IDM Mailing Archive

Today we get a selection of stuff that arrived in the mail at my college radio station just recently. Pardon for the lack of obscurity in the selections, as always. David Kristian: Beneath The Valley Of The Modulars alien8 ALIENCD16 DK's a man after my own heart- in his liner notes, he plainly states "NO SAMPLING ALLOWED." So he's already in good with yours truly. Standard Kristian fare in the vein of tracks apparently descended from cavern-dwelling fish. Strange, dark, nicely layered stuff (SAWII, anyone?) with beats of various shapes and sizes always crawling around on the bottom. Somewhat different from a lot of his stuff in that reliance on beats and basslines is much more pronounced, but since the beats & basslines are generally always on par with the stuff on top it's not a problem in any way, and certainly makes his work a little more accessible. With all the synthesized yelping here and there, it's probably about as pop as DK gets. Try it out- makes you see demons in the cinderblocks. I'm not kidding. Orbital: Middle Of Nowhere FFRR 31065-2 Insipid, cloying cheese from the depths of the Hartnoll bros.' rectums. I already have the originals of all these songs- they're on Snivilisation & the Brown album. It took me a while to really appreciate some of the stuff on In Sides, and it still sounds pretty cheesy to me in a lot of places, but they magnified all the worst parts and failed to add anything. At least the progression from each album to the next for this group used to reveal something new each time- from yer basic techno anthems on Green to yer melodic build-uppity massive symphonic constructions on In Sides. If there's anything new on this piece of shit waste of aluminum and plastic it's New Age inflections. God help us all, this sucks mule nuts. Chemical Brothers: Surrender Astralwerks ASW 47610-2 Better. The vocal tracks are a waste of time, and "hey boys hey girls" is shit, but some of the rest could be considered keepers. Of course, you're going to have to understand that any positive comments are going to be relative to the prejudiced opinion of this release I had before I even heard it. So for a Chemical Brothers record, this is great! Tracks like "music:response" and "surrender" almost make me believe again, like when I first heard "Life is Sweet" on Trance Europe Express vol.4. The Chembros have obviously been listening to a lot of old disco records, not to mention a bunch of other stuff, as there are some sounds on here I never expected to hear from them- vocoder madness all over the place, video game bleeps up in the house on track one, and world-music type stuff going on on track ten, etcetera. Track two is just a techno/hardcore stomper- what the hell! I can say for sure that this record wasn't as utterly painful to review as the Orbital album, and when we played the first track in my room the other night my extreme-noise connoisseur friend got up and performed one of the most disturbing dances I've ever seen. Whoopee Tom

Excerpts from mail: 17-Jun-99 Re: (idm) Reviews: David Kr.. by "Sebastien Beaulieu"@log

quoted 3 lines Also for those already owning and liking this CD, DK is

> Also for those already owning and liking this CD, DK is > mostly doing that "genre" these days. The sequel to "Beneath The > Valley Of The Modulars" is almost ready.

Let me guess, "Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Synths." Aaron

quoted 3 lines DK's a man after my own heart- in his liner notes, he plainly states "NO

>> >>DK's a man after my own heart- in his liner notes, he plainly states "NO >>SAMPLING ALLOWED." So he's already in good with yours truly. Standard

hmm, that sounds like a challenge ;) as much as i like fellow canadian, david k., anyone who makes electronic music and forbids sampling of it is a hypocrite.. and yes i know he makes all his own sounds, builds all his own synths, wires his own electricity, designs all his own musical scales & time signatures, etc.. but sampling somebody and doing something creative with it is the biggest compliment you can pay an artist.. as for the new orbital album, i'll have to agree with the posted review.. my initial response was that they loaded up all the unfinished stuff lying around their computer and tried to make tracks out of it.. but after a bit further listening, i decided that they were actually doing something much more clever.. self-parody.. it does sound like a mock orbital album.. and given the success they've had, what with 'halcyon + on + on' being in just about every movie released in the past few years (inching just ahead of 'papau new guinea'), there's probably a large mainstream music consuming populace that'll just love it after being confused by the brown album and snivilization and mildly confused by in-sides.. - jove --- "music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have below." (harold adamson) impending gigs - Plur My Ass! - June 30th, 1999 drop modulation audio - http://members.tripod.com/drop_modulation __ ICQ# 26360618 "Example: Where can I find information about the hobby pyrotechnics?" (alta-vista)

quoted 5 lines David Kristian: Beneath The Valley Of The Modulars

> >David Kristian: Beneath The Valley Of The Modulars > >alien8 ALIENCD16 > > > >DK's a man after my own heart- in his liner notes, he plainly states "NO > >SAMPLING ALLOWED." So he's already in good with yours truly.

I might guess he is a bit of an analogue purist. However it is not clear above whether he will not permit any sampling from his work, or if he simply is proud to announce that he uses no sampling. This material may not make the earth tremble, but I admire this sound that would be similarly relevant and alive in 1990 or 2010. I should say, though, I've only heard his track "Christinatonal", from the Christina Ricci compilation due very soon [which I mastered brilliantly of course ;-) with a suitably light touch...and to which I contribute a track, "Teach Me How to Kiss", a detail from the forthcoming _Whistler's Bombardier_.]

quoted 1 line and: seeing that this list has such a large number Christina Ricci

>>>and: seeing that this list has such a large number Christina Ricci

fans, she was on jay leno last night as well. i've got to wonder: where the hell did THOSE come from? she's just a little girl!<<< That little-girl phase is so transient (sigh). Stay tuned for more details about the Christina Ricci compilation, which accompanies the upcoming issue of FAQT magazine. --Mark __ Burning Rome : SENSELESS CD on Mindfield Records MindCD03 Cathartium 14 > Distributed by Dutch East India Trading, Com Four, and Carrot Top < < http://www.xnet.com/~mkolmar/BurningRome > < MP3 & RealAudio tracks >

"jovian f." wrote:

quoted 11 lines DK's a man after my own heart- in his liner notes, he plainly states "NO

> > >> > >>DK's a man after my own heart- in his liner notes, he plainly states "NO > >>SAMPLING ALLOWED." So he's already in good with yours truly. Standard > > hmm, that sounds like a challenge ;) as much as i like fellow canadian, > david k., anyone who makes electronic music and forbids sampling of it is a > hypocrite.. and yes i know he makes all his own sounds, builds all his own > synths, wires his own electricity, designs all his own musical scales & > time signatures, etc.. but sampling somebody and doing something creative > with it is the biggest compliment you can pay an artist..

I meant (and I assume he means as well, since there is an entire album of remixed DK songs available) that he doesn't allow himself to use samplers. I avoid them because I know I'd just use them as a short cut and probably make a bunch of shit as a result. I just find it interesting I'm not the only musician to have sampler backlash disorder. Tom