Russell Haswell - 37 Minute Work Out

Noise maestro Haswell trying his hand at rhythms. Awesome result, unusually funky, good continuation from last year's Concrete Fence release. Surprised to not find a thread on this. Check bleep for extended samples.

boomkat

bleep

<3 Haswell

Forgot to post preview for the lazy

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Can anyone explain this to me? I don't get it? What am I supposed to get? It's not very good at all...i.e. I don't like it and it appears to be crap...but maybe I'm not understanding it's complexity or something...

  On 6/24/2015 at 6:04 PM, bendish said:

Can anyone explain this to me? I don't get it? What am I supposed to get? It's not very good at all...i.e. I don't like it and it appears to be crap...but maybe I'm not understanding it's complexity or something...

As if complexity serves as an alibi against being crap. It's distinctive, with precisely realized aesthetics of rhythm and sound.

That Concrete Fence is awasome!

Okay so i really like his noise stuff....its just the kick drum hat snare and clap tracks that seem completely devoid of worth....alternative ways to the truth...clapping...for example

precisely realised aesthetics of rhythm and sound? that could apply to any music realised today

if anyone on this forum released this music nobody would give a shit....

don't get me wrong...im a fan of his work in general....just don't buy the academic hyperbole or media blurb....it is what it is

http://boomkat.com/downloads/940473-russell-haswell-37-minute-work-out

its boomkat but really what bollox

  On 6/27/2015 at 9:29 AM, bendish said:

Okay so i really like his noise stuff....its just the kick drum hat snare and clap tracks that seem completely devoid of worth....alternative ways to the truth...clapping...for example

 

precisely realised aesthetics of rhythm and sound? that could apply to any music realised today

 

if anyone on this forum released this music nobody would give a shit....

 

don't get me wrong...im a fan of his work in general....just don't buy the academic hyperbole or media blurb....it is what it is

 

http://boomkat.com/downloads/940473-russell-haswell-37-minute-work-out

 

its boomkat but really what bollox

I agree with you bendish, but I just can't be bothered anymore crashing into threads (yet here I am about to )

I was reading an interview with him online (probably on The Quietus) he was going on about how fucking clever he thought was barging into a Whitney Housten gig with his mate dressed up in death metal t-shirts (probably swilling Special Brew).

He comes across as a bit of a cock imo. I don't even bother to listen to his music as I know it's gonna be complete horseshit.

  On 6/27/2015 at 7:19 PM, beerwolf said:

I agree with you bendish, but I just can't be bothered anymore crashing into threads (yet here I am about to )

 

I was reading an interview with him online (probably on The Quietus) he was going on about how fucking clever he thought was barging into a Whitney Housten gig with his mate dressed up in death metal t-shirts (probably swilling Special Brew).

 

He comes across as a bit of a cock imo. I don't even bother to listen to his music as I know it's gonna be complete horseshit.

 

you going to the Autechre London gig? if you don't bottle him at that your words will no longer have gravitas. NONE.

I'm not really interested in whether someone thinks he's a good bloke or a nob....I'm curious about the whole conceptual artist vs. musician tensions...

I'm aware that the music may either float your boat or not or somewhere in between....but i do not get the motivation behind making seemingly budget basic drum machine patterns which are then seen to be worthy of release....just because you have the 'artist' label....and you have a well established history and output....doesnt make the music any better necessarily...

The same applies to Holly Herndon, Lee Gamble....Mark Fell, Florian Hecker etc

These artist/academic/musicians seem to rely on a conceptual framework to justify the pieces themselves...when in my view whether they have a phd is irrelevant...the conceptual aspects are immaterial....why does music need to be explained?

e.g.

However, while hypnagogic in effect, the processes behind Gamble's manipulations owe far more to his background in academic computer music - he's a founding member of Brum-via-London's CYRK collective and has previously released on the equally high-brow Entr'acte imprint - applying tactile, de/reconstructive software programming to emphasise the grain and weft of the source material, in turn yielding nano-fine layers of microtonal dissonance, fathomless amounts of space and timbral quirks that were always there, yet practically imperceptible in original form. It's effect is visceral, starkly compelling, bound to send shivers up the spine of anyone who's stood with their ears ringing at the end of a warehouse party and returned home in a state of near-shellshocked delirium after disengaging the soundsystem. One of the best ever PAN records this.

or this...

making his eMego debut with an album influenced by his love of "90s trance/hard-trance music and a growing interest in the musical structures and sound archetypes of these genres." What this amounts to is the Italian artist identifying generic characteristics - super-saw synth lines, ludicrous build-ups, instant-gratification melodies - and drawing attention to their strangeness through isolation and repetition. The resulting listening experience is perhaps surprisingly fluid and engaging: 'Windows Of Vulnerability', for example, has its cake and eats it, coaxing real, almost elegiac emotion out of a rollercoasting uber-trance chord progression even as it parodies it.

i disagree about 'the same applies to lee gamble' that artist in particular doesn't really grab me as someone who actually has dived deeply into the depths of the sonic wilderness and pulled anything that amazing out of it. He's good at what he's refined, but I don't really see it as a conceptual or even really experimental approach to music at all. All the other artists you listed have at one point or another and have proven their ability to mine unexplored depths and have created unique works. I think the problem comes in when one of these artists who has a proven track record relies too heavily on the 'process' as a way to get the listener to appreciate the record more than just appreciating it on its own. When it comes to this Russell Haswell record I don't get the impression he is marketing this as some kind of grand conceptual piece, not like in the same way 'Wild Tracks' was, this just seems like more in good fun, somewhere in between one of his live noise records and a plunderphonic experiment. So maybe this isn't one of his best records, but i think the Boomkat and press machine/wrapping thats bothering you probably more than what the artist intended.

yea maybe you are right. the record selling website hype is always a distraction and an inevitable turn off.

maybe its just internet saturation of information vs substance

however this is still how many of the above artists get their message across...but then how seriously should u take interviews?

I never read any of the conceptual blurbs surrounding Haswell or Fell's stuff, I just enjoy the albums as a listening experience as a whole.

<3 this album.

  On 6/27/2015 at 9:29 AM, bendish said:

 

precisely realised aesthetics of rhythm and sound? that could apply to any music realised today

No, it couldn't. Anything could be named anything of course, for example any music could be named crap without giving out much.

I didn't even know that this Haswell is so conceptual it irritates people. This record is rather straightforward, hence "workout". What is worthy or not worthy of release and artist label isn't that interesting a topic.

Okay so what does constitute precisely realised aesthetics of rhythm and sound?