Badun, F.L.A.N.G.E.R.

I can see it looming....
I go through stages wherein I will discover an artist, and immediately require all of their recordings. Normally this is fine and dandy, but there are a few out there who pose difficulties. I have yet to reach Merzbow/Muslim Gauze levels of insanity, but Uwe Schmidt's back catalogue is both large and out of print. After the pleasures of Badun and Flanger, there will be a lot of Atom Heart.

Badun's self-titled album is odd. It is ambient jazz, with thousands upon thousands of edits. The level of detail in each track is so great, that the whole thing becomes too much to listen to intently 90% of the time, and somehow, paradoxically, becomes background music. It's very much in the vein of Flanger, or Burnt Friedman's solo stuff: a laidback variety of jazz fusion, with live performances transformed through serious sample editing. Stuttering drums, little motifs that keep looping and rearranging themselves - the works. Good, but I suspect this band is capable of great.

Then there is Templates, by Flanger. Templates was made by Burnt Friedman and Uwe Schmidt, both well known under their own names. Templates was made, reportedly, in two weeks, using a handful of instruments and an MPC. This album is as staggering today as it was then - it easily stands next to any major IDM signpost album as a work that defined the state of the art. It's quite easy to underestimate it, because the medium is cocktail jazz, and the way in which the duo have fused the live instruments and performances with sampling techniques is so seamless that half the time you won't even notice unless you're listening closely. Not having heard Flanger is like not having heard Autechre or Mouse on Mars. Seriously, check it out.

Jan Jelly-neck Andrew Pekler

I think one thing this experiment is teaching me is that on the whole there is a pretty clear relationship between how much I like music and how often I listen to it. Who would have guessed.

Jan Jelinek/Triosk 1+3+1 - Pretty good - Triosk at this stage in their lives may have been worshipping JJ and I think that it's a safe bet to say that this record is largely his ideas, with Triosk acting as the vehicle. The best tracks don't have walking bass.

I didn't really know what to make of Kosmischer Pitch - I remember bringing it with me when I went to Calgary in 2005, and riding around on the LRT listening to it and not feeling connected to it. It is a definite change from Jan's earlier work, gone is the house angle, and the texture is king. It took me another year before I got it - one evening I had it on as background ambience whilst reading a stack of papers for school and then I noticed that Morphing Leadgitarre Rückwärts was silky goodness, and I think I listened to the track 3 times in a row before sticking the album on repeat for the rest of the evening. It's warm, it has rhythm, but instead of pounding, it's more like an indentation on the textures, and it does krautrock.

Same goes for Tierbeobachtungen - the further Jan takes it, the more beautiful his guitar textures get - it's the same ideas that he got out of his jazz samples on the earlier stuff, but with live instrumentation. It is a bit shoegazey, but without sounding like other shoegaze records. And there's a western Morricone thing going on.

The Exposures Lost Recordings is a little EP JJ put together for Prefuse 73's label, it's quite a bit like Nouvele Pauvrete, but a bit looser, and it doesn't morph its samples into unrecognisability. Not essential, but certainly worth a listen. Like Flanger, Jan shows his (Germanic ?) love of the fake back story, claiming the Exposures were a group that did music for TV in Germany.

In conclusion: I hope you enjoyed reading about Jan Jelly-neck as much as I enjoyed listening to him.

Andrew Pekler has 4 records out, they're all quite good - definitely falling into the ~scape axis. Station To Station is his first for the label, and it is perhaps unfairly ignored. It does the jazz-influenced micro-house really well, and incorporates sampled live instrumentation in ways that St. Ettiene or Thievery Corp couldn't even begin to dream of. There are some lovely themes and textures that make the album more than classy background music.

Nocturnes, False Dawns, And Breakdowns drops the structures of Station To Station in favour of miniature pieces that have the feel of snippets of 70s fusion records. It may in fact be the case that the tracks on the album are composed from samples of 70s fusion records... Whatever the process, the result has great textures and mood, but I don't know if it has great pieces. At least it bears revisiting, once my journey is complete.

Strings And Feedback - I can't bring myself to like this one. It's made up of samples from Morton Feldman records, and these things (electronic musician takes on classical composer) always just sound amateur to me. Think stock horror movie soundtrack.

