Oval- Missing in action?

shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
there is in general something i can't get over about how impossible it is to recreate a genre outside of its specific historical moment. the jungle guys we've talked about on here totally fail at it to my ears it sounds so different. even when people spend a billion pounds buying all the old equipment it still doesn't work. i think its the people themselves. different times breed different people. both the ears and ways of working and the brain of the artists themselves the way their instincts take them and the feedback they get from the rest of the world when they make something. no-one ever managed to make grunge that was even minimally good once the moment had passed. no-one made any good grime after it was done either even the guys who were there at the start even when there was suddenly a load of money about for it in 2015. these configurations / assemblages are more momentary that people think. same for the early 90s ambient glitch thing nothing as good as that that sounds like that ever got made afterwards it's not just nostalgia
 
R

raljax

Well-known member
Great points. Is there a time limit too on producers who emulate (openly)? Was listening to a Merck (2002)record just now with a clear Autechre and BoC tracks - both great but I was wondering if this can only be done relatively quickly after the originals were made. It's possible that emulating a famous producer's sound extends the window tho as some artists, like those two, have such iconic sounds.
 
R

raljax

Well-known member
There are eg Skee Mask and Brainwaltzera tracks that are blatantly BoC tracks ( everyone's made a BoC track) from very recently that doit well. BUT this doesn't hold for jungle?
 
version

version

Well-known member
Always found this one of Oval's quite moving. Those stuttering squeaking sounds like a failing machine trying its hardest to make music or communicate.

 
version

version

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
there is in general something i can't get over about how impossible it is to recreate a genre outside of its specific historical moment. the jungle guys we've talked about on here totally fail at it to my ears it sounds so different. even when people spend a billion pounds buying all the old equipment it still doesn't work. i think its the people themselves. different times breed different people. both the ears and ways of working and the brain of the artists themselves the way their instincts take them and the feedback they get from the rest of the world when they make something. no-one ever managed to make grunge that was even minimally good once the moment had passed. no-one made any good grime after it was done either even the guys who were there at the start even when there was suddenly a load of money about for it in 2015. these configurations / assemblages are more momentary that people think. same for the early 90s ambient glitch thing nothing as good as that that sounds like that ever got made afterwards it's not just nostalgia
Click to expand...

This is the kind of thing McLuhan talked about, technological developments creating a new kind of person. The sensory parameters being irrevocably altered. Things being shed as others grow.

"Just as printing imposed on us a visual and linear mode of thought, and gave sight the prime place in the hierarchy of the senses, so the electronic age provides information from all directions at once. Thus the ratio of the senses is altered in favour of hearing with its superior kinaesthetic qualities, and we have to adjust to a new relation with space and time."​
 
wektor

wektor

Well-known member
people are less patient and at the same time have more options, infinite race of intercommunication between the mind, hands, and the equipment

I would argue a large part of the "rawness" of what used to be was a matter of inner discourse of giving up
somehow todays ways of working dont lend themself so well to this kind of instability, call it what you want, that accidental quality that @shakahislop mentions
I recall someone on WeAreHappened podcast talking about it, elektron samplers for example are so well made these days it's nearly impossible to hear it break at its limit
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
shakahislop said:
still listen to that every now and then. the computers sounded different in the early 90s it feels like the user had less control
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IIRC there's a bit in the David Toop book about improvisation where he talks about the early free improv scene, and how people who were interested in "non-idiomatic improvisation" either tended towards total mastery of their instrument, to express themselves as fluently as possible without having to fall back on "cliches", or towards toy instruments and non-instruments and unconventionally played instruments and stuff, in order to basically cut themselves off from the technical ability to reproduce established stylistic tropes at all. And I wonder whether the latter is kind of like where computer music was at in the 90s to some extent? Whereas we've now got to a point where anyone who wants to can knock out competent blues licks if they can't think of anything better to do.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
saw ben ufo last night not exactly by choice. he was playing a set at 6pm in a kind of pitchfork tasteful mixture of acts in a big former glass factory with wooden beams and concrete floors. i hate that venue. there's people on the internet who rate him as a totally amazing dj with range and the crowd in the palm of his hands etc.

there's a whole direction of travel / splinter of the electronic thing which seems totally emotionless and seems more like using their control of the computers to show what the computers can do. there's a real precision to all of it. i was thinking: you're there listening to these beats where even the randomness they insert into the tunes to make them less boring / sterile sounds like a randomness generating function in the DAW. you look at the lights and they feel like there's no human involvement they are synched to the tunes. you listen to the speakers and the technology has come a long way, they feel like they're computer optimised too, making constant automated adjustments to the space.

then you sort of look at the audience and everyone there has come because they saw something on the internet probably through songkick or RA automated alerts, got automated reminders from the app that morning reminding them that they're going to this thing tonight.

obviously it depends what kinds of things you show up to it's kind of your fault if you end up in this automation-zone or at least you can avoid it if you know a bit about what's going on in the city and what your options are. something is going on though and there is something new about it i think. it's the computers in everything. or maybe more specifically it's the particular kinds of computers that are around at the moment.
 
wektor

wektor

Well-known member
Slothrop said:
IIRC there's a bit in the David Toop book about improvisation where he talks about the early free improv scene, and how people who were interested in "non-idiomatic improvisation" either tended towards total mastery of their instrument, to express themselves as fluently as possible without having to fall back on "cliches", or towards toy instruments and non-instruments and unconventionally played instruments and stuff, in order to basically cut themselves off from the technical ability to reproduce established stylistic tropes at all. And I wonder whether the latter is kind of like where computer music was at in the 90s to some extent? Whereas we've now got to a point where anyone who wants to can knock out competent blues licks if they can't think of anything better to do.
Click to expand...
funny last time ive seen him perform was at Hundred Years in an ensemble with a friend of mine, Toop would do shit like throw out a handful of feathers into the air and bow a piece of pressed paper
 
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