Comments on: Space Cowboys

By: Ronan

Ronan — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:58:05 +0000

fuck manually typed 0s and 1s…I believe the often hallowed “banging a pot and pan together” wins out here

By: chinstroking.com

chinstroking.com — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:43:23 +0000

Using Reaktor is cheating. You can’t use a pre-built program to make synths yourself; you should be building the program to make the synths yourself, and not using a code builder either, because that’s also cheating. It’s manually typed “1’s” and “0’s” or nothing.

Huckaby, what a fuckwit. Why make things more complex than they need to be?

By: Ronan

Ronan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:43:03 +0000

I agree with that, though I think most good dance music has that feel to it, a small number of nice elements.

By: tom/pipecock

tom/pipecock — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:56:39 +0000

over on Test there is a nice interview with claro intellecto where he says this:

“There is a danger that you can go too deep, especially with electronic music, and get carried away with the concept. Sometimes people can be snobby, but to be honest, I’d rather make a killer groove, programme a great 4/4 beat. Theo Parrish is a good example of this: the elements in his tracks are so simple, but it’s hard for anyone else to get it to sound so good. Once music gets too complicated, that’s when there are problems.”

i think that basically sums up what i feel about it, and of course he references one of the true greats at keeping it simple.

By: Ronan

Ronan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:28:04 +0000

Cool, I’m not having a major go at your point either, just questioning really. Your comments are always welcome here Jacob (even if you are the future of rock and roll )

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:23:12 +0000

Well no probably not, i don’t tend to criticise things I like…but then there are lots of things that I like that probably aren’t hugely innovatory. Maybe my argument was fucked, I just woke up, but its hard anyway to separate objectivity and subjectivity when criticising music.

There are no hard and fast rules either, I just feel that people trying to run before they can walk is less likely to lead to things that are successful in the long term.

I have to go out, maybe i’ll try and explain myself better later on.

By: Ronan

Ronan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:16:21 +0000

Yeah…I just meant you probably wouldn’t criticise a record that worked for you as a “dry exercise in messed up voices” or whatever…or would you?

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:09:58 +0000

Is that addressed to me Ronan?

By: Ronan

Ronan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:32:18 +0000

But if you liked it you wouldn’t say that?

That idea sounds like good old fashioned subjectivity dressed as objectivity.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:28:59 +0000

I thoroughly agree with Tom here - people are too happy to dress things up in fancy clothes and neglect the basis of a song. I think though producers feel under pressure because in this day and age it’s simply not enough to write a good song, you have to show you’re doing something exciting and a little bit different to get noticed. In doing this, both producer and audience can get caught up in thinking “aww wow this sounds really odd and trippy” but then there not really be anything other than that to make it memorable. To take an example from a really good release last year: “Rackadoom” on Tips felt to me like a dry exercise in weird messed up voices without much of anything to back it up.

Don’t get me wrong though, I do feel its important for people to push themselves and to find new techniques/sounds, its just all a balance.