Actress - R.I.P

  On 4/22/2012 at 3:44 AM, Jur said:

  On 4/22/2012 at 3:38 AM, syd syside said:

Actress > everyone else producing electronic music currently imo

 

Uh, what?

I said imo. And yeah comparing musicians is kind of stupid, but its been awhile since I have been this excited over an album. So in that sense, he's producing the best music currently, that I have heard

  On 4/22/2012 at 2:55 AM, Redruth said:

ongly 'affected' by both burial and actress musics. usually if an artist puts out three releases in a row, that all get my regular attention, then that artist moves to special place in my collection, in my heart, in my brain and in my ears.

i understand completely, i was sort of objecting to the use of the term avant with respect to burial

i will check actress's stuff out

  On 4/22/2012 at 4:30 AM, syd syside said:

  On 4/22/2012 at 3:44 AM, Jur said:

  On 4/22/2012 at 3:38 AM, syd syside said:

Actress > everyone else producing electronic music currently imo

 

Uh, what?

 

I said imo. And yeah comparing musicians is kind of stupid, but its been awhile since I have been this excited over an album. So in that sense, he's producing the best music currently, that I have heard

For what it's worth, I definitely know what you mean. The discovery of his music late last year, as well as the expectations I have of his new album (waiting for picking it up in-store before listening) suggest he'll be my favorite electronic musician for the time being.

fuzzy, fizzy, crackly, scratchy, warm, muddy, hollow, flat, mechanical, organic, melodic, light, dark, tattered, smudged, smeared sounds are just so lovely. actress, andy stott, a.d.r.l, raime, lakker, burial, demdike stare, ezekiel honig, tim hecker etcetera etcetera. the list is long and growing. i love these sounds

Totally. I think Demdike Stare's drawn out ambient approach is wonderful for its own reasons, but even moreso than Stott, I found Actress to be so visceral. I think the fact that he's pulling more direct influences from electronic music as far as instrumentation and voicing are concerned has something to do with that. For long-term listening sessions, Demdike and Stott are awesome, but Actress is so immediate, and still has that same opaqueness.

KY you are gonna shit your pants when you hear

  On 4/22/2012 at 7:08 AM, KY said:

I found Actress to be so visceral. I think the fact that he's pulling more direct influences from electronic music as far as instrumentation and voicing are concerned has something to do with that.

right. i also enjoy his ability to make massively abstract bits accessible with more familiar texture and structure. his delicate, meticulous attention to detail. dark, light, playful and full of subtle sound colors. like you have said, opaque, just barely shining through.

Gave it 2 full attention listenings yesterday. Got extremely excited after reading a couple of interviews where Actress talked about the ideas behind the record. I love how even on the heaviest, loudest, more techno oriented tracks, you always get a certain feeling of silence, as the sound is always light and blurred. It's completely fresh, and i always get caught by genuine sounds.

But it still doesnt' feel quite right. I find the shorter tracks to have a stronger effect, as i kind of get distracted on the longest tracks. It works on Splazsh, but it isn't doing anything for me here. This would be my main complain, as i was expecting a more cohesive connection between all the tracks to bring a unquestionable whole.

How does everyone feel about Splazsh?

for me Hazyville is still his best album. in 20 years that is the one that I will remember the most, even if I liked everything he have done so far.

what a fantastic album, really surpassed my (already high) expectations. trying to think of standout tracks, but it works so well as a whole that it is hard to tease any out. the whole stretch from serpent to caves of paradise is the highlight, imo, but the rest is great too. i was a bit skeptical of the paradise lost theme going in, but i can see how it works. not that it's essential, but heard in that light it gives the album a more narrative quality, i think.

i already like it more than splazsh, but i thought hazyville was better than splazsh already. will take some time to digest before i can tell how it compares to hazyville.

still, probably the most exciting thing i've heard this year, just above the cygnus tape and the new belbury poly. not sure what else could top it this year (that i know of); maybe space dimension controller, but something unexpected could always show up as well.

  On 4/22/2012 at 1:35 PM, Jur said:

How does everyone feel about Splazsh?

Probably in my top 5 albums.

