Actress - Ghettoville

couldn't have said it better myself

edit: *sigh* someday I'll really write out why I think actress has zero staying power and is an emperor-has-no-clothes situation for millennials and internet-savvy 30 somethings

It's not an emperor has no clothes situation. I called him out on Rainy Dub. I started listening to Actress because I got into Werk after Lone came out with Ecstasy and Friends. OPN probably is an EHNC situation, however.

JE, you're going to have to do better than "side chain and hiphop tropes." I'm convinced that you are saying hiphop tropes 60% because Actress is black. And as for sidechain, there is a difference between sidechain being the point of a track and being one of many devices employed. Complaining about sidechain now is basically like saying "what the heck is up with all this reverb and delay? Did he EQ this mix? Did he actually EQ this!? I'm so tired of all of these freaking sawtooth waves! And is that really an LFO?"

Besides, if Actress didn't completely destroy your sidechain prejudice with "Ascension," then you weren't listening.

You obviously have a preference for VD because the way he samples is more compatible with the way you operate as Fluorescent Grey, and was probably a model for you, whereas Actress is more irreverent with his "plunderphonics." It's the same misplaced problem you have with vaporwave.

I think we've made some real progress today. Same time next week?

^ lol

i don't like actress at all but how can you really argue that something is "conceptually" more interesting than another thing? what does that even mean with regards to abstract, basically narrative free electronic music? we can all make up reasons to not like the music, why not just admit it isn't your thing and move on?

  On 2/7/2014 at 12:40 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

I wouldn't want to be within a 100 foot vicinity of someone who thinks Actress is actually comparable in quality/skill/experience/body of work to Vladislav Delay. It's too embarrassing of a vibe to even be in remote proximity to.

 

flol i really want people to take electronic music this seriously

This album is great, not his best… But there are still a lot of tracks I really like, very much.

Particuarly Corner and Birdcage.

I can reverse engineer an artist's statement that will blow your mind Zaph.

Lol. And carl craig is dated because he used corny synths on some of his tracks. You dig?

If you dont like hubble you are an idiot

Ascending ftw

  On 2/7/2014 at 12:40 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 2/6/2014 at 7:38 PM, huzur said:

 

  On 1/27/2014 at 11:39 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

Vladislav Delay is a master at his craft, I don't think it's even fair to compare the two musicians. In completely different leagues all around

 

I've just found my new least favorite user on this forum. There's a whole new world of insults that I've prepared for you for the time we'll cross our paths. I (sincerely) hope you aren't happy and content with your life.

 

since you live in Romania it's pretty unlikely, but i'll make sure to steer clear of anyone who has a problem with the true statement I made, I wouldn't want to be within a 100 foot vicinity of someone who thinks Actress is actually comparable in quality/skill/experience/body of work to Vladislav Delay. It's too embarrassing of a vibe to even be in remote proximity to.

 

Actress is one of the very few artists I've ever listened to that gives me this weird set of emotions, an unfamiliar mixture of a great deal of familiar things; it really works like channeling for me in many ways, to the extent of the fact that some tracks sound to me like the music that you keep hearing blasting from the club's speakers 3 doors by the hall, when you're pissed, and confused, and you go to the bathroom and all you hear is this discombobulated loop, as you try to cling on to reality. Contrary to your belief, maybe, I happen to be a fan of Vladislav Delay too, but he never gave me any of these phantasmagoric drifts from reality that I got from Actress.

That R.I.P. track is probably the most mesmeric track that I know of, second only to Aphex Twin - Gwely Mernans.

ohhhh nd excuse my english, it's not my native language. But if you learn romanian I promise that I'll take you to the very edges of your vernacular, and most certainly beyond...

  Quote

"The way I approach music is much more from a sculptural perspective. You build algorithms. You can layer those algorithms so they become marble-like. Autechre do the complete opposite to what I do. You can see the axis, you can feel what they’re rotating around certain things. What I do is the same but I smudge it completely, so you can feel the axis but you can’t get that clarity of where it is. I like things to drip. There’s execution and there’s perfection and even though I’m a perfectionist I don’t like having something that’s so perfect you can’t see the flaws. You have to have a sense of there being a flaw in it, because essentially I’m human and I want a human aspect always to be there in my music." - Actress

here's some conceptual shit

  On 2/6/2014 at 11:48 AM, tokn said:

Welcome in 2014 when un-satisfaction is becoming the new satisfaction.

guys, i swear i didnt read the interview before... actress says " I think it's that quality - or un-quality - which is fundamentally what I was trying to get out of Ghettoville, and what the essence of the expression was as well."

haha

  On 2/6/2014 at 6:54 PM, sheatheman said:

"[The way you get ahead these days is learning how to express dissatisfaction in interesting ways]"

you say this or someone else? i like this. it's not even negative.

tokn: Don DeLillo said that, I paraphrased it. From White Noise.

