[Cryptowen]

^I agree with you there. I can never get into "magic moon music". It's boring. SAWII, despite many of the songs being the same handful of notes for several minutes on one instrument, is a lot more interesting to me because of it's imperfections (like the clipping on the second track).

[beerwolf]

SAW 2 took me years to appreciate and even now I hear things/patterns I didn't before. Drukqs also followed a similar path as well.

[Masonic Boom]

One of these years I will give Drukqs another try.

[sneaksta303]

oh my

controversy

[Masonic Boom]

That wasn't intended as an insult. I'm just kind of scared of it. I know that I'm going to have to be in a certain headspace to listen to it. Some albums are a time and a place. And some albums require being removed from a time and place to acquire meaning of their own.

[sneaksta303]

i suggest taking drukqs

[Hoodie]

Gocab, on 06 February 2010 - 11:53 AM, said:

bigs, on 06 February 2010 - 08:43 PM, said:

edit: also, i must say i LOVE saw 85-92 but saw ii is rubbish.

:wtf:

i am in this boat as well. i like the wisp remixes of it though.

[Hoodie]

Masonic Boom, on 08 February 2010 - 06:27 AM, said:

That wasn't intended as an insult. I'm just kind of scared of it. I know that I'm going to have to be in a certain headspace to listen to it. Some albums are a time and a place. And some albums require being removed from a time and place to acquire meaning of their own.

i don't get what you're saying. it seems like you're raising the album onto a pedestal. just listen to it, because otherwise you will be disappointed if you save it for a specific mindset and it doesn't end up delivering what you expected.

[Masonic Boom]

Hoodie, on 08 February 2010 - 02:56 PM, said:

Masonic Boom, on 08 February 2010 - 06:27 AM, said:

That wasn't intended as an insult. I'm just kind of scared of it. I know that I'm going to have to be in a certain headspace to listen to it. Some albums are a time and a place. And some albums require being removed from a time and place to acquire meaning of their own.

i don't get what you're saying. it seems like you're raising the album onto a pedestal. just listen to it, because otherwise you will be disappointed if you save it for a specific mindset and it doesn't end up delivering what you expected.

No, it's kind of the opposite. I didn't "get" it when it was first released because it had been so raised onto a pedestal that it was of course a disappointment when it finally came out - in fact, ANYTHING would have been a disappointment when delivered with that much hype, even the second coming itself.

I have to get myself into a mindset of where I'm expecting nothing from it before I can listen to it. Because if I go into it thinking "ah, this is going to be shit..." then of course I'll be overly pleasantly surprised. I just want to take it on its own terms. Which means it has to be divorced from *any* expectations, good or bad.

I guess also, I'm a very different person now than I was when I first heard it. And my musical tastes and expectations have changed so much.

re: SAW II I guess I can understand how someone could not really feel it. But it's something that so perfectly hits a specific sweet spot of mine that I want to force it on people and go "no, give it another try. Sit down, have a cup of chamomille tea, it'll happen for you, no really it will..."

[Calx Sherbet]

Hoodie, on 08 February 2010 - 08:56 AM, said:

Masonic Boom, on 08 February 2010 - 06:27 AM, said:

That wasn't intended as an insult. I'm just kind of scared of it. I know that I'm going to have to be in a certain headspace to listen to it. Some albums are a time and a place. And some albums require being removed from a time and place to acquire meaning of their own.

i don't get what you're saying. it seems like you're raising the album onto a pedestal. just listen to it, because otherwise you will be disappointed if you save it for a specific mindset and it doesn't end up delivering what you expected.

both drukqs and SAWII only took me one try to love. for some reason ziggomatic took me awhile to like

[bigs]

hah well i was in a bothered state last post but i'm glad i at least started some debate! thinking back on it (and giving it another listen) i quite like it, but it's something i'm rarely in the mood for. again, headphones have helped me out here. i agree with the 4am sentiments, it's that kind of album. 95% of the time i decide to flick on some music, i want something to engage me and take me places (and, usually, to take me there on the backs of a thousand beats). consider this me removing my foot from my mouth... saw ii's pretty good.

edit: also i've always been confused that saw 85-92 was labeled "ambient"... there's a lot of beat going on there!

This post has been edited by bigs: 08 February 2010 - 07:05 PM

[Mesh Gear Fox]

bigs, on 09 February 2010 - 01:04 PM, said:

edit: also i've always been confused that saw 85-92 was labeled "ambient"... there's a lot of beat going on there!

I always thought it was a pisstake of a title.

[bubbhasdance]

Calx Sherbet, on 08 February 2010 - 11:55 AM, said:

for some reason ziggomatic took me awhile to like

even now I don't super enjoy it, I love the rest of drukqs though

[yek]

Mesh Gear Fox, on 08 February 2010 - 07:30 PM, said:

bigs, on 09 February 2010 - 01:04 PM, said:

edit: also i've always been confused that saw 85-92 was labeled "ambient"... there's a lot of beat going on there!

I always thought it was a pisstake of a title.

well it's "ambient techno"...

[ieafs]

Masonic Boom, on 08 February 2010 - 11:07 PM, said:

ieafs, on 08 February 2010 - 02:02 AM, said:

not to think of it like a lot of ambient type music - huge sweeping soundscapes of electric cathedrals and an angel in rainbow rainment and all that. it's more like a tiny little bit of magic lying latent in everyday life. a weird smell in the shed behind your house that you can't quite place, a strange old abandoned factory you pass by every day - eraserhead lady-in-the-radiator type stuff. that there's this little teeming world inside otherwise kind of mundane things. i read this simon reynolds quote a while back in which he said it should be subtitled "the secret life of minerals" which is sort of the same idea.

Argh, see I don't think of that "sonic cathedrals" stuff as ambient AT ALL. That's more like shit New Age gone horribly wrong. (Get a lot of that crap in the kind of ethereal end of shoegaze/nu-gaze.)

OK, I don't know jack shit about Ambient as a genre, then, really. But the whole point of this kind of thing is NOT that it's just meandering prettiness without a point. It has to have some kind of edge of evil or darkness or something to balance out the fluff and make it actually beautiful as opposed to just pretty. I have a friend who works in fashiony type stuff and she was telling me how they make perfume - that it's not just about finding beautiful scents, but also balancing it with something - I think she said a word that sounded like "perdu" - balancing it with something earthy and almost kinda gross and animal in order to make it actually smell good.

Sorry, off the point again.

But yeah. SAW II is almost like little dioramas, like those Victorian mechanical boxes and there's a representation of some tiny element of life - except instead of ballrooms and opium dens, it's like the space behind the radiator or the back of a loom as it's spinning. Or erm, sorry, I'm not really awake here. Not making sense.

well i was taking the piss there slightly. i don't necessarily mean stuff being super pretty or anything (that's from a tongue-in-cheek quote i can't remember where i heard "studio scientists conjuring six-string cathedrals").

but just generally a lot of ambience has a kind of epic-ness to it. or even just a kind of "important"-ness to it (for lack of a better word).

so me even things like 1/3 or 2/8 and the traditionally pretty bittersweet ones are more... watching the sunrise from your backyard rather than from the grand canyon. the effect is the same almost - it's just on a smaller scale.