squarepusher I just "got" Ultravisitor

  On 3/15/2011 at 8:02 PM, Wall Bird said:

  On 3/15/2011 at 7:26 PM, hahathhat said:

fuck you if you want a coherent song to hum along to instead of some pretentious astral voyage to uranus.

 

That's the reason I decide to listen to Ultravisitor. The album happens to be a very specific and extreme permutation of musical composition that certainly has no agenda of trying to cover every musical angle. It's a very specialized kind of music that one listens to for a certain kind of release that you sure aren't going to find anywhere else.

nonsense. there's plenty of boring, over-edited crap out there. see autechre. don't they take you on a voyage or something? maybe i don't get it because i haven't set up a dedicated autechre listening-room with surround sound

  On 3/15/2011 at 8:02 PM, Wall Bird said:

I don't think there's anything pretentious about this album. It seems that whenever anyone uses the word pretentious they're doing it in a way that suggests the accused person is not able to be the thing they may be projecting themselves as. As if they're some sort of poser. I think Tom deliberate in not presenting himself as anything other than a very dedicated musician; one who happens to be pushing the limits of his imagination and virtuosity.

i read interviews of him blathering about how 50 cycles is the most intense track he's done, it took two months of constant work, etc. then i listened to it and i found it incoherent and annoying.

from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A16411187

  Quote

I don't really have a favourite piece - in truth I hardly ever listen to my old music. Usually it takes a good three or four years for me to want to hear something again after I've spent the time making it. Quite often I prefer the tracks that were just made as a joke, or made in a really throwaway manner. Out of the pieces that I have released, I think the most time-consuming was 50 Cycles on Ultravisitor. Roughly speaking it took a month to make. This was the last piece to be completed on Ultravisitor, which contains several other pieces that also took unprecedentedly long to complete.

 

This manner of working really started to test my patience, as in the main I have worked very quickly on my music. It is rare for me to deliberate for long on any sort of musical decision - indeed, my decision-making process was not changed in this period but rather the ambition for the scope of the pieces which entailed a massive amount of decisions. After completing these pieces I decided to abandon these grandiose ambitions. Instead, I applied an arbitrary time-limit according to which I would spend no more than a week on a piece, much more in keeping with my older mode of working. Some of the pieces made according to this concept are gathered together on Hello Everything.

and there you have it. hello everything is my not my favorite (big loada or hard normal is) but i liked it loads more than ultravisitor, on which he was obviously trying waaay too hard.

Well if the album was bad he would be pretentious but since the album is great I don't think there's a point in calling him that. I don't think he was able to make it happen if he didn't believe what he was doing was good, it's not his fault.

  On 3/15/2011 at 8:25 PM, Wyern said:

Well if the album was bad he would be pretentious but since the album is great I don't think there's a point in calling him that.

THANKS WYERN, I GUESS THE THREAD IS OVER NOW

when dinner is cooked, does it get better if you keep cooking? or does it start to burn and taste like crap?

who wants a piece of roasted charcoal on a bun burned to a crisp?

Whoever said listening to this album is a release was spot on. Yes there are long segments of complete noise and complexity that seems to go against everything we know of music, but you have to view the album as a whole. The contrast of very melodic beautiful pieces against the sonic waves of the middle of the album creates a journey of imagination unlike anything else I can think of. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE

  hahathhat said:

I read interviews of him blathering about how 50 cycles is the most intense track he's done, it took two months of constant work, etc. then i listened to it and i found it incoherent and annoying.

Blathering doesn't seem to be an accurate description. Somebody asked Tom a question:

  Quote

The greatgabbo asks: I have a few questions. Firstly, out of the hundreds of tracks that you've made over the years, which one is your favourite? Which track have you put the most time into, and was it worth it?

...and he replied succinctly.

  Tom said:

I don't really have a favourite piece - in truth I hardly ever listen to my old music. Usually it takes a good three or four years for me to want to hear something again after I've spent the time making it. Quite often I prefer the tracks that were just made as a joke, or made in a really throwaway manner. Out of the pieces that I have released, I think the most time-consuming was 50 Cycles on Ultravisitor. Roughly speaking it took a month to make. This was the last piece to be completed on Ultravisitor, which contains several other pieces that also took unprecedentedly long to complete.

