---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 16:37:22 -0000
>Sorry Thomas, but I have to totally disagree on this one!
you dont have to apologize to me ;P
>No disrespect - it just seems to me that your tastes seem more on
the house side of >things then on the techno side.
thats only because thats where the good stuff is coming from right
now, IMO. i still buy techno records but its very infrequently
because of the infractions i mentioned. i feel like theres too
much overproduced (and thus it has its life sucked out) stuff, and
way too much that falls too easily into the clicky category or the
minimal german category (for two of the most popular trendy genres
out today). even those recentish dan bell tracks that were on that
comp didnt do anything for me because they sounded way too
"microhouse" or whatever its called these days.
>Generally, there are a lot of old records
>(funk/soul/disco) that you and other 313 list members really like
that I can't for the
>life of me get into AT ALL (unless there's a really hot synth
part)!
the old stuff still (for the most part) has that raw funkiness.
plus theres no way for an old record to be made to fit into a
modern sound trend!
>What has made me happy in the last few years is that a lot of
IDM/glitch/experimental
>production values have seemed to come into their own in the
techno world, and have been
>interpreted in ways that are a little more dance friendly. I
don't mind digital
>production values, especially if they are used to create a high
level of detail.
>However, it seems that there are two camps in the 313 world, and
one camp is rather
>opposed to these IDM-style sounds infiltrating techno, and sees
the new stuff as being a
>cold imitation of the old soulful stuff.
im not staunchly against digital stuff. i love soundhack and some
of the MMM stuff. that predated the corny glitch stuff and
features entirely digital sounding production. but they were
somehow more interesting than what has come since then. i dont
believe that digital = bad. i do believe that digital seems to
give people easier access to overdoing some aspect of their music
at the price of sacrificing the overall quality.
>>From my point of view, I really don't think there is any kind of
attempt to be purposely
>"hip", and I love the newer sounds. It is a natural integration
of ideas
>(IDM/experimental v. techno) that should not really be seperated
anyway.
dan bell's recent tracks are the best examply of this trendiness.
you have a guy who went from being a complete innovator to a
complete biter. im not trying to knock the guy, but it feels like
he took the easy way out by just fitting into some premade sound
instead of trying to further his own sound. you can look at people
like juan atkins or UR or rob hood to see people who havent tried
to fit into any trends. and thats why i still care about and buy
their music. those guys are utilising lots of digital stuff these
days and their productions are definitely clean sounding. but they
know what theyre doing so it doesnt come off sounding wack.
>However, all
>the glitchiness does sometimes seem to leave the some of the
disco sensibilities behind
>for something a little more stark and digital sounding. I don't
mind - I'm a Cyborg.
>As long as the funk is there - and I don't define funk by analog
warmth and production
>value, or old school type soul, but rather by rhythms that have
some character and are
>off-kilter or polyrhythmic. Which is really just a natural
extension of minimal techno,
>except that tracks seem to be a little more intricate now thanks
to software.
theyre more than "a little more intricate". theres definitely a
point at which people should stop working on a track and call it
finished. the current technology allows that point to be
essentially irrelevant. with old technology, you could keep
tweeking things out. but you couldnt call back up your sounds
unless you kept things sitting in a state of stasis in the studio.
this seems to have caused people to have a better understanding of
when enough is enough.
>And I
>don't think ANYTHING on vinyl sounds that "clean" when it is
played on a turntable and
>sound system (maybe on CD though). I actually think that
sometimes having clean
>production and not overdriving everything to sound like #$%! is a
GOOD thing, though
>some dirty tracks do work for me too of course.
like i said, im not just against clean production. im against
clean production at the expense of good music. too many
"producers" these days are actually just engineers. ill take
someone who produces good stuff with no engineering skill over
someone who has mad engineering skill but doesnt actually make
anything good and worthwhile. i dont think other people feel the
same.
tom
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