  On 4/22/2012 at 7:17 AM, syd syside said:

KY you are gonna shit your pants when you hear

lol i've shat my pants in far less extreme situations, trust me.

fantastic album. but i'm not sure if it's one that i'll truly love

for the moment i like it a little bit better than hazyville and splazsh, but it's close (what a great discography imo)

  On 4/23/2012 at 1:32 AM, usagi said:

I really like Splazsh but I haven't listened to it enough times for it to stop seeming like a collection of bits and pieces. or maybe that's what it really is. I enjoy albums best when they come together as a whole (this is the reason I don't rate Quaristice as Ae's best).

the way i see it precisely!

you shouldn't be afraid of looking at Splazsh as a collage. but listen to R.I.P! it is the opposite. it's like an organism, and there is no way it can be heard in a fragmented way

  On 4/23/2012 at 1:32 AM, usagi said:

I really like Splazsh but I haven't listened to it enough times for it to stop seeming like a collection of bits and pieces. or maybe that's what it really is. I enjoy albums best when they come together as a whole (this is the reason I don't rate Quaristice as Ae's best).

typically i share this attitude, but i think splazsh is intentionally actress doing his own take on a large variety of different styles of electronic music. so, it lacks stylistic consistency in a sense, but what holds it together is the unique approach actress brings to the different styles.

i think something similar is true of quaristice, which to me feels like ae doing a kind of hip-hop beat tape (which also explains why the tracks are so short).

anyway, as already said, r.i.p is much more cohesive than splazsh.

  On 4/22/2012 at 2:03 PM, grue said:

trying to think of standout tracks, but it works so well as a whole that it is hard to tease any out

i am experiencing this as well. it would seem that i am only just beginning to appreciate this album for what it truly is, it has become more cohesive with each listen

quite good

one of the best opening tracs i've heard in some time, really beautiful way to start

edit: then into ascending which shimmers with the most beautiful, delicate light. really wonderful!

troon you goose, you are making it hard to let this one sit on the shelf for more than a day

heh, right, it really is hard to stop listening to this.

Allow me to counter all the gushing praise around here by saying this is the most average album I've heard in ages. No tracks stood out or me either, but I'm guessing for different reasons.

Yeah, I sometimes wonder is the current state of electronic music so depressing and nonprogressive that people have to attach adjectives such as "exciting", "visceral" and "already best album of the year" to such a mediocre album such as this. I'm speaking here from a perspective of someone born and bred on Autechre, Monolake, Pan Sonic and other true innovators that seriously stretched the boundaries and explored new territories, and to acknowledge music such as this today would be admitting the defeat of electronic music and its progress. Yeah, there is a nice track here and there, but people going apeshit for some really average programming buried under the layers of haze and hiss is not understandable to me at all. I mean, isn't that sound already pretty much done? I reckon it's not the type of sound you can infinitely vary and it can still be fresh and interesting. Maybe I haven't listened to it enough though...

Like with so many records nowadays, it might just be a question of hype.

R.I.P offers us an hour of good music, and the ideas behind it concerning death might be worth exploring, but like the music itself, they become smudged. it has become pretty much forgettable to me.

it's definitely not innovative. while driving home yesterday i had Lifeforms playing, and was thinking how FSOL have been doing organic electronic music since the beginning of the 90's and no one does it better than them. R.I.P doesn't feel as organic even tho it is marketed as such. Some tracks do remind me of Oversteps, and i remember Actress mentioning ae in one of his recent interviews. Oversteps is for me, a kind of evolution from FSOL's music and i would even dare to say it is digitally organic. it's dangerous to say that Actress might have wanted to explore a similar path, but so far, only thing we might say is that he listens to Ae. my belief is that Oversteps actually might have been a reference for him.

My point is that, having FSOL's Lifeforms and Ae's Oversteps in such high appreciation, it's difficult for me to see anything worth of worship in this record, concerning innovation. It's still a good record, because it stands as a peaceful experience among so much shitty and loud music being released nowadays.

I certainly don't think it's a bad album and I hate to be the prick that thinks it's shit in the face of so much praise, but unfortunately it's disappointing to hear so much good stuff about an album to then go and hear it and wonder what it is you're missing. See: VHS Head.

I certainly 'get' the album, it just doesn't blow me away. Actually I was listening to it on the train today and thought that the last couple of tracks were fantastic, but then I checked my MP3 player and realised that RIP had finished and it had cycled alphabetically to the next album which was Analogue Bubblebath 3 - one for some reason I've always owned but never listened to. So, thanks to Actress for making me discover an album I liked! Shame it wasn't his.

I'll probably give it another listen at some point, maybe it will grow on me. But the album I put on afterwards (Gold by Komet; another I was listening to for the first time) is perhaps comparable in some ways. It's stripped down, deconstructed music, quite repetitive and hypnotic, which I would argue RIP is... but when it finished I was eager to go back and listen to it again. There were tracks that clearly stood out to me. It had the 'it' factor which I felt RIP lacked.

tl;dr: Obel doesn't get the hype.