 

This manner of working really started to test my patience, as in the main I have worked very quickly on my music. It is rare for me to deliberate for long on any sort of musical decision - indeed, my decision-making process was not changed in this period but rather the ambition for the scope of the pieces which entailed a massive amount of decisions. After completing these pieces I decided to abandon these grandiose ambitions. Instead, I applied an arbitrary time-limit according to which I would spend no more than a week on a piece, much more in keeping with my older mode of working. Some of the pieces made according to this concept are gathered together on Hello Everything.

It was an appropriate answer. It's not as if he is volunteering this information with no provocation in an effort to be recognized.

  On 3/15/2011 at 8:21 PM, hahathhat said:

and there you have it. hello everything is my not my favorite (big loada or hard normal is) but i liked it loads more than ultravisitor, on which he was obviously trying waaay too hard.

I wonder what too hard is. Clearly a track of 50 Cycles' density would take a large amount of time to create. He's alluded to the fact that this is one a few tracks in which the composition's structure is based on (undisclosed) mathematical processes. It's likely that we'll never know what the logic behind the music was, but it doesn't matter to me because the track is still exciting.

  On 3/16/2011 at 4:42 AM, Wall Bird said:

  hahathhat said:

I read interviews of him blathering about how 50 cycles is the most intense track he's done, it took two months of constant work, etc. then i listened to it and i found it incoherent and annoying.

 

Blathering doesn't seem to be an accurate description. Somebody asked Tom a question:

 

  Quote

The greatgabbo asks: I have a few questions. Firstly, out of the hundreds of tracks that you've made over the years, which one is your favourite? Which track have you put the most time into, and was it worth it?

 

...and he replied succinctly.

 

  Tom said:

I don't really have a favourite piece - in truth I hardly ever listen to my old music. Usually it takes a good three or four years for me to want to hear something again after I've spent the time making it. Quite often I prefer the tracks that were just made as a joke, or made in a really throwaway manner. Out of the pieces that I have released, I think the most time-consuming was 50 Cycles on Ultravisitor. Roughly speaking it took a month to make. This was the last piece to be completed on Ultravisitor, which contains several other pieces that also took unprecedentedly long to complete.

 

This manner of working really started to test my patience, as in the main I have worked very quickly on my music. It is rare for me to deliberate for long on any sort of musical decision - indeed, my decision-making process was not changed in this period but rather the ambition for the scope of the pieces which entailed a massive amount of decisions. After completing these pieces I decided to abandon these grandiose ambitions. Instead, I applied an arbitrary time-limit according to which I would spend no more than a week on a piece, much more in keeping with my older mode of working. Some of the pieces made according to this concept are gathered together on Hello Everything.

 

It was an appropriate answer. It's not as if he is volunteering this information with no provocation in an effort to be recognized.

that's all 100% irrelevant to my point; you're just annoyed i had the nerve to say BLATHERING blather blather @u

  On 3/16/2011 at 4:42 AM, Wall Bird said:

  On 3/15/2011 at 8:21 PM, hahathhat said:

and there you have it. hello everything is my not my favorite (big loada or hard normal is) but i liked it loads more than ultravisitor, on which he was obviously trying waaay too hard.

 

I wonder what too hard is. Clearly a track of 50 Cycles' density would take a large amount of time to create. He's alluded to the fact that this is one a few tracks in which the composition's structure is based on (undisclosed) mathematical processes. It's likely that we'll never know what the logic behind the music was, but it doesn't matter to me because the track is still exciting.

you're extremely dense and there's no logic behind you

something can be dense and still be shit. something can be dense and carefully crafted and still be absolutely no fun to listen to. just because it's complicated doesn't mean it's good.

  On 3/16/2011 at 4:42 AM, Wall Bird said:

but it doesn't matter to me because the track is still exciting.

i wouldn't say i find 50 cycles "boring" so much as "tiresome." if you don't understand what i mean, say it like shere khan -- "50 cycles is soooo tiresome..."

good hat waveform, innit?