Cue - I like this record, but it reminds me of Jan Jelinek's last two records. This makes sense when you consider that Pekler has been Jelinek's on-tour guitarist for the last couple of years. You will enjoy it, but you will enjoy it a lot more if you ignore the library music descriptions of the pieces, which are naff.

Mega Listening Party Time Pt 1

It's a lot easier to listen to 10 CDs by different artists than 10CDs by one artist...
This is one of the things I've learned.
I've also learned that this process probably isn't going to radically alter my likes and dislikes, although it will hopefully extend me a bit.

So
Clark - Body Riddle: I don't get this one yet - or rather, I don't have a concrete image in my mind of what this album is all about. It is good though, and covers a lot of ground. I think Clark is seriously underrated in the halls of electronica.
Turning Dragon is Banging Techno. It has all of the aspects of Clark's previous work, but is much more immediate, coming as it does from live work.

Pinch - Underwater Dancehall
Another dubstep album that isn't really dubstep. It's strange how the instrumental disc and the vocal disc (same tracks for those that don't know) offer completely different listening experiences. I think that a mix of the two is optimal, since some tracks do better w/o vocals, while some really shine with them.

Burial - Burial, Untrue
What can I say that hasn't been said. Except maybe don't listen to Burial on a grey rainy day in a series of grey rainy days unless you are really feeling the grey rain. I think some of the initial amazement has worn off, but these are both incredibly solid albums. Etched Headplate off of Untrue is particularly recommended, and much kudos to Burial for not bottoming out after the success and hype of the first album.

Pole 1 2 3
Pole's first 3 albums keep growing on me, and they fit well with the subterranian mood left by Burial and Pinch. It makes a lot of sense that these 3 albums got reissued as a 3 disc set, since they are all explorations of the same themes and ideas. The point though is that they are very cool themes and ideas, and Stefan Betke has definitely brought something to the genre of Dub-informed-electronica which was completely new at the time. There's a sort of ascetic aspect to 1 2 3 which is quite different from the tones of, e.g., the Basic Channel crew.

Pole R
A surprisingly good remix album. The new pole tracks point the way, not to the next album, but to Steingarten. Love the stabs of guitar and small sounds. Burnt Friedmann's mixes add a touch of lounge, but it's the two Kit Clayton tracks which really make the set as they shuffle grimily around.

Pole - Pole
An interesting experiment...could have worked but didn't quite. In retrospect, bits remind me of Jan Jelinek...

Pole - Steingarten
Sound. Designers. Dream. You understand why Stefan does so much mastering. Deceptively simple, but this is an amazingly fantastic outing, which has an even more original sound than 1 2 3. Hiphop, dub, noise, but man, those little sounds, and the space they define. Go the steingarten!

dB - Peron
This album should be much better known than it is. It's a bit Jan-Jelinek-alike, but it has a whole lot of great microhouse tracks replete with grit and damaged samples. Go track it down.

Farben - Textstar
This microhouse outing by Jan Jelinek makes me wish I had the full 16 tracks as to be found on the rather rare Starbox 4x 12". I doubt that there is any better microhouse out there than this album - the attention to detail is fantastic, and the way in which Jan builds interesting music out of such a small palette is inspiring.

Gramm - Personal Rock
I think this one was the warm-up for Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records. Less dancey than Farben, the whole degraded sample texture thing going on. Even a little bit of dub experimentation here and there.

Jan Jelinek - Loop Finding Jazz Records
Gauzy goodness. This sits happily next to Endless Summer and Loveless in terms of textural glory. A steady 4/4 grid keeps the thing grounded.

JJ avec les Exposures - Nouvelle Pauvrete
At this point Jan figures out that he can't keep working the same ideas w/o going stale, so he fools around with rhythm, more obvious instrument textures, Serge Gainsborough-type singing, and a certain jazziness. Jan has already demonstrated that he can do no wrong, and this just seals the deal.

Another Day, Another CD

Glyphic - I hadn't listened to Boxcutter in ages - it's quite good. I think this is what I want Four Tet to sound like. The album may overstay its welcome a little, but the variety of textures and moods keeps it rocking. As with most critically acclaimed dubstep albums, this has very little to do with dubstep. Glyphic is definitely better than Oneric, which was a very monochromatic listen. Oneric sounds a whole lot like the little-known Jamie Liddell album Muddlin Gear.

