IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 7 lines I find the comment "there is so much to understand & appreciate on a micro

> I find the comment "there is so much to understand & appreciate on a micro > level, & so little on the macro level" surprising/interesting. My thoughts > were that the micro level, precisely, is a bit weak in Phthalo. I'm talking > here about the sounds used. The samples sound "cheap", the textures poor. > [...] As it stands currently (at least, for "Navy Warship"), it seems to > me that he didn't bother with the crafting of basic sound elements (like a > Richard Devine or an Autechre does with extreme attention).

here, you mistake my allusion to "the micro level" for "microsound". i'm not talking about the quality of the sounds used; that, to me, is something completely different called "sound design" & has very little to do with "musical composition". what you call the "poorness" of the textures comes from the fact that he isn't using dsp (digital signal processing) technology, & this comes down to a mere matter of taste. it's simply a different sound. your comment could be used for any pre-dsp music (e.g. many early warp acts). granted, a lot of music released nowadays wouldn't be half as interesting if there wasn't dsp all over it; but i think the lack of it in phthalo's case says a lot about what's really in the music. it would be mostly trivial for him to refine his sound. ...perhaps then you might find crank's _wanton phenomena_ interesting for this reason, though. he does work more on refining individual sounds, but the result is far less complex than phthalocyanine's work in general.

quoted 8 lines To me, Phthalo's strength resides in the area between the micro and the

> To me, Phthalo's strength resides in the area between the micro and the > macro (I think there's a word to describe this abstract region but I forgot > it...) He's quite good for assembling nervous sound aggregates, very short > quirky motifs. > As for the macro side of things (flow of ideas, track coherence, etc.), well > sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. IMHO, of course. For all his > notorious disjointedness, he's actually better than several IDM music makers > at maintaining a good flow throughout a track.

on the "macro level" (by my definition), compare phthalocyanine's work to vladislav delay's albums _entain_ or _multila_, whose tracks make very little sense if you consider them as wholes; one must consider clusters of the tracks (hence, "micro level" analysis) in order to appreciate it. obviously it's easier with vladislav delay as the sounds are very agreeable to hear, by stark comparison to phthalo's in-your-face aesthetic. (it may be interesting to mention that delay has released one cd on phthalo records, _sistol_, a raw minimal house album which is something of a quirk even compared to say _vapaa muurari_ or "huone"). anyway, i may be getting a bit overenthusiastic here, but this music does mean a lot to me, so sue me! :) ~ david --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org