Sean Booth quote about being surprised by how similar electronic musicians sound to one another..?

Everybody talks about technology and technical progress in EM but what drown me into Ae was complex emotions that i found in their music. The only other music that can satisfy me (even more than Ae) is Beethoven's music.

  On 1/21/2013 at 2:56 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

I'm even willing to give credit to guitar bands since they do have such a limited palette of sounds. Samey electronic music is just disgraceful though. Could use literally any sound our ears are capable of hearing yet everything sounds the same. I guess I just rephrased booths point but it really irks me.

Could use literally any words capable of being expressed in the English language yet you rephrased Booth's point. (Just joking.)

But in all seriousness, maybe we're looking only at the effects of an underlying common cause: the reason why there are samey sounds in electronic music despite the wide-open palette is because there's a sheepish sameness of attitude and emotion that underwrites the music.

Squarepusher said that, if I remember correctly

Pure innovation in electronic music would be rubbish though; there has to be some influence/relevance otherwise it'd just sound academic and ridiculous. Then again, I do wonder why producers still use emulations of traditional drum sounds (ie. kick, snare, cymbals), even in the most abstract IDM.

  On 1/21/2013 at 11:41 PM, modey said:

Pure innovation in electronic music would be rubbish though; there has to be some influence/relevance otherwise it'd just sound academic and ridiculous. Then again, I do wonder why producers still use emulations of traditional drum sounds (ie. kick, snare, cymbals), even in the most abstract IDM.

dunno about that, if I hear something different that I can't associate with emulating something else I've heard in my sub conscious then I'm all ears

I think Autechre have always had their shit together when it comes tweaking technology and they have a veteran ear for the unusual whilst keeping the familiar characteristic to their style which also goes for the hardened fanboys like us as we know its an Autechre track even if we've never heard it before

it wouldn't surprise me if the stuff we hear is only a refined fraction of their output since the last album but you have to dig deep to get gold

The problem at the heart of it all is cats not treating their stuff like capital-A Art, but rather like a weekend pisstake.

Show me the music of someone who obsesses over their craft like they were put on this earth solely to make it. That's the music I want to hear.

I'm pretty obsessive about my music. But I tend to wear my influences on my sleeve most of the time. I don't have much desire to make purely innovative stuff.

  On 1/22/2013 at 6:33 AM, modey said:

I'm pretty obsessive about my music. But I tend to wear my influences on my sleeve most of the time. I don't have much desire to make purely innovative stuff.

Influences are essential. I think the reason that painters and poets and jazz musicians used to mimic those that came before is because influences are the way one develops a vocabulary.

But then once you've amassed a vocabulary, what've you got to say?

(Unless of course you're just mucking about and just clicking squares on a grid, but then I'm probably not gonna like your music)

I think Autechre are as original as it gets.. but in hindsight it took them time to scale that mountain. If they had been dogmatic from the get go about having to be innovative and original would they have even started messing with sound in the first place? When they started out they were making tape edits of hip hop and scratching with no pretence of authorship.

Making original music is easy. Making original music that somebody is actually willing to listen to is hard. And making original music that somebody is willing to listen to for other reasons than novelty is really fucking hard.

  On 1/21/2013 at 11:41 PM, modey said:

Then again, I do wonder why producers still use emulations of traditional drum sounds (ie. kick, snare, cymbals), even in the most abstract IDM.

I've been wondering about this also. It may be because of the letter D in the IDM. Lots of IDM is dance music influenced even when it's really abstract and uses dance music production technology which has a staple drum sound palette.

  On 1/22/2013 at 8:22 AM, mokz said:

  On 1/21/2013 at 11:41 PM, modey said:

Then again, I do wonder why producers still use emulations of traditional drum sounds (ie. kick, snare, cymbals), even in the most abstract IDM.

 

I've been wondering about this also. It may be because of the letter D in the IDM. Lots of IDM is dance music influenced even when it's really abstract and uses dance music production technology which has a staple drum sound palette.

I see it as musicians taking up tradition instruments.

  On 1/21/2013 at 11:41 PM, modey said:

Pure innovation in electronic music would be rubbish though; there has to be some influence/relevance otherwise it'd just sound academic and ridiculous.

  On 1/22/2013 at 8:22 AM, mokz said:

Making original music is easy. Making original music that somebody is actually willing to listen to is hard. And making original music that somebody is willing to listen to for other reasons than novelty is really fucking hard.

