"unseen rulers" ep

Hi there.

A first release from Hidden Music - we'll have two actual CDs coming out in the nearish future, but we decided to kick off with a 'net release.

It's an eight track EP by me called "Unseen Rulers" (after the Wire track "Map Ref 41degN 93degW").

http://www.hiddenmusic.co.uk/releases/unseenrulers/

I finished this EP over a year ago. It's a *lot* more stripped-down than the stuff I'm doing now, purely because I've learnt much better technique since, but I'm still mostly proud of it. :)

Hope you like it.

Downloading this one!!!! I too have a broken PC!

a very nice EP, despite your attempt to outdate it. looking forward to more.

  Mrs Jynx said:

Downloading this one!!!! I too have a broken PC!

The motherboard (literally) blew up shortly afterwards - leaky capacitor or something, the same week as I bought my Powerbook.

I reckon it was sulking.

Any other comments? I'm trying to get this past the 250 download mark. :)

It's quite nice yeah... sound wise it's very simple and a bit presety sounding... but it comes off more as raw and nostalgic than bad. But that would be the main thing I'd work on.

Structurally the songs are fairly plain... but none of them outstayed their welcome and they all flowed nicely with nothing jarring at all. You COULD mix things up a bit but it's not necessary really.

Melodies were VERY nice... all very pretty... gave me a nostalgic rainy day kinda feeling. Beats were simple but well constructed and served their purpose well enough. I reckon you'd be good at making really really minimal drums.

Overall: very enjoyable to listen to but not very interesting. You can write good songs, try making your sounds and textures more interesting and unique.

  springymajig said:

It's quite nice yeah... sound wise it's very simple and a bit presety sounding... but it comes off more as raw and nostalgic than bad. But that would be the main thing I'd work on.

 

Structurally the songs are fairly plain... but none of them outstayed their welcome and they all flowed nicely with nothing jarring at all. You COULD mix things up a bit but it's not necessary really.

 

Melodies were VERY nice... all very pretty... gave me a nostalgic rainy day kinda feeling. Beats were simple but well constructed and served their purpose well enough. I reckon you'd be good at making really really minimal drums.

 

Overall: very enjoyable to listen to but not very interesting. You can write good songs, try making your sounds and textures more interesting and unique.

I'd say that's fair. All bar one of those tracks (Rainsong) was done purely in Reason Adapted (where you're limited to two Subtractors, a Redrum and one sampler patch) well over a year ago; my newer material is much more dense and "produced", but I'm still pretty happy with it. It was the first thing I saw through to completion; from getting a keyboard to that EP was maybe four months or so...

It's not like the EP's radically unrepresentative of what I sound like - but the stuff I'm working on now is just... more in about every way I can make it more.

That's cool, I am interested to here what you're doing now. I defenitely don't think it's bad... don't get me wronq it's quite a lovely ep but I like to offer criticism where I can.

Rainsong BTW happened to be my favourite track :P

listening to this now, and in a sense, i can't tell if i love it or hate it.

it's got some good ideas going on, but i think you could benefit from paying more attention to production/eq on the sounds themselves. some of the synths are so abrasive on the high end, like they just came straight from Reason or Fruity. (particularly "Iso")

the drums in most every track could be bumped up a notch in volume, but that's a personal preference.

i think i agree with what springy had to say on the matter. it's enjoyable, but it does come off as plain.

thanks for sharing dude!

  luke said:

it's got some good ideas going on, but i think you could benefit from paying more attention to production/eq on the sounds themselves. some of the synths are so abrasive on the high end, like they just came straight from Reason or Fruity. (particularly "Iso")

Thanks for the feedback. About the drums, I know my drum programming's weak compared to some of the ninja breakcore guys round here, so it's mostly backing off the volume in shame! I'm much more into the kind of electro 4/4 kick/snare/kick/snare rhythms anyway, to be honest...