Electronic Music 411 - twenty years of aphex

04/12/08 + jarvis

it dawned on me today that our dear mr. james has a discography spanning over 20 years. that does a few things for me:

*makes me feel old
*impresses me
*makes me glad that much of that work still sounds fresh
*makes me wonder where it'll lead to

the thought interested me because so many of our EM influences have died over the last few years and i don't feel like there are many contemporaries that i personally feel influenced by. what are our musical successors going to be influenced by in 20 years? will it even matter by then?

Recent Blog: janko

04/15/08 + flies

AE, AFX, []push. nobody will ever top them.

i'm not particularly interested in vsnares or kid606. neither of them has ever felt very musical to me. for drill'n'bass, druqks and big loada beat all.

boards and clark are both very good but neither has the range of the three above.

a lot of the music that i like now takes a lot from these guys, but in a slightly different direction. certainly my tastes have changed, but i follow 12k and raster noton these days, not warp.

Recent blogs: grade school, bohdan pacynsky, meditate?

04/15/08 + Roshi

flies said: "AE, AFX, []push. nobody will ever top them."

Arrrgghhh...sorry flies, I feel this is the attitude that keeps IDM in the ghetto.

I feel the prevailing attitude is "We're never good enough to compare to these guys"...sorry, but I think RDJ is just a guy, and AE are just two guys, and squarepusher is just a guy.

I'm tired of the comparisons...do something new (this is why I burned out on IDM)

Recent blogs: Summer Reading - The rest is noise, oogazer set, Origins of Butterzone?

edited: Apr 15 2008 + flies

all i can say is that i like their music better than anything else 'in the genre'. now i listen primarily to other genres. You're certainly right that IDM got into a self-recycling dead end. on the other hand, i didn't see that many people trying to do what squarepusher did, mainly the other two. There are other outstanding contributions (BoC and prefuse73 being among my personal favorites).

In any case, i think 'IDM' had a historical moment that is now over. The music continues, is branching out, but the focussed energy and excitement of mid-late nineties warp will never be beaten. for me.

I was so into IDM that i practically listened to nothing else for like 3 years and then i simply lost interest after listening to a lot of second rate tho decent stuff. is this the music's fault? kinda, yeah.

I mean, i don't think anyone will ever beat charlie parker but that doesn't mean i don't care about joshua redman.

Recent blogs: grade school, bohdan pacynsky, meditate?

04/15/08 + Roshi

Yeah, I see what you mean. The hero worship is really what put me off the genre.

I like any genre that is accepting of freaks who want to do their own thing, and I think it's really ironic that IDM seemed that way to me, but became so limited it might as well just be a cult or a religion at this point.

Recent blogs: Summer Reading - The rest is noise, oogazer set, Origins of Butterzone?

04/15/08 + flies

it's just funny that unbeatable icons should inspire imitators.

Recent blogs: grade school, bohdan pacynsky, meditate?

04/15/08 + j_chot

my wife says "forums are for the gays"

Recent blogs: Mom's Fridge doesn't cut it, machine drum observations, possible album cover

04/15/08 + nagrom

Roshi, I think 'the power trio' can only be called IDM in the sense that it's 'beat driven electronic music that's not dance music'. All three of those guys have a huge range of 'sounds', each one very individual. There's definitely an IDM sound that has emerged...you know, portamento melodies and glitchy beats, but Aphex, Squarepusher, and Ae aren't really part of that.
I don't see them as the masters of IDM, but the masters of beat-driven non-dance electronic music in general. Sure, there are plenty of amazing artists out there, but as Flies said, none of them have the range, and I'll add that none of them have the craft. Every release from any of those guys is just mind-blowing detailed and beautiful. They're master in the sense that great painters are masters. The command immense intentional control of the medium.

And I'd say Merzbow is a master, in that sense, of noise. And Stockhausen of electroacoustic music. I'm still looking for mind-blowing ambient music. Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Stars of the Lid, Eno... I find it all beautiful, but crude.

Recent blogs: Interview: Mark N./Bloody Fist Records, Je Suis en Montreal, Electronic Music Search Engine

edited: Apr 15 2008 + nagrom

it's just funny that unbeatable icons should inspire imitators.

