IDM Mailing Archive

The Rare Guy wrote:

quoted 4 lines the only thing about breaks IMO is the awkwardness of them, compared to

> the only thing about breaks IMO is the awkwardness of them, compared to > other rhythms, but I think that it's not something that is that hard to do. > I would put the challenge more in making the actual music of the track than > making the breaks.

Chris Sez: I don't doubt your formidable programming skills, but I do question your perception of TJ's production method and the content of his songs. The whole point of Squarepusher is, to me, that the drums are not "breaks", but are rather very complex drum tracks integrated into the composition as musch as the melody is. Most of his songs have zero repeated measures in the drum track. He's not using breaks, he programming a full 5 minutes worth of drums which change all the time because he programmed them with the skill and feel of a live drummer. Most electronic musicians create beats in two ways: One is sampling. The other is programming, and most artists only program the equivalent of four or five seconds of drums for a three minute track. A d&b artist might program 10-20 seconds, but still they repeat measures like crazy and it *feels* sequenced. You can almost *see* the horizontal bars on their little mac screen. With TJ, all bets are off. "How's he do it?" you wonder. I love the way TJ weaves the drums and melodies together. Often the drums *are* the music, and the composition and effects processing on both the melodic and percussive aspects blurrs the boundaries between them. Track 2 on HND has these intense parts where he employs a typical d&b doubledoubledouble accelerating drum, so the fast drums become a tone. But he goes a step further and makes the resultant tone blend in with the underlying melody and join with it as a single track, dissolving into it. Then, from out of underneath, a new drum track arises. It's beautiful and it can't be described as breakbeat or jungle in any sense of the term. I would be the first to argue strongly against classifying him as a D&B artist at all. Nate Harrison gets it right when he notes that qualitatively, TJ is clearly practicing a different art form than most d&b artists. So when I hear that someone just fools around with breakbeats and then sounds like TJ, I get a bit skeptical. I beleive that you can make convincing jungle that way, but not anything that just sounds like TJ because that's just not how he makes his music. I agree that most breakbeat/d&b/jungle is "awkward", and to be honest I don't like most of it unless it has one of two qualities: 1) A really strong half-time beat (like a dub foundation) so you can actually dance and not look like a spastic Rhesus monkey. 2) Beautiful orchestration and music. TJ and AFX have #2 in spades. WE and Amon Tobin (which I just bought and I love!) have an awful lot of #1 to boot. Most jungle artists are just playing sped up house music with awkwardly placed and sped up canned zero-g breakbeats and that's why I think they are mostly crap. -CF