Dostrotime [2024]

  On 3/10/2024 at 9:11 PM, thumbass said:

 

 

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Aooouuuuw-techre

  On 3/10/2024 at 10:31 PM, X4creek said:

love and respect this guy so much and i understand that that style of music is not his thing but why does he consistently mark the most complex and odd sounding tracks as least favorites?

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he's a... 

  On 3/10/2024 at 9:11 PM, thumbass said:

 

 

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No idea who this is but this is more cringe for me than that Fantano guy.

Music opinions aside it's just a really really annoying review, the way it's recorded and his vocal mannerisms. 

Maybe I'm just getting old.

  On 3/10/2024 at 11:40 PM, ignatius said:

he's a... 

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I was trying not to go there lest I ostracize some of the newer membership (haven't quite gotten my bearings here back yet lol) but yes. Massive punter.

  On 3/11/2024 at 4:49 AM, Hugh Mughnus said:

I was trying not to go there lest I ostracize some of the newer membership

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i've not noticed an increase in burgers. 

watmm is quite silo'd sometimes. aphex, BOC subs especially, are kinda their own thing. i go in there and and there's different names, different people.. people running around saying things that don't make sense. not a sean pls in sight. it's like a WATMM suburb. 

btw any new members.. i'm sorry i called that guy a punter. he's probably fine. i'm old and out of touch. ask anyone. 

anyway.. dostrotime.. getting to know ye. it goes well w/BUAH. need to make a playlist. 

He has his opinions just like everyone else on this forum. I respect this guy because you can hear the love he has for electronic music through the way he talks. He is a little goofy but his videos are enjoyable most of the time. Dont act like a bunch of old grouches lol

  On 3/11/2024 at 5:04 AM, ignatius said:

i've not noticed an increase in burgers. 

watmm is quite silo'd sometimes. aphex, BOC subs especially, are kinda their own thing. i go in there and and there's different names, different people.. people running around saying things that don't make sense. not a sean pls in sight. it's like a WATMM suburb. 

btw any new members.. i'm sorry i called that guy a punter. he's probably fine. i'm old and out of touch. ask anyone. 

anyway.. dostrotime.. getting to know ye. it goes well w/BUAH. need to make a playlist. 

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The "I'm old" is the new "I'm drunk" !

I agree though.

/continues programming in LISP

/gets cancelled

Had a break this weekend from music/got into nature and haven't had such a yearning to relisten to an album in ages..... AND all the 2019-23 livesets.

....and i agree with others ... its made me go back to BUAH with a new ear and I LOVE it

1st March it's up on Spotify. Just saying. Don't shoot the messenger!

Did anyone receive their vinyl/t-shirt yet?

  On 3/11/2024 at 10:42 AM, beerwolf said:

1st March it's up on Spotify. Just saying. Don't shoot the messenger!

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You mean 1st April?

Maybe you should shoot the messenger!

Still waiting on my copy to arrive from Bleep, on a first listen the first single is the best, same as the last album in that regard, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the first is best but hot damn the muthurfuckur gets my hopes up, maybe it will grow on me

Had the fucking thing sitting in my bleep account for nearly 2 weeks without copping it, some dope

  On 3/5/2024 at 6:46 AM, kuniklo said:

Same. I liked his last one a lot but so far this one just annoys me. I'll give it more time.

The production sounds really thin to me.

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I'm increasingly finding this to be true now, and think it may be why it's hard for me to get into. It's fine if I don't listen to other music beforehand, but if other really nicely mixed / mastered albums have generally been on in the day, the new one sounds thin - particularly the breaks for some reason. If in a good mood I can overlook it, but on other occasions can't.

It's probably better in this regard than the series of releases after Hello Everything (until Be Up A Hello, which was a nice return to warmth even in its most extreme moments) but I still find the mixing choices or overall impact weirdly flabby. Strangely the solo bass tracks have grown on me a lot though - and they don't suffer from this.

Does he master his own stuff? It's quite strange going even further back to Go Plastic and realising how massive that sounded. Of course all of this is likely deliberate, and obviously my subjective uninformed take, but I'd find the music a lot easier to get into with more of a meaty overall sheen. Even the Shobaleader One could have relaly kicked ass with more upfront, rich mixing/mastering, like some weird fantasy r'n'b record. 
 

I was wondering if he’s been doing his own mixing and mastering too. Listening to this side by side with other recent electronic music stuff it really stands out sonically and not in a good way. 

