
also:
I don't think there is much of a line to draw between the "original wave of electronica" of the 90s and techno producers of the 80s. what is carl craig? what about derrick may's ambient stuff? quoth by aphex is just banging techno really. etc.
the newer people i find very weird... i guess it's just my age but i can't fathom how you could get into making dance music and not know about acid house or the fact that techno was invented by black americans (like every other music) or pre-NWA hip hop or YMO or UR.... i suppose it's not even dance music theyre making and i need to get with the times. i suppose when i got into house and techno I didn't know about all the disco and soul and euro synth stuff that the guys who made that were influenced by....
hmmm ok just thinking out loud now, it's probably getting boring for everyone else.....
was also pleasantly surprised at the high quality of Murcof's several albums following his debut, which I must admit I thought might have been a one hit wonder.
I love all of Raster Noton, but for those to whom the label's ascetism is too much, check out Modul - Isol. a very listenable and lovely recording of bass thuds, gentle yet crisp highs, and gorgeous waves of elongated midrange tones.
I love all of Raster Noton, but for those to whom the label's ascetism is too much, check out Modul - Isol. a very listenable and lovely recording of bass thuds, gentle yet crisp highs, and gorgeous waves of elongated midrange tones.
I like Murcof a lot, but his last album ("Remembranza") was a real downturn in quality from the debut, it piled up the orchestral textures a bit thickly, rather than having that alien minimalist ambiance of "Martes" where each element was given a lot of space to breathe and the tracks developed very logically, taking the aesthetic of the purer end of minimal techno and applying it to a much broader range of sampled textures. However the lead track on the "Utopia" ep is unbelievably brooding techno/Gorecki par excellence.
The problem with raster noton releases is that basically with a few exceptions they are all repping exactly the same hyper-minimalist click/buzz/bleep sound, and basically Ryoji Ikeda's stuff is all you need, I think... although some of the other acts took an even more deconstructed "nothing there at all" attitude...
The problem with raster noton releases is that basically with a few exceptions they are all repping exactly the same hyper-minimalist click/buzz/bleep sound, and basically Ryoji Ikeda's stuff is all you need, I think... although some of the other acts took an even more deconstructed "nothing there at all" attitude...
swears
preppy-kei
What I'm getting at is there should be more diversity in the influences, people should be picking up on the sparseness of Halfstep tunes, or the sheen of RnB production, or the "clunkiness" of Grime beats, whatever....finding new little routes and ways of thinking about music, rather than just ripping off established names. And there are people like that out there of course, but I think the buzz surrounding dance music in the 90s that caused millions of people to see music in a totally fresh way provided fuel for these experiments. Now IDM/electronica/laptop music is sort of off on it's own little island.
If you look at Planet Mu and Warp you can see that the IDM record labels are well aware of the imagination deficit/creative dead end problem affecting the mid to late 90s style electronica sound... Warp have signed loads of completely non-electronica acts (and Battles, who aren't exactly indie and use lot of electronics but are basically meta-post-rock)... Planet Mu have put their faith in the dubstep crew, with great success. It really angered me that Autechre (my favourites by a long way from the Warp electronica lot of the 90s) failed to take on Grime or avant-R'n'B, and from Draft 7.30 onwards became utterly utterly irrelevant.
the hardcore continuum doesn't have to be the only source for the laptop crowd, autechre from confield onwards seem more interested in granular synthesis (although the last album was quite complacent)
with all the advances in software and with time, it seems strange that there is hardly anyone 'idm' who has done anything new, a surfeit of possibilities is open and yet the product becomes ever more obtusely classicist, 8 yrs since windowlicker and that's still the high watermark
with all the advances in software and with time, it seems strange that there is hardly anyone 'idm' who has done anything new, a surfeit of possibilities is open and yet the product becomes ever more obtusely classicist, 8 yrs since windowlicker and that's still the high watermark
viktorvaughn
Well-known member
I love Mum's first two albums for super melodic slow beats with fractured vocals. It's not really your classic IDM, but more beautiful dreamy stuff.
Same for Susuma Yakota's 'Sakura' and 'Grinning Cat' - chilled stuff with some underlying blunted house beats in parts, especially on the latter.
Same for Susuma Yakota's 'Sakura' and 'Grinning Cat' - chilled stuff with some underlying blunted house beats in parts, especially on the latter.
I liked that first mum for about 3 days when it came out. wears thin as paper REAL quick.
on the girl vocals over trip hop tip, i know hard to believe that anything quality exists in this area at all, but Antenne's self titled is very nice.
oh and new Pole is niiiiiiiiiice! did i mention that already?
on the girl vocals over trip hop tip, i know hard to believe that anything quality exists in this area at all, but Antenne's self titled is very nice.
oh and new Pole is niiiiiiiiiice! did i mention that already?
classic idm is often a name for sub, blanded out early aphex/boards/black dog/autechre type gear. not altogether very interesting imo.
i don't know if windowlicker is a high benchmark for electronica it's more or less a great pop song more than anything else i think, there are loads of good things dotted thru the genre and loads of overlooked artists, the worst stuff is the overly fluffy stuff in alot of ways though imo
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Yeah, the point when I began to worry about things was when IDM went from meaning "more or less anything influenced by dance music but weird and intended more for home listening than purely for clubbing" to specifically meaning "glitchy or crunchy hip hop influenced beats possibly with ambient influenced melodies."
Is anyone apart from the usual suspects still actually doing the first version, and really rewriting rules?
@OP - you might like Secret Frequency Crew's Forest of Echo Down, which is 'classic IDM' (albeit with odd bits of brass thrown in) but about as well done as I've heard in that style: it's really immersive, engaging, tactile music. Also Ulrich Schnauss - In A Strangely Isolated Place.