[Mesh Gear Fox]

yek, on 09 February 2010 - 01:50 PM, said:

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"...

was that even coined back then?

[Calx Sherbet]

i think that term is as old as IDM

[PhonicBoyOnDope]

how the fuck did this thread about Hedphelym go into SAW II and Drukqs and such? anyways.. all are epic, and this lack of love for Ziggomatic, don't understand it one bit. One of my favorite tracks ever, the build up to the end is amazing. SAW II and Drukqs are completely different kinds of music from RDJ, and I think you have to be in different mindsets for each, but sometimes as stated before by someone else, when a SAW II track comes on I just get stuck in it, and I can't change it, even when I'm in the mood for something faster with more beats... oh yea, Hedphelym is the shit as well, for how old it is, wow ambient awesomeness

This post has been edited by PhonicBoyOnDope: 08 February 2010 - 10:37 PM

[Masonic Boom]

ieafs, on 09 February 2010 - 04:05 AM, said:

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.

Ha ha, no, that whole "Sonic Cathedrals" or "Cathedrals of sound" thing was totally an early-90s meme. I can't remember exactly which music journo coined it, but it was used as an insult du jour of the whole shoegaze scene (heck, it gave its name to the shoegaze revival club, after all.) I think that the pompousness of the description really does hit that kind of ... yeah, what you say. That the music aspires to a kind of "IMPORTANCE" and epic-ness.

(It conjures up visions of Sigur Ros after they jumped the shark - that whole "two chords away from Lord of the Rings kind of thing. Which is an ironic statement coming from me, a prog fan, but there's a time and a place for EPIC. And this ain't it.)

I like your idea of the sunrise over your backyard rather than the Grand Canyon. That sometimes it's the familiarity, seeing something so familiar imbued with a new and beautiful light. And also the unexpectedness of it. Perhaps that's what you mean by "smaller scale" - perhaps even on a nanoscale, where a mote of dust can reveal canyons and landscapes of its own.

It's funny. I was listening to SAW 85-92 on my commute this morning, and was absolutely struck by Delphium, how it was almost perfectly in synch with the train and its movement. And that metaphor has always struck me with SAW 85-92, that it's travel music. It's the sound of trains and long auto journeys, it's like a tiny, understated, British version of Autobahn or Trans Europe Express - but instead of these sweeping Germanic journeys, they're tiny enclosed carriages across small, enclosed English spaces.

The delay that Mr Twin uses all over both these collections often reminds me of that double-echo of train wheels. ANd how you hear the echo all down the tunnel as the carriages behind you cross over the same bump.

Mesh Gear Fox, on 09 February 2010 - 04:26 AM, said:

yek, on 09 February 2010 - 01:50 PM, said:

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"...

was that even coined back then?

God yes! Ambient techno as a concept and term dates back to the KLF's Chill Out album and the Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld - released in '90 and '91 if my memory isn't totally destroyed by the abuse I put it through in those years.

[ieafs]

Masonic Boom, on 09 February 2010 - 10:29 PM, said:

Ha ha, no, that whole "Sonic Cathedrals" or "Cathedrals of sound" thing was totally an early-90s meme. I can't remember exactly which music journo coined it, but it was used as an insult du jour of the whole shoegaze scene (heck, it gave its name to the shoegaze revival club, after all.) I think that the pompousness of the description really does hit that kind of ... yeah, what you say. That the music aspires to a kind of "IMPORTANCE" and epic-ness.

(It conjures up visions of Sigur Ros after they jumped the shark - that whole "two chords away from Lord of the Rings kind of thing. Which is an ironic statement coming from me, a prog fan, but there's a time and a place for EPIC. And this ain't it.)

I like your idea of the sunrise over your backyard rather than the Grand Canyon. That sometimes it's the familiarity, seeing something so familiar imbued with a new and beautiful light. And also the unexpectedness of it. Perhaps that's what you mean by "smaller scale" - perhaps even on a nanoscale, where a mote of dust can reveal canyons and landscapes of its own.

It's funny. I was listening to SAW 85-92 on my commute this morning, and was absolutely struck by Delphium, how it was almost perfectly in synch with the train and its movement. And that metaphor has always struck me with SAW 85-92, that it's travel music. It's the sound of trains and long auto journeys, it's like a tiny, understated, British version of Autobahn or Trans Europe Express - but instead of these sweeping Germanic journeys, they're tiny enclosed carriages across small, enclosed English spaces.

The delay that Mr Twin uses all over both these collections often reminds me of that double-echo of train wheels. ANd how you hear the echo all down the tunnel as the carriages behind you cross over the same bump.

well yeah that's why i said it was a tongue-in-cheek reference... to a tongue-in-cheek quote.

but yeah, i doubt any of this was in RDJ's mind when he was making the tracks, but i guess that's what great art does - takes a life of its own. i just think maybe that's a context-clue for people who don't get the fuss about it. cause it's a good un.

[Mesh Gear Fox]

PhonicBoyOnDope, on 09 February 2010 - 04:37 PM, said:

how the fuck did this thread about Hedphelym go into SAW II and Drukqs and such? anyways..

like I said, I always go off topic so it seemed appropriate that my threads go off topic too.

[Masonic Boom]

Maybe we're just desperately talking about anything and everything Aphex on this thread to keep WATMM from turning into purely an Autechre forum for the forseeable. ;-) :aphexsign:

[PhonicBoyOnDope]

Mesh Gear Fox, on 09 February 2010 - 06:05 AM, said:

PhonicBoyOnDope, on 09 February 2010 - 04:37 PM, said:

how the fuck did this thread about Hedphelym go into SAW II and Drukqs and such? anyways..

like I said, I always go off topic so it seemed appropriate that my threads go off topic too.

yes, I did read that earlier, but all over the place with this thread, I like it. carry on

oh, and on the ambient techno, I was thinking that term to be from at least mid to early 90's

[Calx Sherbet]

man, slow down the saw 85-92 tracks and some of them could work on saw vol2

[Cryptowen]

Similarly, some of the SAWII tracks feel like SAW85-92 tracks with the beats taken out.

[marf]

yes saw 85-92's bpm is the same speed as windows of a train going by objects. The same clip.

[Smettingham Rutherford IV]

anyone posturing or soapboxing on what ambient "should be" is missing the point entirely.


ambient is music you feel, not listen to (even though you can listen to it). that's all it is. there is ambience in everything, trying to pinpoint what it is and isn't is like trying to classical music within a piano or something.

it creates the mood of a space passively...

ah fuck it i hate you assholes

[Calx Sherbet]

i can feel something with beats, figuratively and literally

[bigs]

Smettingham Rutherford IV, on 09 February 2010 - 11:16 PM, said:

anyone posturing or soapboxing on what ambient "should be" is missing the point entirely.

while i somewhat agree, in order for the term to gain any relevance in classifying music you've gotta draw lines somewhere. perhaps its better used as something that is experienced in degrees rather than an absolute yes/no.

[Masonic Boom]

marf, on 10 February 2010 - 02:01 AM, said:

yes saw 85-92's bpm is the same speed as windows of a train going by objects. The same clip.

Absolutely. It's that double delay effect he uses all over that record, and it's magic.