The gear thing is all relative. All the environments, filters and
4-pole dsp wankmobiles in the world don't mean nothing if there's no
musical substance to what you're doing with them.
If you take a dead rat, spray it gold, embed it in a perspex block, and
put strobes blinking at 140bpm on top of it, call it "Jeff", make a
million, sell them all, the fundamental truth is that you're still
presenting people with...a dead rat. Pet Rock, anyone?
I also think this is a problem with a lot of really commercialised
stuff...I'm thinking here of stuff like David Holmes, who I heard recently
for the first time. I just didn't get it. It just sounded like a fairly
decent old band from the 60s biffing away with a few samples on top. But I
didn't get any sense of atmosphere or menace or anything from it. Just a
dead rat. Whereas FSOL's Dead Cities album is, IMO, a real masterpiece. I
can't envision sequencers when I listen to that. It just seems whole and
complete, and somehow organic, maybe cause of the way elements
happen in it and then sort of collapse. Likewise, the Richard D James
album, or the Christian Fennesz record I've heard - the one with the
really cryptic map location for a title, that comes in a little muslin
bag...
I, as a vaguely gifted amateur - definitely a future staff writer! - am as
guilty of Pointless Track Syndrome as anyone else - though I don't want to
sound *too* sanctimonious - but I think I saw something where Sean from
Autechre said "you need to turn the screen off sometimes - it's the only
way to tell how much you've actually got there". I concur.
The software sequencers (logic, cubase, etc) lend a visual element to the
producer that's completely lost to the audience. It makes everything far
more interesting for the writer, with all that eye candy.
And one plus of having
a "real" synth - or one that is physically separate from your PC, rather -
is that you can fool around with it and find stuff without slipping into
the "Ok, now I'm going to write a track" frame of mind that often sees you
program in two bars of beat, some nonplussed chords, and not really
get anywhere in the process. I think you know the kind of thing I
mean.
And if you want to hear a prime example of something that really
*isn't* a Pointless Meandering Track, sit down with SAW 85-92 sometime and
really *listen* to track 2, Tha. All the muting and chopping and changeing
that's going on there, within the track, barely discernible, because it's
just so soothing...but it really does make a difference; of course it
does. It's why Tha doesn't sound like Cubase cycling over and over - even
if it is...
But enough of this. There are people on the list out of the loop entirely
on this thread, and that doesn't really seem fair. So I'll just close by
asking this:
"Hey, has anyone seen those ads for an album on Grand Royal, the Beastie
Boys' label, called "At Home With The Groovebox?". It seems like they've
just given John McEntire, Buffalo Daughter, and various other luminaries a
Roland MC-505 for a couple of days and got them to make tracks on it."
Oh shit, that's going to turn into another gear thread. No, forget it...
(smile)
Have fun,
j.d.
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