Chris Clark - Clarence Park, Empty The Bones Of You,
Clarence Park is one of the most sunny pieces of electronica ever released - it brims with energy, and even features a sea shanty (Lord Of The Dance). If you've overlooked this - it's well worth the 30 minutes. As well as having a range of sound well outside the standard warp fare, including comandeered rave stabs and trance chords, it avoids the seriousness of anorak-IDM, without being dumb.
Chris is a strange one - for the longest time I thought that Clarence Park was a one-off, and that he had gone down the gloomy-electronica path since. Recent months have led me to re-evaluate his stuff, and I grow more impressed with what I hear. ETBOY is dark dark dark, a bit less strikingly original, but Clark has made this particular style his own. The way the beats just evaporate and leave steely pads hanging in a cloud is one of his calling cards I would say...

End of Squarepusher, A quick run through the Jungle

Alright - 3 SP albums to go

Ultravisitor is a sprawling, messy album. It's 80 minutes long, and I'm pretty sure Tom had the 2x LP in mind. It also has sampled crowd noise. I have a huge soft spot in my heart for Ultravisitor. It has some classic melodies, some annoying wankery, some miniatures of counterpointed intent, and no matter what mood I'm in, there's always something in it which I will enjoy.

Hello Everything - Eh. I dunno. Return to the old ways, but this album lacks excitement. A few good tracks, but on the whole, not essential. I skipped Vacuum Garden, b/c it's 6 minutes of metallic drones which doesn't actually do anything.

Just A Souvenir - Prog? I just don't know. What I do know is that this album has parts that are fantastic, and parts that I want to punch myself for listening to. The worst thing is that the proggy elements are growing on me.

Alright - with AE and SP done, there's some clear sailing for the next few days. No monolithic blocks until I hit Uwe Schmidt. Continuing on the DnB/Jungle, we have Kid606s
Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You - (at 240 BPM or so) Boom Chh Diddle-iddle-uh-chhh Boom Chh Boom Chh. This album is Dumb Fun. Huge Dumb Fun, with a couple of nice mellow tracks in there somewhere.

Disclaimer: I never understood the fuss about Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album. It's nice enough. Well programmed synth strings, and the breaks really work with the music. The milkman song is still a bit...

Chosen Lords - Another nice album, but it never really stood out for me as one to drop everything for. Some of the really good tracks from the vinyl singles (Analord series) got left off, which is surprising.

The Raid On Squarepusher Hills Continues

Big Loada winds up what I think of as early Squarepusher - his career is long enough that there are distinct regimes in it. Big Loada is a lot like Hard Normal Daddy, with a lot of acid, breaks, and melody front and centre. A very enjoyable outing.
It's still weird to think that Trent Reznor's label relased it in North America...

Post Big Loada, something happened in the realm of Tom Jenkinson.
Music Is Rotted One Note is a pretty strong departure from his previous work. Whereas before, the jazz in his music was the sort of lite Weather Report kind of fusion, and it shared the stage with his other influences, Music Is Rotted is much more of a Bitches Brew kind of jazz, and aside from some masterful use of reverb ala King Tubby, this smokey, atmospheric fusion dominates the album. This is perhaps the most surprising album in Tom's catalogue, and, aside from the two EPs that followed, it is unique in its single-mindedness. If you like SP for the breaks, you can probably skip this one, although you would be robbing yourself.
The two EPs, Budakhan Mindphone and Maximum Priest are, together, like a second installment of Music Is Rotted... BM is better on the whole, more of the same ideas, but not B-side material. The new tracks on MP are good, but the remixes at the end don't really do anything.

Ever since Music Is Rotted, it seems that every SP release has included his efforts to truly integrate the fusion techniques of that album with his love of DnB, acid, etc.

Selection 16 is a schizophrenic album, in that it has some great acid tracks (e.g., Time Borb, Tomorrow World) interspersed with what has (unkindly) been called 'jazzy noodlings' or something to that effect. It's not a cohesive album, by any stretch of the imagination, and not a highlight of SP, but there are some fantastic tracks on it. The bonus 4 tracks are largely forgettable (some odds and ends plus a Ceefax Acid Crew remix - it must be hard being Tom's brother).

Go Plastic is the return to Amen. Aside from Red Hot Car, a great pop/2-step track, this album is a monochromatic outing, featuring some of the most intimidating drum programming I've heard. Lots of breaks, classic samples, dub effects effects effects , bass-through-a-ringmod, and all out noise. The hard thing about the album is that you'll miss a lot if you're not listening closely. I used to play this guy at work, I don't quite know how I got away with that.

