The Flashbulb - Piety of Ashes

  On 8/8/2017 at 8:06 AM, peace 7 said:

All right, this dude's probably gonna be pretty good in about... 10 years?  I don't know.  I mean that positively.  Because yah, this thing whatever track for his new whatever, it's actually all right, and you can tell that he just cried for the first time like 3 months ago or something like that (as opposed to just looking in the mirror with a dramatic face- nude- and drawing the Squarepusher logo in the mirror with red lipstick; after which he quotes Nietzsche out loud for no fucking reason).  Still boring, but the intro is nice.

 

YOU KNOW WHAT I JUST NOTICED ABOUT THE FLASHBULB RIGHT NOW?!?!?!

 

I always thought his music was emotionally flat and the faux-complexity generally meaningless (Acidwolf stuff is actually all right, though), but check this out: The reason why this dude's music feels so flat, is because he has very little *GROOVE*.  Aphex Twin is fucking crazy with groove.  Squarepusher got groove for days.  All the great electronic musicians have mad groove.  Some Acidwolf stuff has groove, which is why it's so different (like Valley Shuffle is a straight up Squarepusher vibe-clone track, but it's at least got something you can sit in for a bit).

 

What a great revelation, but I also feel kind of tired that it was about The Flashbulb.

 

If I could get funding to study The Flashbulb phenomenon, I would get all the hardcore Benn Jordan fans and see how well they can dance, because my hypothesis is that there's a strong correlation between how little groove one can feel and how much one loves Benn Jordan music.  Of course, not all people who can feel groove can dance, but they can at least move their head or hands, as they ride the waves of the music.  Benn Jordan's The Flashbulb music generally has no groove, so when his fans start to dance to it for the scientific study, this is already proof that they have severe no-groove-disorder.  And if funding permits, they can all receive free therapy, which will be sending them back in time to relive their childhood-- but raised on at least 5 hours a day of hip hop, house, jungle, and jazz.

Yeah just listening to the title track and I can hear that he has a lot of skill in production technique in regards to headspace and mixing, but he lacks actual talent needed to do anything with it. His tracks are abnormally unimaginative and resorts on familiarity to make up for it. It's more blatantly expressed in how he imitates anything Aphex Twin leaves in his wake.

  On 8/8/2017 at 4:31 PM, MIXL2 said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

  On 8/8/2017 at 3:41 PM, six said:

 

  On 8/8/2017 at 6:09 AM, sweepstakes said:

He was disgusting with salsa

Thank you for this, I actually looked up the old classic lion post. From way back in '09, fuck I'm getting old.

 

"once i was walking out of taco shop with a bag of good mexican food (carnitas burrito, tres tacos de tripas, 5 rolled tacos w/ guacamole, large diet coke) and a young gangster mexican bumped into me, knocking my glasses to the dirty concrete. my glasses shattered and i became furious. "you broke my glasses... now i break your arm" i threw a haymaker at him and he bowled over into the salsa bar, he was disgusting with salsa. regardless i jumped onto him and performed an excellent armbar while in the salsa, tomato all over me and the Puto. i quickly snapped his arm like a twig and the police came. they ran his information and he had a warrant out for his arrest for crimes. i was congratulated for catching the criminal and the taco shop paid for my food, the officer shook my hand as well.

 

who says violence solves nothing..? they are a fool.

 

The End"

 

 

is endlessly amusing to me that this is being posted in a thread about the flashbulb

 

  On 8/8/2017 at 8:06 AM, peace 7 said:

The reason why this dude's music feels so flat, is because he has very little *GROOVE*.  

...

my hypothesis is that there's a strong correlation between how little groove one can feel and how much one loves Benn Jordan music.

  On 8/8/2017 at 12:40 PM, Amen Warrior said:

Narcissistic Personality Disorder Dance Music

  On 8/9/2017 at 4:25 AM, Entorwellian said:

abnormally unimaginative

THE SLUBBLAH

Can't get enough of the blog. The absolutely not made up story where Obama remembers flahblub's name at a train station is great, and definitely happened.

Flol i need to read this. Link pls

I heard a train coming, and, for some reason, being completely socially inept, barked “YO BARACK!”, and walked over to shake his hand and, well, I hadn’t figured out what I was going to say. Probably something equally as stupid. When I got to him, he put down his briefcase, put out his hand, looked at me with a pause, smiled, and said:

“Benn, right?”

Yo Flahblub!

lolol

  On 8/7/2017 at 11:45 PM, Brian Dance said:

The musical equivalent of drinking a luke warm glass of day old squash, 27 parts water to 1 part squash.

 Sounds like an homeopathic remedy. Maybe he's missed a trick.

I feel pretty indifferent about the whole Flashbulb situation despite him somehow being on my radar for 15 years. But this thread is like a li'l lol-leaf adrift in the breeze.

P.S. I cannot believe he actually wrote that stuff about meeting Obama, oh my lol-y lol.

what, where? link? I'm not clicking on his blog.

  On 8/10/2017 at 6:23 AM, usagi said:

what, where? link? I'm not clicking on his blog.

  On 8/10/2017 at 3:07 AM, Extralife said:

I heard a train coming, and, for some reason, being completely socially inept, barked “YO BARACK!”, and walked over to shake his hand and, well, I hadn’t figured out what I was going to say. Probably something equally as stupid. When I got to him, he put down his briefcase, put out his hand, looked at me with a pause, smiled, and said:

“Benn, right?”