I really don't think they do. Show me an Autechre imitator... Datach'i? Not even close. Sure there's lots of stuff that sounds like the RDJ album, but it's still not as good, and the people doing it don't also have seminal techno, ambient, acid, drill and bass, etc. records.

Roshi, does classical music turn you off because everybody's trying to be like Bach or Stravinsky or Mozart or whatever? Every artistic field has pioneers and masters. Perhaps thankfully, there's room for people who lack craft to make up for it in 'character' or 'stylistic flair' or 'showmanship' or 'aesthetic appeal'. Stockhausen was thoroughly against that trend (started by jazz I guess) link

Recent blogs: Interview: Mark N./Bloody Fist Records, Je Suis en Montreal, Electronic Music Search Engine

04/15/08 + Roshi

I respect and admire their music. I don't think they are the Mozarts of electronic music.

I guess I admire their daringness, but I don't think they are the end all be all. They've dominated the conversation for too long.

Recent blogs: Summer Reading - The rest is noise, oogazer set, Origins of Butterzone?

04/15/08 + ricemutt

yeah totally I agree roshi.... skiptracer sucks!

and yeah those guys, the iconic guys, made good music but really not the best. I think that now, anything that poeple are making that is good wouldn't be called "IDM" because IDM has such a narrow definition, and that definition is VERY played. So in that sense there' can't really be any more good IDM, haha.

Recent blogs: diy poobox, Electronics, reaktor, live set, Bagger288 Records for Sonarchy

04/15/08 + electrodan

wait, what's an IDM?

Recent blogs: Spanish House, Dear ricemutt,, Great Guitarists

04/15/08 + ricemutt

I think it's internets dorks musics

Recent blogs: diy poobox, Electronics, reaktor, live set, Bagger288 Records for Sonarchy

04/16/08 + Roshi

nagrom said: "

it's just funny that unbeatable icons should inspire imitators."

I really don't think they do. Show me an Autechre imitator... Datach'i? Not even close. Sure there's lots of stuff that sounds like the RDJ album, but it's still not as good, and the people doing it don't also have seminal techno, ambient, acid, drill and bass, etc. records.

Roshi, does classical music turn you off because everybody's trying to be like Bach or Stravinsky or Mozart or whatever? Every artistic field has pioneers and masters. Perhaps thankfully, there's room for people who lack craft to make up for it in 'character' or 'stylistic flair' or 'showmanship' or 'aesthetic appeal'. Stockhausen was thoroughly against that trend (started by jazz I guess) link

I did attend a showing of people who were painting after Picasso and cubism, and truth be told, about 90% was crap. 10% you could see a glimmer where they assimilated the style with something personal in their soul and achieved a new synthesis.

I am against imitation when it becomes a dogma and excludes all other possibilities. This is why I came to hate drum and bass - it became a boy's club where two or three people held the reins and hence slavish imitation became the norm.

Of the realm of possibilities that is electronic music, the above artists explored a minute fraction of the possibilities that is electronic music. Why not look elsewhere?

Recent blogs: Summer Reading - The rest is noise, oogazer set, Origins of Butterzone?

04/16/08 + bla

'beat driven electronic music that's not dance music' ha ha- i think they really tried to make it dance music

Recent blogs: programmers please help, bla live at bitjam at the rigger feb 08, alesis hr16

04/16/08 + bla

fictional history i just made up: aphex used to have universal respect from all kinds of ravers then got labeled as a weirdo outsider then went along with that and made crankier music and lost the respect of many dance music people because he wasnt making proper techno or couldnt do something as clever and funky as jungle so he tried to go back to that somewhat while still trying to live up to his reputation as an inventor of crazyness but it didnt really work but he got new love and respect from loads of nerds who werent into dance music then he got fucked off with that and made old acid again because he knew he could do that and hoped the ravers would love him again- it was always meant to be dance music
hahaha
none of the above has any grounding in fact and is not based on evidence or research

Recent blogs: programmers please help, bla live at bitjam at the rigger feb 08, alesis hr16