  On 3/11/2024 at 9:40 PM, Lianne said:

I'm increasingly finding this to be true now, and think it may be why it's hard for me to get into. It's fine if I don't listen to other music beforehand, but if other really nicely mixed / mastered albums have generally been on in the day, the new one sounds thin - particularly the breaks for some reason. If in a good mood I can overlook it, but on other occasions can't.

It's probably better in this regard than the series of releases after Hello Everything (until Be Up A Hello, which was a nice return to warmth even in its most extreme moments) but I still find the mixing choices or overall impact weirdly flabby. Strangely the solo bass tracks have grown on me a lot though - and they don't suffer from this.

Does he master his own stuff? It's quite strange going even further back to Go Plastic and realising how massive that sounded. Of course all of this is likely deliberate, and obviously my subjective uninformed take, but I'd find the music a lot easier to get into with more of a meaty overall sheen. Even the Shobaleader One could have relaly kicked ass with more upfront, rich mixing/mastering, like some weird fantasy r'n'b record. 
 

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What albums do you find to be nicely mixed?

  On 3/11/2024 at 10:59 PM, Wunderbar said:

What albums do you find to be nicely mixed?

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Of course there's too many to list, but maybe out of more recent releases specifically relevant to these subforums, I found Aphex Twin's Collapse E.P really stunning in its presence and punch, Autechre's last two studio albums sounded hugely satisfying, and whilst I didn't really get on with the album in other ways, Clark's last studio album at least *sounded* really rich and excellently engineered if I listened to it across various systems.

Those I can tell are mastered quite "loud", but I've also enjoyed releases from other genres with much more dynamic range and those felt really good too.

I'm not an expert and get there is a big aspect of deliberate choice in these matters (I'm not gonna complain that Ryoji Ikeda has too much top end or something lol - although his stuff does sound great to me too!), but the mixing and mastering on Squarepusher's albums after Ultravisitor - especially Just A Souvenir, d'Demonstrator, Ufabulum and Damogen Furies - doesn't seem to work in their favour for me.

I think the "does the artist master their own stuff" conversation can generally speaking be somewhat of a tricky question to answer when talking about electronic music. A lot(most?) of electronic production includes, by nature of the industry, heavy compression settings on the master bus before it leaves for mastering. We also know that a "squashed" or "thin" character can just as easily be imparted on the track by how individual groups/busses/tracks are mixed and treated before summed down to stereo for a mastering stage. I think it's likely his records are mastered by someone else, but theres only so much a mastering engineer is going to do if it's already compressed or certain way or whatever. In most cases a good mastering engineer isn't going to completely imprint a different sound on things, and if they did, why would he approve that unless it's what he's going for? My point is, I don't think we can blame "this" (not sure what "this" is as I personally like how this record sounds) on mastering.

  On 3/12/2024 at 12:17 AM, Lianne said:

I found Aphex Twin's Collapse E.P really stunning in its presence and punch
 

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my god, yes! my favorite reference tracks.

I really love this album. Clearly one of his best. 

  On 3/12/2024 at 12:17 AM, Lianne said:

Ufabulum and Damogen Furies

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i concur. those two sounded brittle to me and i think it was on purpose. i remember him saying he was thinking about "really aggressive dance music" or something so they were done in that vein maybe? but i'm not a mind reader and what "really aggressive dance music" is is anyone's guess.. but mainstream EDM was a thing in the USA and probably something different in UK. regardless, those two records sound different to me. i only own i think one or two songs from each of them as neither albums really jelled w/me. 

so, that being said, be up a hello was a return to form for me. the synths, the drums, the stabs the pads the bass etc.. all sounded way more natural or rich or deep or all those things.. sounded like a combination of all the things he'd done through out his career found a home in those tracks and made sense of all those ideas or something. i remember thinking.. "damn Tom... break your wrist more often" but please tom don't break your wrist ever again! and obviously there was more to his frame of mind than just the wrist and mending well so he could play bass etc.. 

but whatever.. people rate those two pretty high and for me they missed and i didn't get what they were about or something.  a lot of people liked those albums. 

so much of his stuff is tops in every way.. he has all the chops

  On 3/12/2024 at 1:25 AM, ignatius said:

i concur. those two sounded brittle to me and i think it was on purpose. i remember him saying he was thinking about "really aggressive dance music" or something so they were done in that vein maybe? but i'm not a mind reader and what "really aggressive dance music" is is anyone's guess.. but mainstream EDM was a thing in the USA and probably something different in UK. regardless, those two records sound different to me. i only own i think one or two songs from each of them as neither albums really jelled w/me. 