Do You Know Squarepusher - kind of an identity crisis? 2 discs, one which is 30 minutes w/ 7 tracks, and a live CD. The title track is a fantastic slice of pop, there's a bit of 'I can sound like Autechre', a bit of 'Look kids! 300 BPM', a 'rap' track (for want of a better word), a 9 minute ambient piece, and a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart which is done completely straight. Live CD is completely forgettable. Think selections from this album and Go Plastic with more reverb than usual.

I think of that as the Mid Period Squarepusher, encompassing an album that put him on a higher pedestal than the one he was already on, followed by a period of 'where now' soul searching which had some great stuff, and some not so great stuff.

Next up - the once and future SP.

Feed ME Weird Things Tom!

I shall say it: Listening to Squarepusher is an activity I find generally preferable to listenening to Autechre. I think it's the fact that Tom is interested in making songs with more traditional elements such as melodies and themes that appeals to me. I think too that Squarepusher has achieved a much more complete union of traditional techniques and technology in his work. And he plays a mean bass.

Feed Me Weird Things is still a work in progress in the sense that I don't think SP was fully realised at that stage. There are a few tracks which run a touch too long, and don't shine the way some of his later stuff does, but it's hard to complain when your ass is being kicked with Squarepusher's Theme, or Theme From Ernest Borgnine. It would be quite rude to really.

But!
Hard Normal Daddy.
HARD. NORMAL. DADDY.
(!)
This album was my first exposure to IDM, I remember getting it in Brighton back in something like '99? At first I was a bit underwhelmed, the drums seemed too thin, they lacked the punch of other stuff I was listening to at the time, like ATR and NIN. I was also well into the rave scene by that point, and it was much less obvious than the DnB that I liked so much (Hello there, Goldie, how's the wife and kids?).
I kept at it though, and gradually the album unveiled itself before me. I'd never heard acid before, and certainly never paired with bass that funky. The sweet melodies of Beep Street were nearly permanently on my stereo.
This is to say that HND is good. It's better than good. 10 years isn't enough time to call something a classic, I don't think 20 is, but this is a discussion worth considering in 2023 or so.
And here's the weird thing - I was listening to it now for the first time in quite a while, and I have passed through much more of the classical canon of techno, and the thing that I really feel when I hear HND is how Tom was doing the same thing with a lot of rave genres that Tortoise was doing with rock. His acid isn't straight up acid, it's more like a reference to the acid idea, that he's fused with all of his other ideas...this CD somehow sounds like it could be new, in the way it isn't tied to the prevailing styles of the time the way most albums are.

Autechre = Finished! Squarepusher - Started!

Draft 7.30, Untilted, and Quaristice are in the bag. Autechre is done.

And here's what I thought:
Both Draft 7.30 and Untilted got two plays in the course of the journey. I think these two are among the strongest AE albums. They are focussed, and don't succumb to the process-over-content that sometimes plagues AE productions.

Draft 7.30 still has some traces of the generative stuff, but it doesn't dominate the album. I still don't think I understand Draft 7.30, but I do enjoy it.

Untilted apparently marks the point when Autechre started using the Elektron gear (www.elektron.se - if you ever need a drum machine or synth which is a true instrument as well as a sound generator) in their productions, and aside from the fact that I can recognise some sounds, or at least think I can, there is a clarity in composition which hasn't been so pronounced since LP5. This is probably my favourite album after LP5, and I think there are quite strong similarities between the two.

Quaristice is interesting, but due to the format (a whole lot of short songs), it feels like a number of sketches which haven't been fully developed. The beatless tracks that bookend the album are quite striking, and like Corc on LP5, remind me that AE are in fact capable of melody, and beautiful melody at that. On the other hand, there are tracks which sound like 2 bars of randomly selected notes looped for a couple of minutes, and I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of them. If I was made of money, I'd get the limited edition version of Quaristice, which has a second disc containing something like 11 tracks, each of which is 10 minutes long using the same material as Quaristice. Brevity is not AE's strengths and I suspect that longer versions of the best moments of Quaristice would be more fulfilling.

And that's Autechre. I have mixed feelings on their work, which veers between inspired experiment and aimless wandering. They certainly do have their own sound, but in some ways they have stuck to their own template a little too firmly.