  On 3/16/2011 at 6:28 AM, hahathhat said:

that's all 100% irrelevant to my point; you're just annoyed i had the nerve to say BLATHERING blather blather @u

I think this debate has about run it's course, but for my own edification, what was your point? Was it that you thought '50 Cycles', among others, was incoherent and annoying?

  hahathhat said:

something can be dense and still be shit. something can be dense and carefully crafted and still be absolutely no fun to listen to. just because it's complicated doesn't mean it's good.

I agree.

  On 3/16/2011 at 7:17 AM, Wall Bird said:

I think this debate has about run it's course, but for my own edification, what was your point? Was it that you thought '50 Cycles', among others, was incoherent and annoying?

the whole thing.

well, there's some good bits, but they're but buried in mounds of tedious edits. in general, it sounds like background sound for some movie -- some tense ambient drones, lots of wrench-falling-in-a-warehouse sort of shit, but not a lot of melody, not a lot beyond sounds that are carefully morphed over the course of the track. movie soundtracks are boring without the movie!

if i had to offer a counter to 50 cycles, i'd say full rinse (feat mc twin tub) off big loada. that song is a delight to listen to.

Essential album. Its like a journey into the centre of Tom Jenkinsons brain.

Yeah I still think it's fantastic... listened to it at least once a day for the past week. It is like an incredible journey... and the best albums feel like that :) Since I've got a taste for his glitchier tracks now, is it possible I'll get into Go Plastic? I would just go out and get everything he's done at once but it's hard to find his albums for cheap around here.

I love it. I'd agree that it's best to listen to it in one long intense sitting rather than as individual tracks. Intergalactic voyage.

  On 3/17/2011 at 10:09 AM, Springymajig said:

Yeah I still think it's fantastic... listened to it at least once a day for the past week. It is like an incredible journey... and the best albums feel like that :) Since I've got a taste for his glitchier tracks now, is it possible I'll get into Go Plastic?

yes. actually this is almost exactly how i got into go plastic. now i can't imagine what i was thinking for having written it off so easily.

  On 3/17/2011 at 12:52 PM, Cellar Door said:

I love it. I'd agree that it's best to listen to it in one long intense sitting rather than as individual tracks. Intergalactic voyage.

that's probably the best way, but it almost seems as if the album kind of breaks into somewhat cohesive sections really easily. for instance, if i don't have time to listen to the whole album, i will do either the first 3 tracks consecutively or skip to district line II through tetrasync. the circlewave/tetrasync combo never ceases to amaze me.

I used to think 50 Cycles was the weak-point to Ultravisitor. Now I see it as one of the strongest part.

Can't really put into words about what's so great about it, though.

  On 3/17/2011 at 1:35 PM, Root5 said:

I used to think 50 Cycles was the weak-point to Ultravisitor. Now I see it as one of the strongest part.

 

Can't really put into words about what's so great about it, though.

agreed. i love the part that starts around 6:15 that sounds like the final polishing on the "direct to mental" track from the "alive from japan" cd

to me its a perfect lp

me loves it

Steinbolt annoys me a bit, though. it degenerates into a bit of a mess, which would still be ok but the mess bit takes up most of the song. makes me sad

wicked

wish i could join in on the love, Ultravisitor has always been kind of like Drukqs in my mind, lots of amazing songs punctuated by not so amazing melodic diddies that slightly ruin the flow of the album for me. as a cohesive album i don't really like it but it does have a couple of his best songs ever composed as does Drukqs

edit: I'm also not really a fan of Tom's solo instrument playing, thats why i listened to him because he always incorporated those moments into electronic music

  On 3/20/2011 at 5:22 AM, Awepittance said:

wish i could join in on the love, Ultravisitor has always been kind of like Drukqs in my mind, lots of amazing songs punctuated by not so amazing melodic diddies that slightly ruin the flow of the album for me. as a cohesive album i don't really like it but it does have a couple of his best songs ever composed as does Drukqs

 

 

edit: I'm also not really a fan of Tom's solo instrument playing, thats why i listened to him because he always incorporated those moments into electronic music

agreed. i really could have gone without the solo classical guitar pieces, despite that they're not unpleasant considered as singular pieces of music without an album . they don't really add to the overall experience but instead sort of divert from the album's feel,.

  On 3/20/2011 at 5:02 AM, yikes said:

wicked

that was really good but i thought they would have used the whole tetsuo mutating bit in it.