Wordsound connected to theAgriculture?

theAgriculture

theAgriculture is run by once11 of MuliPolyOmni&WE fame/nonfame. It ran kind of parallel to both the wordsound and asphodel labels and is the only one of the 'illbient' triumvirate to still publish music as far as I'm aware... it might have folded now.
There are some excellent SubDub releases on that label as well as We solo joints that are worth checking.

www.theagriculture.com
Still in the game!

ha yeah i believe that agriculture dude is coming to berlin to stay with a friend of mine for a while in the next weeks... if you have any questions i can try to get some answers -- i know i want to ask what happened to WE. that first album was so unique, so good!

Am I the only person who thinks this stuff is horribly naff? I picked up a few DJ olive affiliated records (cant remeber off teh top of my head) when he was getting regular props in the wire and it never seemed any more than quite hackneyed art bar goatee chillout. Is there some amazing parts of the catalogue I should check out?

straight said:

Am I the only person who thinks this stuff is horribly naff? I picked up a few DJ olive affiliated records (cant remeber off teh top of my head) when he was getting regular props in the wire and it never seemed any more than quite hackneyed art bar goatee chillout. Is there some amazing parts of the catalogue I should check out?

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well UR rite a lot of it was weak, none of the labels exempted. but there were enough bright (er... dark?) moments for me to be totally into it back then. hard to make recommendations as a lot of it is about finding a couple great cuts on otherwise shit album...

on Wordsound the compilation series like Certified Dope and Subterranean Hits for instance -- but when it was dope it was really dope, and very inspirational for me personally -- arabic flutes on top of doomsday hiphop and skewed fucked up rap. i guess Spectre's "Seven" album was pretty solid through out, if a bit limited (Bassnation used one of the songs on his bloggariddim; it was also on the Force Inc. Electric Ladyland series of abstract hiphop - also worth tracking down, the first 4 were solid)

on Asphodel back in the day i never felt those Olive solo albums which bordered on boring triphop. but i can 100% vouch for the first WE album "As Is". the Jame Plotkin and Mick Harris things i enjoyed at the time, as did the Incursions in Illbient compilation, the Byzar album, and as much as i hate on the pretentious bullshitter, dj spooky's first album Songs of a Dead Dreamer was good at the time (now prolly weak though). i have massive respect for and love love love Badawi's stuff though, always have, both old and new material.

gosh, that's enough tripping down memory lane for an entire month i reckon

straight said:

Am I the only person who thinks this stuff is horribly naff? I picked up a few DJ olive affiliated records (cant remeber off teh top of my head) when he was getting regular props in the wire and it never seemed any more than quite hackneyed art bar goatee chillout. Is there some amazing parts of the catalogue I should check out?

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I'd grab his ambient releases on room40.

i think its because they give lengthy post structural analysis on their music and can fill out grant forms. Id actually place this stuff lower than UNKLE etc, its like wallpaper, Sneaker Pimps Phd

straight said:

i think its because they give lengthy post structural analysis on their music and can fill out grant forms. Id actually place this stuff lower than UNKLE etc, its like wallpaper, Sneaker Pimps Phd

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this is an extremely skewed view that is largely mistaken and offensive in its smug dismissal of a large community of musicians that lived and worked in NYC in the late 90s/early 2000s.

only Spooky (aka Pukey) ever quoted the first 3 pages of Mille Plateaux, talked about cut-ups and readymades in embarrassing fashion like a first year art student, and probably got grant money.

what was loosely defined as "illbient" comprised of much much more than that, and so many ideas, styles, personalities involved. it was an incredibly rich, diverse, and fruitful period of abstract electronic music which spawned and influenced much in its wake. Mick Harris was associated with the scene, as was the Bug, just to name a couple that were important precursors to your beloved Dubstep. i have been to Soundlab parties where Autechre played, Arto Lindsay sung, and Jim O'rourke fiddled with his laptop. i have been to "illbient" loft parties where the djs dropped Afrobeat and Gamelan mixed with electronic noise. there were much video experimentation going on as well...

"lower than UNKLE"??? "like Sneaker Pimps???" comments like this do not do justice to yourself, Straight, because i know you are generally not a callous and ignorant idiot.

sorry, im a little hateful first thing in the morning. im just going by the couple of cds which didnt make much of an impression on me and was talking specifically about djs olive and spooky. a lot of the best illbient stuff went on while i was still a techno youth in the late nineties and thats why i was asking for reccomendations.

straight said:

just going by the couple of cds which didnt make much of an impression on me and was talking specifically about djs olive and spooky.

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oh i absolutely agree with you on that Olive CD with the stock photo water bubbles cover. i guess he was trying to go mainstream "cinematic triphop" bullshit.

and besides a couple of decent moments in his first 1 or maybe 2 albums Spooky is a cunt and a half. he did this "Africa" mix for like the Venice biennale, and it was a BIG STINKER accompanied by his run of the mill textual diarrhia. made me really angry. can't believe these overly educated art people can be so utterly clueless and dumb when it comes to music sometimes.

Sneaker Pimps Phd *sniggers* I quite liked that, esp. if it was direct at Spooky, whose game never matched his mouth. He performed and workshopped in N.Z a few years back and the best thing I heard him do was a 5 minute mix at the beginning of his workshop lecture.
As for the Asphodel/Agriculture et. al., there are some totally brilliant albums (SubDub, the aforementioned Badawi, the Incursions comps...) and some total rubbish. The last we album was a bitter disappointment to me, although the first 2 have some excellent music going for them.

zhao said:

oh i absolutely agree with you on that Olive CD with the stock photo water bubbles cover. i guess he was trying to go mainstream "cinematic triphop" bullshit.

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Olive (whose Extra-Virgin album is the stock water bubbles cover you are talking about, I think) /= DJ Olive.

DJ Olive's solo material is okay. I think I like the other two guys who were in We more. Agriculture is hit or miss, but the Nettle and David Last records are both quite good and the new /rupture miss is also very nice.