IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 2 lines All I know is that this list is sucking shit these days. 5 best warp

> All I know is that this list is sucking shit these days. 5 best warp > albums? Please... They are all from 4 years ago.

so what? as others have said, the list goes through phases. it's sucking shit for you right now, probably lots of others, but given the amount of folks on it, i'm sure there are a few interested in what's been going on. anyways, the list is idm. as a whole. 4 years ago, 4 minutes from now, 4 years from now. i started the 5 best warp albums thread because i'm going through and trying to fill out some holes in my warp collection, couldn't decide where to start. yeah, some of us are obsessives... anyways. right on, bigup, solid, etc. new-ish stuff: future sound of london: 'the isness' [hypnotic] it's a 60s psychedelic freakout album. no joke. guitars, sitars, flutes, floaty female vocals, hippie male vocals, string arrangements, etc etc. sounds absolutely nothing like any other FSOL stuff i've heard (i've only got the mainstream releases tho. maybe there's a FSOL obsessive out there who's heard similar from them). some of these tracks would sound right at home on the 'green crystal ties' set (10 discs of 60s psychedelic garage band music from the US). now, this is not saying it's bad. the songs are actually really good. it's just a complete departure from their previous output. i'd say 85% mellow. you'll be very disappointed if you're looking for anything like 'papua...' or 'we have explosive'. phako: 'bolnes shipyards and engineering co ltd' [dub] crunchy but polished, analog melodies + large bassy beats and lines... 'metal laundry' = wacky deep bell sounds over wide bass and click-beats. 'side slip' = robot cicadas playing jazz with metal things and zippers. 'blue villa' brings a stripped down and cyborg'd amon tobin to mind...'plate storage bay' = aliens numbing your head so they can steal it. overall, lives well and happily in the dub catalog. arovane: 'icol diston' [din] all the arovane 12"s on one handy cd. chock full of that arovane sound, needless to say. spreading ambience with beats everywhere between pokey and semi-glitch-quick on top. his synth lines seem heavily-thought, meticulous, with a soft dark edge to them...some of the tracks run on a bit too long without enough change-up (they were originally on 12"s after all), but overall the collection's quite good. music to study for algebra placements to. makes head-counting easier, what with all the mental pictures of undulating wires it induces. tim hecker: 'haunt me, haunt me do it again' and 't.hecker performs "my love is rotten to the core"' [subtactif/alien8] 'haunt me...': glitchy ambient for rotting train stations. extended tones, stuttery acoustic instrument samples, indistinct peoplethings (voices? footsteps?), filtered strings...makes time-lapse pictures of paint peeling from old girders, sepia-transparent ghosts in old clothes walking towards cracks of sunlight in the ceiling. 'my love...': more dischordant/noise-oriented than the former: distinct radio and phone voices, filtered string and/or guitar stabs, the devil's orchestra over an AM radio in a wind tunnel, noodling keyboard solos over murmuring voices...good for stirring up some hate at 3am airport layovers, play it loud. because i am poor these days, i've been going back to a lot of mp3 sites. tracks in constant rotation are the ten and tracer and cellular releases on kikapu (cellular: s/t [kpu.001], ten and tracer: 'fourth lake' [kpu.004], get them both at kikapu.com) and quark kent's '16 neptunes' (quarkkent.com). ten and tracer: 'fifth lake and screams' and 'yellows home' will make BoC fans very happy. in fact, i like them better than most of the stuff on geogaddi. warm, downbeat idm, with fuzzy analog-sounding melodies. 'fifth lake and screams' stands out a bit more; it could be happy early morning music, or melancholy mid-afternoon nap music. you decide. the other 2 tracks are much in the same vein...they're good, but don't grab me as much as 'fifth...' & 'yellows...'. the percussion in '...and the sky says' puts me off a little, a bit too clicky, but the rest is good, makes me feel like i'm exploring a dark cave with nothing but a flashlight full of dying batteries. cellular: noisy melodic, more emphasis on melodic. keeps my ears interested and busy. beats are all over the place. some tracks start out standard breakbeat, fracture and fold onto themselves, into spurts of d'n'b, then smooth out into ambience. others keep a constant, bassy, klangy breakbeat going with nice rolling synth melodies bobbing along on top. still others are piano-crazy drill'n'bass tunes. all around pretty solid stuff. quark kent: i can't get enough of this sucker. i've been stressed these days, getting ready to go back to school, trying to dig myself out of debt, recover from a bit of id theft, and loading this record up in the player really smooths things out. play it on a nice sunny day and it really lessens the tension, i tell ya whut. ok. beats are good and simple, layered with lots of interesting synth melodies. a few of the tracks have somewhat of an electro lean, some have a bit of dub and/or d'n'b elements thrown around in them...as a whole, it reminds me of some of the better instinct ambient releases from the mid 90s, updated, and more beat-heavy. completely and utterly worth the download. also worth a cdr so you can play it on the home system. there. put that in your pipe and smoke it. unless you're already passed out with your hand in the cheetos and your ankle in the bongwater that's spilled onto the carpet. hugz, -z --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org