  On 2/8/2014 at 7:32 AM, kirm said:

 

 

  On 2/7/2014 at 12:40 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

I wouldn't want to be within a 100 foot vicinity of someone who thinks Actress is actually comparable in quality/skill/experience/body of work to Vladislav Delay. It's too embarrassing of a vibe to even be in remote proximity to.

 

 

What about someone who just likes Actress music more? surely that’s a legit personal choice? Technical skill and all that don’t really have fuck all to do with it

 

Actress himself wouldn’t pretend to be a technical master or anything, this quote from his latest fact mag interview sums it up well for me

 

" when I first heard Autechre I was like ‘OK, it’s got all those crazy sounds but I’m into it.’ Then I started trying to make Autechre tunes, but I was nowhere near. And I guess that’s where all of this comes from, wanting to do something but not being able to do something, so having to find a different way to do it." (http://www.factmag.com/2014/02/07/actress-interview-fact-ghettoville-darren-cunningham/)

 

Loads of people copy Ae who have shit loads of technical skill but come off like soulless copy cats. Actress tried to copy Ae failed, but made something with his own vibe and with tons of soul, that counts more for me than Technical mastery or whatever

 

yeah i can get on board with that, i don't even remember how it started but i believe someone made a totally ridiculous comment about Delay being less "skilled" than Actress. So i had to set them straight, not trying to tell them that Actress's music is inherently worse or something, I'm not that much of an idiot. His music is definitely some of the most captivating i've heard of the enlightened amateur variety that gets hyped up around here. But i don't listen to much new electronic music like that in general.

Dumb.

I only like a few of Actress' tunes, but I really respect this quote from that Fact interview, right above that Autechre bit:

"I was being taught about Xenakis, and it went right over my head. What, he made stupid noises out of cymbals? Put something else on. It didn’t interest me, and it didn’t interest me because all I heard was [makes stupid noise]. No, I wanna hear form, I wanna hear structure, I wanna hear elasticity, and I wanna hear meaning."

Oh yeah. That's the same thing I always thought when I was in my "mysterium" experimental composition class. I got into it as a music minor even though it was only for composition majors. Great class, but frustrating at times for the those Xenakis kind of reasons.

Alright well aphex actually didnt like xenakis all that much either

Neither did Manuel Gottsching. In regards to composers like Stockhausen and Xenakis:

"...but I didn't find any real access to this music, it was too much brain and not enough body. For me music has to make an atmosphere somehow. You don't have to understand it, just listen to it, it has to give you something. I always miss this in that very academic, mathematical style."

Hear, hear.

seems like a very naive over generalization, plenty of music by each of them has discernable structure. Maybe their body of work was dominated by more cold and academic methods, but plenty of stuff by Stockhausen especially is more or less accessible to anyone with a remote appreciation for weird music with structure.

  On 2/9/2014 at 8:04 AM, ieafs said:

xenakis has no structure, lol

  On 2/9/2014 at 3:56 AM, Deion Sanders said:

I only like a few of Actress' tunes, but I really respect this quote from that Fact interview, right above that Autechre bit:

 

"I was being taught about Xenakis, and it went right over my head. What, he made stupid noises out of cymbals? Put something else on. It didn’t interest me, and it didn’t interest me because all I heard was [makes stupid noise]. No, I wanna hear form, I wanna hear structure, I wanna hear elasticity, and I wanna hear meaning."

that's really odd coming from someone who claims to be an Autechre fan who wanted to imitate their music, I actually can't understand it all. Seems like a quasi-fronting "i'm rebellious' type of statement to me. Like I get that Xenakis is probably overly-pushed in some of these academic communities, there are plenty of others who I think were more interesting like David Tudor who get over-shadowed by him, but it just feels dumb to me, i dont know what else to say.

but I'm not here to fuck up anyones fun, i think i've had enough, the comparison to vlad was one thing but now here creeps in something about how Aphex didn't like xenakis that much therefore Actress's statement becomes worthy of merit, that's getting A LITTLE too close to someone basically saying that those 2 guys are comparable in any way, and for me that will be my exit to the thread. Sorry for ruining any enjoyment of actress or causing butt-hurt reactions. I'm out

I don't know if Xenakis is really overpushed somewhere, but within his life he was almost an outsider who has the respect but no power as Stockhausen (his strong ideologic opponent, Xenakis was the only European avant composer to go against Stockhausen's dominant serialist ideas with his own radical ones) and Boulez (Stockhausen's boy) at IRCAM have. Some of the Xenakis' pieces are the most powerful shit known to me, it's so grandiose and to the point i can't see how it could be described as non-meaningful etc even by non-specialist. He has large body of work though.

By the way, Aphex changed his mind in recent years.

If you want to listen to some good music, listen to my music.

I feel as if we have somehow not resolved anything in this thread.

  On 2/11/2014 at 9:14 PM, Ascdi said:

I feel as if we have somehow not resolved anything in this thread.

Just as Actress did within his tracks.