I think it's also hard because sometimes the vocabulary or context of very original music doesn't exist in the person until they've built it up themselves. The whole point of being original is to create something new, which by definition disregards the past and known, so it sounds to me like a bit of a paradox when you make the separation between types of original music like this. Maybe most people need to be eased into it with familiar elements and then gradually introducing 'oddities'

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="xox" data-cid="1936214" data-time="1358852299">

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="modey" data-cid="1935927" data-time="1358808082">Pure innovation in electronic music would be rubbish though; there has to be some influence/relevance otherwise it'd just sound academic and ridiculous. </blockquote>

</blockquote>

<p><br />

true if you're looking at it as a zero sum game, that one would have to be 'entirely' original to be fully innovative. There are obvious degrees to this whole approach. Everyone has influences obviously. <br />

<br />

I think what Sean Booth was trying to say is that we now have tools available to anyone to essentially make any sound we can imagine, yet there aren't too many people pushing their imagination to create these un-heard sounds. Electronic music is still in a lot of ways trapped in the past or too reliant on a particular piece of gear's trademark sound and not seen as a tool to put one's imagination into the sonic realm.  Modular synthesizers are making a come back, which is promising since depending on one's configuration you can get a bunch of unique sounds no one else is (probably) making, even if you have the exact same configuration<br />

<br />

i equate electronic music technology to a certain extent to visual computing technology like CGI. We've finally, about 40 years later reached a point with CGI where you can literally create a photo realistic object or creature that seems organic and not made by a computer.  <br />

Synths have been around much longer, and in a way were more 'new' to the human ear when they hit the scene than CGI was to the human eye when it hit the scene. People could have in theory been making paintings that looked like Tron or other digital stuff, but not the same with oscillators and electronic sounds. </p>

  On 1/22/2013 at 11:58 AM, xox said:

  On 1/21/2013 at 11:41 PM, modey said:

Pure innovation in electronic music would be rubbish though; there has to be some influence/relevance otherwise it'd just sound academic and ridiculous.

Kind of like autechre then?

Lifeless glitchy sounds with no melodies strung together in an abstract way just for the sake of being abstract and "forward thinking"?

Just kidding. Don't kill me. lol.

Kills him.

Don't worry I like the aw tekk ers.

smiling zombie that likes the 'chre

this thread has actually inspired me to make music again. gotta fight the good fight.

  On 1/23/2013 at 1:47 AM, disoriental express said:

smiling zombie that likes the 'chre

 

this thread has actually inspired me to make music again. gotta fight the good fight.

Yay do it!

(And please please don't become one of those people who stops making music because they no longer think they're gonna become rich and famous...)

if you slapped an Ae label on a richard devine cd how many peeps outside of this forum- i'm referring to the casual lover/listener of electronica /WARP or SKAM or REPHLEX [who is not a fanatic fanboy/musician producer ]would really notice?

poorly worded run on sentence but…whatcha think lads?

  On 1/24/2013 at 3:36 PM, yikes said:

if you slapped an Ae label on a richard devine cd how many peeps outside of this forum- i'm referring to the casual lover/listener of electronica /WARP or SKAM or REPHLEX [who is not a fanatic fanboy/musician producer ]would really notice?

 

poorly worded run on sentence but…whatcha think lads?

you could say the same about pretty much anyone when you have 'casual' listeners involved.

Slap a 'The Tuss / Aphex Twin' label on a Monolith CD.

  Quote

Slap a 'Squarepusher / Aphex Twin' label on a Steinvord 12''.

  On 1/24/2013 at 3:40 PM, oscillik said:

  On 1/24/2013 at 3:36 PM, yikes said:

if you slapped an Ae label on a richard devine cd how many peeps outside of this forum- i'm referring to the casual lover/listener of electronica /WARP or SKAM or REPHLEX [who is not a fanatic fanboy/musician producer ]would really notice?

 

poorly worded run on sentence but…whatcha think lads?

you could say the same about pretty much anyone when you have 'casual' listeners involved.

 

Slap a 'The Tuss / Aphex Twin' label on a Monolith CD.

Yeah, and remember the Steinvord is Skrillex rumor..

hahahahaha

all true!

  On 1/24/2013 at 3:43 PM, mcbpete said:

  Quote

Slap a 'Squarepusher / Aphex Twin' label on a Steinvord 12''.

Wait, I don't think I'm doing it right

zole