That's legit a quote from the blog... I thought Extralife was just getting creative with font colors up there but no ... straight from the blog. 

http://i.imgur.com/0aRdu3A.png

He was pretty good live when I saw him during the Plaid tour.

I don't know half the tracks he played though, would have liked to figure out his set list since some of them were quite good.

The story's supposed to have happened in 2003 though. Doubt that Obama needed security detail back then.

this bit gave me quite a chuckle:

  Quote

 While this locked in some distant-future plans of having an A.I. alias that automatically writes music, I’m more immediately fascinated with neural synthesis, which not surprisingly Google’s Deepmind team beat me to by about 4 weeks with nSynth, which is strikingly close in concept.

those pesky teams of phds and their research

  On 8/10/2017 at 12:33 PM, Brian Dance said:

It's a true story guys.

If you're wondering where Barry O's security team were, they'd all fallen asleep or killed themselves due to hearing Gashdullb's music blasting from his approaching car.

 

Baz Obam is immune because he's an alien/robot/ancient shape shifting lizard creature (and thus doesn't have a soul either).

 People with souls appear to be in short supply these days. Maybe the souls are there but they are sleeping and we just need the correct alarm tone to wake them up. Maybe one day one of us will write this clarion call. (it won't be flahbulb).

to me, his music sounds like a bad combination of the worse imaginable ochre's and the best known hans zimmer's music.  //ost of forever alone vomiting moments 

Schmaltzy is the word we're looking for.

The Flashbulb is living evidence that if you just incessantly spit game, self-promote and never, ever back down, you can achieve some level of perceived celebrity, regardless of how little talent you actually have. And I think BJ pisses some people off because they know they've got more talent, but they lack the ego/time/resources necessary to shamelessly self-promote like BJ does, so they end up resenting him for his success.

I actually can't think of an artist where the ratio of "celebrity" to "talent" is more out of whack than with the flashbulb. Early Com Truise, maybe.

I've never seen a more punchable face, his silly perma-grin makes me uncomfortable. He just thinks he's the coolest thing on the planet. He has two tattoos of his own logo on his arms. His music is almost offensively bad for how grossly self-aggrandizing and lacking in humility he is. He's not that great of a drum programmer. He's not that great of a keyboardist. He tries way too hard.

I'd like to hear him make a tune with just ONE SINGLE TRACK that's actually quality. instead of arranging these fantastic symphonies of sub-par quality. his piano albums are impossible to listen to due to the quantization, which rather than adding to the tracks, just makes them sound lazy.

On his blog and website he carries himself like he's much more famous, important, and talented than he actually is.

but honestly it's mostly just the perma-grin.

Banger first post, welcome to WATMM!

Hahah yeah ol flashbulb have like a synthesizer vlogg on YouTube talking about his fancy equipment and how super star he is 

Can't focusing on what he is saying because his weird eyebrow is starring at me 

flahblob! ma fav synthfluencer! seems like a lovely person 

  On 5/28/2023 at 7:13 AM, drempels said:

The Flashbulb is living evidence that if you just incessantly spit game, self-promote and never, ever back down, you can achieve some level of perceived celebrity, regardless of how little talent you actually have. And I think BJ pisses some people off because they know they've got more talent, but they lack the ego/time/resources necessary to shamelessly self-promote like BJ does, so they end up resenting him for his success.

I actually can't think of an artist where the ratio of "celebrity" to "talent" is more out of whack than with the flashbulb. Early Com Truise, maybe.

I've never seen a more punchable face, his silly perma-grin makes me uncomfortable. He just thinks he's the coolest thing on the planet. He has two tattoos of his own logo on his arms. His music is almost offensively bad for how grossly self-aggrandizing and lacking in humility he is. He's not that great of a drum programmer. He's not that great of a keyboardist. He tries way too hard.

I'd like to hear him make a tune with just ONE SINGLE TRACK that's actually quality. instead of arranging these fantastic symphonies of sub-par quality. his piano albums are impossible to listen to due to the quantization, which rather than adding to the tracks, just makes them sound lazy.

On his blog and website he carries himself like he's much more famous, important, and talented than he actually is.

but honestly it's mostly just the perma-grin.

 

Expand  

Hi Benn.

Actually saw him at a show and he was super pleasant. Came into the audience afterwards, since he was opening, and mingled with people.

  On 5/31/2023 at 5:26 PM, Summon Dot E X E said:

lmao it was also my guess

Lol.

I feel like I gently have a general liking of the music of individuals adjacent to this forum's typical genre stylings that get memed on with Vsnares and Flashbulb. I got really tired of viscerally hating things after I hit like 25, though sometimes I still slip back into angyboi feelings.

I actually like the Piety of Ashes album, along with Red Extensions of Me, Flexing Habitual, and Girls.Suck.But.YOU.Don't.

  On 5/31/2023 at 6:37 AM, xyrofen said:

Hi Benn.

 

Actually saw him at a show and he was super pleasant. Came into the audience afterwards, since he was opening, and mingled with people.

I'm actually not Benn.

After I posted that, I kind of felt bad about being so negative about him. He does have my respect for being so productive with his YouTube channel and just never backing down.

He does seem pleasant.