Vladislav Delay - Vantaa

  On 10/13/2011 at 9:27 PM, azatoth said:

Loved his rant about how shitty the music sounds today. Spot on. Some nice albums have been ruined by brickwall mastering, which is a shame. And people being happy listening to music on their shitty phones with the shitty plasticy earbuds it came with.

  On 10/14/2011 at 2:49 AM, Tauhid said:

I think his statement about Ableton Live being the "worst thing to happen in music making, ever" is a little over-exaggerated.

needs more scarf, thick-rimmed glasses

Some people earn the right to talk like that. Richard D. James, Autechre, Theo Parrish. He lives in his own (?) island ffs, doesn't get any more Greek God than that IMHO. I think the point of having 'heroes', at least in my case with this man, is to have some sort of guide and you are supposed to wrestle with them, not blindly follow everything they do as if you were a 14 year old girl.

 

My personal WTF moment was how Kanye West made the best record of the last five years or something.

 

Also, Monolake's Silence isn't 100% Ableton. There is a lot of Max on that album.

Heh, that Ableton bit had escaped my memory. It's funny as I've been trying to familiarize myself with the program this whole year now, and I do sort of look up to him.

 

Mellow U summed it up very well and I agree word to word. To continue, I also think that the mobility that came with digital files is one of the best things to happen to music... Some records simply work a ton better outside. As we're talking Delay here, I'll mention Multila. It suits every season here in Finland, especially these autumn months. And I do see it as a very Finnish record, perhaps a bit urban, even if it was only for the sound. It's named after a city here, but that's probably not news for anyone.

 

I do agree though that in this scenario one should always try to commit himself to the record and treat it as a work of art, listen to it back to back with good in-ears and gapless playback. I do much understand the artist's agony of knowing that most people run around with mutilated digital copies of their albums - bad tags, audio glitches, wrong running order, you name it. It's like spitting on a painting.

Edited October 14, 2011 by 40days

but we are poor and can't afford $60,000 speakers!

  On 10/14/2011 at 4:37 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

but we are poor and can't afford $60,000 speakers!

I'm sporting Sennheiser CX-300 IIs, 35 euros postages included. Should be enough to change everything if one is going up from basic earbuds.

I think Sasu Ripatti's elitist opinion about music is cancelled out once you listen to his last Sistol and Luomo albums, lol.

Shut up, the last Sistol was good.

Being an artist myself, part of me wants to agree with what 40days said about "spitting on a painting" - you always want to envision that your work is received in the most ideal circumstances. However, this is hardly ever how it actually happens, and I have to testify about it being a good thing. Sure, it sounds pretty god awful on paper when you talk about low bitrate MP3s and things like that, but how about when I was a kid and the first time I'd heard Cosmic Thing by the B-52's on a tape that was probably 3rd or 4th generation? I mean, years later when I finally bought the CD and vinyl because my cassette copy I grew up on in the 80s was breaking, it was a pretty jarring experience to hear the music so clear and perfect.

 

I guess what I'm getting at here is that music has always been and will probably always be represented in less than ideal quality, and that really shouldn't bother an artist because context is everything. I mean, I remember first listening to Kid A from the back seat of my old drummer's Jeep with the top down, noisy wind blowing past my ears and through my hair and everything. The record still blew my mind. "How To Disappear Completely" came on just as a thunderstorm was approaching in the distance, and we just kept driving through the empty countryside with this incredible music melding with the atmosphere around us. It wasn't the most hi-fi situation ever, but the music was strong enough still to make a great impression on me.

 

Of course, we do live in an age where music travels in mediums that are just as much information as they are art, so while I could go all out with the opinions of people like Sasu, or even David Lynch talking shit about watching movies on your iPhone, I'm still going to go with context winning out above all else in these situations where my brain digests things on a creatively stimulating level.

Yeah, once you finish the artwork it's no longer yours.