Next up, Warp's other giant: Squarepusher. I have even more SP than Autechre, but then, I think SP is generally a better listen.

Burning n' Tree - It's like finally breathing out to hear real instruments and melodies after a week of Autechre. It's also quite odd to hear this early SP work, which has the seams showing to a much greater extent than his recent stuff. The cutup Amen breaks, the sampled and transposed jazz chords, it's all there, and there is something refreshingly rough about it. It's a little frightening to think of how young Tom Jenkinson was when he put this stuff together - it makes the rest of us look a bit johnny-come-lately...

Day 3 - Windows reinstall and Confield

A slow day - a slow day watching my slow computer take 2 hours to burn each backup DVD, followed by a reinstall of Windows.
That is to say: Only 1 CD today. At this rate, the quest will take ~2 years. Still in Autechre territory, into the more intense stuff

Confield - I didn't hate this as I thought I would... There are some tracks, e.g., the second one, which just piss me off, but there is a lot of stuff on here which is quite musical. The opener is still the best track in my mind, but stuff like Parhelic Triangle and Uviol are actually worth the time it takes to listen to them.

Days 1 and 2 - Autechre

Starting this mission and starting the blog weren't totally synchronised - so today is day 3. Here's what days 1 and 2 were like:

Day 1: We're Off! Incunabula, Tri Repetae ++
This journey is off to a slow start - I don't want to burn myself out in the first week. The next couple of days involve crossing the Autechre Mountains. I have everything of theirs save Amber and some of the eps, so there are many hours of music to get through.

Incunabula - It's ok, I suppose, but quite long, and Autechre hadn't really found their voice yet.
Tri Repetae++ - 2 discs here, the album, plus the 2 eps. I hadn't been back to the album in a while, and although I like it, there are some songs with a really harsh top end. High frequency stuff. The EPs on the other hand are 100% certified fantastic, and sound quite unique in Autechre's catalogue.

Day 2: Chiastic Slide, Envane, Chicli Suite, LP5, EP7
The journey feels well and truly underway now. I can start to see the landscape of my CD collection stretching out before me, and there are definite patches that I'm looking forward to, and others which are a little daunting. It's good to be starting with Autechre, since they are unyielding. And mountainous.

Chiastic Slide - Quite nice textures, very close to background music in places. Not a highlight, but a nice listen - I guess if you're between writing two classic albums, you need a breather
Envane, Chicli Suite - These EPs are really good - they have quite different characters, and Chicli suffers a little from Autechre's unfortunate 'generative' thing, but on the whole, some great tracks here. You can hear the hip hop influence coming through on Envane, and the love of complex beats on Chicli
LP5 - Hands down my favourite Autechre album. In terms of raw sound quality, it's head and shoulders above what's come before, and it balances complexity and accessibility very well. Corc gets me every time
EP7 - Last CD of the day, I always thought this one was the most organic of Autechre's stuff. Some tracks I find my attention drifting, but then there are moments like the timpani and bells towards the end that grab me.

The Quest

I have a fair amount of music. Maybe not a world-class collection, but still a lot. Something just over 600 on the shelf, organised by genre.

I've tried the ipod thing, but mine broke. Once I opened it up and discovered just how cheaply made they are, I realised that buying another one would make me feel like a stooge.

So, every time I go out, and want to bring music with me, if I'm doing some work, I have to grab a stack of CDs. Sometimes it takes a second, sometimes it takes a good 10-15 minutes.

I've noticed that there are some sections that my eyes skip over a lot more quickly than others - I'm not usually in the mood for Ryoji Ikeda, say.

In the interests of fairness, I've decided I should give my collection a proper, thorough listen. Starting from the top left (Autechre), and working down towards the bottom right (Radiohead). There is some weird stuff in the middle.

My rules are as follows:
1. I have to listen to the CDs in order, left to right, and when that's done, I hit up the box sets. Much as I'd like to do this on my radio show, that's probably not what my audience calls a good time.
2. CDs stacked on the shelves get listened to after the shelf is done, before moving on to the next shelf.
3. No skipping albums, and they have to be properly listened to - not necessarily 'eyes closed in a dark room' listening, but I have to be paying attention.
4. Anything I buy during the journey gets shelved in the appropriate place in the collection, and listened to when I get to that part. If it's in a section I've already finished, it gets listened to right away.

Each day or so I'll post updates the albums completed, and my impressions.