IDM Mailing Archive

At 03:42 PM 8/8/97 -0700, you wrote:

quoted 14 lines This is a plea for help. I think RDJ is a great musician, but he

> >This is a plea for help. I think RDJ is a great musician, but he >doesn't really *do* anything for me. Is there something I'm missing, >perhaps some context? What should I hear? I've heard polygon window >& i care because you do & saw][. Although I haven't listened to saw][ >in months, so perhaps I should now. On headphones. > >And, before you tell me my musical taste must be horrible and my brain >porridge for thinking such things, let me say this: I know, and I feel >the same way about you ;) > >--brett > >Well, I can understand your thinking if you've most recently stumbled onto

Mr. James (within the last 4 years). There are a lot of other musicians/programmers out there today that can match and quite often out produce anything that he's let the public hear of late. But , what he's done for electronica in general (especially during the early 90's) has definatley inspired and pushed electronic musicians to strive for more in this forum of music. When Mr. James first starting getting recognized to the public ( which was actually late in the years he's been writing electronic music) he brought back the spirit of the early pioneers of electronica (Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Klaus Shultze, ect...) but with a new and inspiring twist. Fusing elements of emperimentalism (noise, sporatic time signatures, abstract tonal structure, eg) with emotional chord progressions and just plain achingly beautiful melodies. At that time, most electronic music wasn't much more than cold emotionless bleeps and blonks. So called musicans of this forum were doing nothing more than turning on the machines and letting whatever came out be the end result. Mind you there were some artists that were doing some interesting work but, by in large, electronic music left a vary bad taste in peoples mouth. To this day, when people asked me what music do you write/listen to? And when I reply "electronic based music" they say," Like... that Techno Crap!" To which I reply, "Who have you listened to in that genre of music?" they respond "Well, no one really, can't stand the stuff, but my sister/brother's got a few comps. of techno trax vols. 1-10 that he/she listens to all the time". I arrest my case. "Do you think this is the best that electronica has to offer?" to which they reply "Well, I don't know, It's suppose to be the best of... isn't it?" Anyway, I don't condemn you for not liking Mr. Jame's music or not "getting" what he's doing... just know that he did a lot for the people that you probably listen to today. Put him along side Kraftwerk, Klaus Schultze, and Brian Eno. bEn Synaptic Records (Rick and Ben) 608 S. Broadway Denver, CO 80209 (303) 722-9428 (phone) (303) 722-9540 (fax) synaptic@eazy.net www.eazy.net/synaptic-records/