 

40days thanks for the suggestion. My expensive Chinese DJ headphones are about to disintegrate at any moment and the Ipod ones are so insultingly awful I won't even talk about them, I'll probably buy those Sennheiser soon.

http://vimeo.com/30614060

Well, that was certainly different from the previously bubbly and organic V.Delay stuff.

  On 10/16/2011 at 6:50 PM, Enter a new display name said:

http://vimeo.com/30614060

 

lol

Is that beat for real? I was looking forward to this.

Yeah...it sounds more like a Kouhei collaboration of some kind than anything Delay. I'd have to hear the whole thing to really make a call, and I will probably still check this out.

 

However, based on that video, this feels disappointing.

I wish there was time travel so I could prevent myself from watching that video.

 

Release date is November 28.

  On 10/14/2011 at 4:55 AM, Joseph said:

Listen to monolake's silence and tell me ableton is obstructing musical progress.

 

Sure thing: Ableton is obstructing musical progress. Silence sucks hard.

Henke is awesome but he barely uses Live like most people do. He does all his stuff from scratch with instances of operator and whatever, no loops and no timestretching involved. So despite his association with Live he uses it very unlike 95% of the other people that use it do. I feel like most of the "awful Ableton Live music" being made is people grinding layers of shit together with the timestretching engine, ie. the most obvious thing Live is "for". Which is worthy of railing against, imo.

 

If you take that feature away Live is basically just a robust VST host and regular DAW, and the usual "tools don't matter" arguments then apply.

  On 10/19/2011 at 4:58 PM, Ascdi said:

Henke is awesome but he barely uses Live like most people do. He does all his stuff from scratch with instances of operator and whatever, no loops and no timestretching involved. So despite his association with Live he uses it very unlike 95% of the other people that use it do. I feel like most of the "awful Ableton Live music" being made is people grinding layers of shit together with the timestretching engine, ie. the most obvious thing Live is "for". Which is worthy of railing against, imo.

 

If you take that feature away Live is basically just a robust VST host and regular DAW, and the usual "tools don't matter" arguments then apply.

 

+1

man, seriously. ableton need to implement a button to globally turn off automatic time stretching. it is done on all recorded files and sounds crap. I never realised how crap it sounded until I recorded the same multi tracks through the same convertors, 1. into Pro-Tools le and 2. Ableton. I couldn't believe the difference. Ableton autowarp seems to modulate the recorded material in a well strange way.

 

//rant

I'm digging the track excerpt.

i just wanted to say, i really like the Ableton time stretch sounds. i think it has its own character. actually, everything in that program has its own character. and i like that character. it's strange, there is a specific style that works well if you go for it.

 

the way you can line up samples with those yellow markers for timestretching is really unique and if you embrace it it can be good.

 

if you're going for a clean sound it's probably not the best choice.

the sound of an mp3 slowed down in Ableton is the most hacky overused effect going right now

  On 10/21/2011 at 2:37 AM, vamos scorcho said:

i just wanted to say, i really like the Ableton time stretch sounds. i think it has its own character. actually, everything in that program has its own character. and i like that character. it's strange, there is a specific style that works well if you go for it.

 

the way you can line up samples with those yellow markers for timestretching is really unique and if you embrace it it can be good.

 

if you're going for a clean sound it's probably not the best choice.

I like the sound of timestretching too. My point was more about the fact that it allows you to move around audio so much, I think it encourages people to do unmusical things. Squishing all the feel out of a drum break for example.

 

Older breakbeat music is great because of all the rickety edges and imperfect aspects of the technology at the time. Well, that's one of the reasons it's great anyway. Ableton is like giving everyone a Ferrari F40 the moment they pass their driver's test. Just because people have the technology in their hands doesn't mean they're necessarily going to do tasteful things with it.

 

Basically just take Jeff Goldblum's rant in Jurassic Park from when they are sitting eating dinner and replace “genetic engineering” with “Ableton Live”.

http://www.factmag.com/2011/11/18/vladislav-delay-narri-edit/