so, that being said, be up a hello was a return to form for me. the synths, the drums, the stabs the pads the bass etc.. all sounded way more natural or rich or deep or all those things.. sounded like a combination of all the things he'd done through out his career found a home in those tracks and made sense of all those ideas or something. i remember thinking.. "damn Tom... break your wrist more often" but please tom don't break your wrist ever again! and obviously there was more to his frame of mind than just the wrist and mending well so he could play bass etc.. 

but whatever.. people rate those two pretty high and for me they missed and i didn't get what they were about or something.  a lot of people liked those albums. 

so much of his stuff is tops in every way.. he has all the chops

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Thank you for this; really interesting to read. Be Up A Hello was also a massive return to form for me, almost entirely because of how more richer and deeper it sounded once again. It was so good to realise he could still do that after the few albums before it. Whilst I will happily defer to you and other musicians on this, I do remember musicians and producers I know also saying d'Demonstrator had incredibly weird mixing. Obviously weird and unconventional can be a wonderful thing, but in that case if anyone else had done it I'd just found it amateurish rather than "wow, this is different and challenging."

At his best Squarepusher seems to pull off amazing paradoxes - music that can be really extreme or surprising but with an obviously excellent full sound that makes you grin. During that previous 2008-2015 period I just found I had to do too many mental gymnastics to get into it as the brittleness made the first line of just listening generally not that enjoyable. I don't know much EDM or like it, but even that stuff felt it had a bit less weird sizzle when I have heard it.

An interesting test for me is whether I'd show a track to a friend (who likes other interesting music) to get them into Squarepusher. And that's not just showing something familiar to them/their tastes; it can make them WTF but if it sounds great then that has its own fun. I'd share My Fucking Sound or Do You Know Squarepusher or many things from 1997 - 2003 in a heartbeat, but as much as I try to make myself get into that other period because it's good to hear an artist you respect out, experiences of sharing it kind of confirmed the above instincts on it all.

 

Interesting discussion all around 

Ufabulum was the one album where the flatness of the mix got to me. I like the way this one sounds; it can feel a little muddled when the tracks are at their busiest and a lot of sounds are competing for center stage but it doesn't really bother me.

I'm loving the album overall, it still has moments that are a little overly pushed/aggro for my tastes (like most of his stuff from Ufab onward) but the atmospheric attention to detail is great and there's a lot of elements that hearken back to things I love about his late 90s material.

It's interesting he mentioned in the track notes a connection to Vortrack (Fracture Remix) with the use of gated reverb. That was one of my favorite tracks he'd released in years and I was really hoping more of Be Up would have that sound, so I'm thrilled to hear a lot of material on this album that's kind of similar in style to it.

Great breakdown Boxus

  On 3/11/2024 at 4:49 AM, Hugh Mughnus said:

No idea who this is but this is more cringe for me than that Fantano guy.

Music opinions aside it's just a really really annoying review, the way it's recorded and his vocal mannerisms. 

Maybe I'm just getting old.

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You've aged out of the "poorly lit video of deeply, deeply autistic teenage boys telling you their unsolicited opinions on Intelligent Dance Music" demographic.

  On 3/12/2024 at 2:23 AM, Lianne said:

Thank you for this; really interesting to read. Be Up A Hello was also a massive return to form for me, almost entirely because of how more richer and deeper it sounded once again. It was so good to realise he could still do that after the few albums before it. Whilst I will happily defer to you and other musicians on this, I do remember musicians and producers I know also saying d'Demonstrator had incredibly weird mixing. Obviously weird and unconventional can be a wonderful thing, but in that case if anyone else had done it I'd just found it amateurish rather than "wow, this is different and challenging."

At his best Squarepusher seems to pull off amazing paradoxes - music that can be really extreme or surprising but with an obviously excellent full sound that makes you grin. During that previous 2008-2015 period I just found I had to do too many mental gymnastics to get into it as the brittleness made the first line of just listening generally not that enjoyable. I don't know much EDM or like it, but even that stuff felt it had a bit less weird sizzle when I have heard it.

An interesting test for me is whether I'd show a track to a friend (who likes other interesting music) to get them into Squarepusher. And that's not just showing something familiar to them/their tastes; it can make them WTF but if it sounds great then that has its own fun. I'd share My Fucking Sound or Do You Know Squarepusher or many things from 1997 - 2003 in a heartbeat, but as much as I try to make myself get into that other period because it's good to hear an artist you respect out, experiences of sharing it kind of confirmed the above instincts on it all.

 

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My Fucking Sound - now THAT is a track. hugely not talked about. Nothing else like it