Actress / Nail the cross

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version

Well-known member
I liked R.I.P. at the time, but rarely listen now. I still haven't clicked with Ghettoville and AZD felt a bit thin. The album he did as Levantis was cool.
 
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version

Well-known member
It feels like Pitchfork fodder to me and makes me think of stuff like Four Tet. I was worried he'd end up like that once he signed with Ninja Tune tbh. You get good producers who end up on Warp, XL, Ninja Tune etc then they all seem to become kind of boring mid-level festival acts.
 
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boxedjoy

Well-known member
I know there's plenty of lo-fi techno out there and plenty of mopey chorus-FX'd ambient piano music out there but this seems to sit at an odd and distinct intersection, I can think of music it sounds alike to, but nothing that sounds like this
 
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boxedjoy

Well-known member
I dont think this is music that "clicks" - it's more a mood and a texture and a sensibility parlayed into an album
 
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version

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Got it on again now and enjoying it a bit more. The first nine tunes are cool and work well together then he completely kills the mood/flow with that horrible Sampha tune - Many Seas, Many Rivers - which seems to go on forever and comes off like some clunky James Blake thing.

If he ditched all the vocalists and it just jumped from Gliding Squares (9) to Turin (15) then ended on Diamond X, it'd be miles better, imo.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
skull kid said:
"whereas digital lo-fi tends to be abrasive and purely unpleasant."

this isn't always true though, people love to talk about the "warmth" of classic 90s ny rap for instance and attribute it to the low sample rate of old samplers, even going further to celebrate certain DACs and dithering rates and so on. why do you think sp-12s and mpc 60s and the like still command decent rates on the used market?

this whole analogue = warm, superior, digital = cold, inferior thing is a dichotomy that began in the used synth market to promote an agenda, and has unfortunately become second-hand knowledge in the critical realm. i doubt very much that anyone on this thread could blindfold identify an analogue synth from its software counterpart, or a digital recording from 1/4 inch tape, especially if you consider the great lengths software designers have gone to emulate analog recording techniques (this isn't a sleight on anybody, not many can!)

whatever actress uses, i reckon the perceived warmth of his recordings comes as much from his use of classic deep house tropes, soulful 7th and 9th chords and suspensions, and more "human" feeling unquantized drum patterns, than any particular gear. i did read somewhere that he samples youtube a lot, which may explain the low bitrate people are hearing
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Absolutely bang on the money. best post on music forum. Skull Kid is my acolyte and my student. he absorbed my lessons when i was floating in the ether on soulseek.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
daddek said:
oh i meant 1st gen plug in synths, the shitty direct x ones that came with cubase 4 or whatever.
Those 80s digital hardware synths were beautiful, crafted things.. DX7, D50, SQ80 etc. Some ways I prefer the sound of those wavetable synths to the grizzly 70s analog beasts.
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just beautifully crafted, great waveshaping.



If 2020s jungle/techno sounded like this I'd be in heaven. utterly sublime. especially that plucked breakdown. transcendent. I love samples as much as the next man but the real interesting bit comes when synths are programmed, not necessarily *played.*
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Slothrop said:
Woohoo, Dissensus backlash time.

So I quite like Actress, but the thing that I find a bit weird is that his music seems to fit pretty squarely in with the early 2000s techy / housey IDM thing - y'know, Splazsh wouldn't have been massively surprising if it had come out on Ghostly International or Plug Research or ~scape or something about ten years ago - but seems to get love from people who'd rather stick screwdrivers in their ears than be associated with that scene.

See also the "would you have been that surprised to hear Flying Lotus' stuff had come out on Ninja Tune in 2000?" issue...
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yeah weird, i thought his music would be like on playhouse or perlon or even sudelectronic, dial etc, all these german minimal house labels from the 00s, in fact an isolee track is still more satisfying.
 
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linee

Guest
thirdform said:
just beautifully crafted, great waveshaping.



If 2020s jungle/techno sounded like this I'd be in heaven. utterly sublime. especially that plucked breakdown. transcendent. I love samples as much as the next man but the real interesting bit comes when synths are programmed, not necessarily *played.*
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this is great but i kind of want to try mixing into this

 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
HMGovt said:
tidy analysis. I've noticed this when driving with Actress widgeting away in the background, but every now and then there's a splash of light and colour to grab your attention. Bit like Shackleton, but with at least one idea per tune rather than half an idea and twice as many spliffs.
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shackleton is good though, afroasian microvariation in rhythmic interplay. looking for ideas in his tunes is missing the point, its like islamic art, all geometric shapes and lines.
 
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