Well I don't think there's any need to turn this around into an IDM-list
selfhatefest or anything (not that you have, but it looks like it'll go
that way soon).
Warp (or anyone!) can do what they want, and more power to them. That's
the whole point, right? Go out and do what you enjoy doing, if you can.
I hope they're putting out music they like and leaving it at that.
But people can still talk about Warp falling off relative to what they
like, and maybe turn it into a positivie thread, like visa asked, what
labels do it for you these days then? Instead of a negative, bitter,
cynical, "the IDM list is a lame bunch of whiners" viewpoint.
"IDM" has gone so many directions I can't even keep track of it anymore.
There's ninja tune style scratchin' & funk, there's tigerbeat-style
punkishness, there's force-inc techno disco, mille plateaux style
minimalism, there's more traditional yet still creative fare like Merck
& N5MD, maybe predictable, maybe just what I like :P ..there's electro,
nostalgia, pretty melodies, vanity labels, indyrawkish stuff, pop
worshipping... really, the '90s saw computers come into their own as a
musical instrument/tool, and now everyone is exploring & using them.
There's good and bad in that.
Meanwhile, Warp is huge, there's no more B12 and deFocus is defunct.
*sigh*
-adamp
damek.org
DavidASim@aol.com wrote:
quoted 30 lines Warp in the 00's is like Cleopatra or Invisible in the 90's. In the early
>>Warp in the 00's is like Cleopatra or Invisible in the 90's. In the early
>
> days of all three of
>
>>those labels, they put out some really great stuff for the times. It always
>
> seems, though,
>
>>that when a label adds more and more artists to their roster, it's
>
> inevitable that the
>
>>signature "sound" of that label loses focus.
>
>
> Certainly Warp have no longer got a zeitgeist-humping signature sound. It's
> not quite clear whether this is because they've lost their A&R edge, or whether
> they've just decided that putting out a series of diverse records that they
> like is more important than being at the cutting edge of what some mailing list
> considers to be the core IDM sound. Or indeed, whether in a year or so, the
> current series of Warp releases will be genre touchstones like Artificial
> Intelligences, and we'll all be kicking ourselves for being so slow. Although this
> seems less likely.
>
> They also seem to suffer rather from the fact that the idm list, for a bunch
> of fans of self consciously progressive and eclectic music, gets very annoyed
> when people progress in a way they didn't expect.</troll>
>
> David
>