I actually really like it. I think in places, that it sounds suffers from double album syndrone(more tracks than nesc.)
It may have been been better if he had put all the hard tracks on to on disc. I think it holds its own against his
previous albums.
Rob
::::::Component Records:::::::
Box 783, Somers, Ct 06071
www.componentrecords.com
----- Original Message -----
From: David O'Toole <dto@qwsi.net>
To: <boston-idm@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <idm@hyperreal.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 12:36 AM
Subject: [idm] [rant] sorry, new aphex record blows
quoted 53 lines Last week I picked up the latest full-length from Aphex Twin.>
> Last week I picked up the latest full-length from Aphex Twin.
> Unfortunately, post-millennium, he has done exactly what Autechre did:
> gone from being one of the major innovating electronic artists of the
> 1990's to being a complete joke. There are precious few tracks worth
> listening to on this record, and none of them equal the melodic skill
> or production quality of his "middle period". Aphex's little sample-reuse
> problem gives the "ambient" tracks a very samey feel (vaguely oriental
> chimes in the vein of "Nannou") and the orchestral piano pieces just fall
> flat.
>
> The rest of the album is tired, mediocre drum-and-bass. The originality in
> drum arrangement, rhythmic composition, and sample creation that graced
> most previous efforts is gone here---the drum sounds are ripped from some
> old tracker's sample pack you might find on an obscure Scandinavian FTP
> site. And that shrill, dissonant "sample-rate conversion" effect is
> everywhere, hanging like a pall of smoke over the melodies---the obsession
> with certain facile, sonically homogenizing DSP effects that killed
> Autechre circa LP5 has finally snuffed out the last of 90's IDM's original
> megastars.
>
> The awful truth for the elites who shunned melodists in favor of more
> "difficult" music: the glitch disease was terminal, the patient has died
> with the release of this album. Glitch-fetish and DSP-fuckery sapped
> attention from the first commandment of what we do---the idea that melody
> *is* music---and led the greatest electronic artists of a generation into
> the sorriest work of their careers. Bouncing-ball percussion and granular
> wank are as worn-out as The Cher Vocal Effect.
>
> Sitting in a dark, hollowed-out building somewhere under the Manhattan
> Bridge last year, at a show where a friend and I had played a set
> earlier in the evening, watching kids actually try to dance along to
> the-latest-hot-shit-from-warp, realizing that he'd been hovering over
> that PowerBook for more than an hour without producing anything resembling
> melody, chords, or steady rhythm----I knew, this can't seriously last.
> Well the iMac has crashed and all our Max patches are lost. Our Metasynth
> license expired, the Kyma's power supply burnt out, and glitch has
> imploded----in Helvetica Bold, leaving nothing but the smell of burnt
> Atari logo t-shirts and an angular plume of smoke rendered in cubist
> fracture courtesy of The Designer's Republic (with a few symbols
> of Katakana thrown in for luck).
>
> "Drukqs", like Autechre's awful "Confield", will probably have its staunch
> defenders among the elites. But don't be fooled--- don't waste your time
> with this flaccid and uninventive record.
>
>
>
>
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