springymajig

I found parts of it genuinely unlistenable, particularly Ringa Ringa. It might be my least favorite Orbital album yet, at least tied with Blue Album. There are parts of it that thought were tolerable but those parts were just boring, to me anyway. So my emotions ranged from embarrassed to bored. I wouldn't have even given it more than 30 seconds if it wasn't by Orbital. It still seems unreal how sharply they turned from Middle of Nowhere (dense, epic, beautifully produced big beat) to The Altogether (crazy frog) and have settled on the latter for decades.

I would just like to retract my earlier statement about liking dirty rat. After a second listen, I realised that actually, I kind of hate it. I'm also really not on board for the other two singles, Ringa Ringa is embarrassing, the other one is boring. I know they'll never be anything like the pre-Altogether days, and I don't think they should try to be... they're doing what they want and that's admirable. Admittedly, most of Wonky grew on me over time but the trajectory they've been heading in since has left me disappointed.

I basically had the same experience with Draft. I'm not even sure I find confield difficult anymore as much as it is... Quirky. It's so squishy and farty and organic. It's like a really strong blue cheese. Delicious, but not something I would want every day.

I'm not sure why compare these two albums... I think there are a lot of pairs in their discography but I would think chiastic pairs with tri rep and confield pairs with ep7... Anyway... I love both these albums, but I hardly ever listen to confield... To me it's like something I really have to be in the mood for but when I am I love it. So I picked chiastic just cos it's easier to listen to, and it really is one of my favorites anyway.

Oh no that's alright thanks, I just wanted to add that one ? Thanks for putting it together!

Who's in charge of the spreadsheet? 01:27:48 is Orbital - Omen (The Chariot) EDIT: N/m, I left a comment on it

Very sad... Those last two albums were particularly interesting and I was looking forward to hearing that sound progress.

I don't often seek out playlists on Spotify but the other day I came across this "90s ambient techno" one that's pretty good: Anyway that Spooky track near the top was the first thing that caught my attention. I'll make a point to check out more.

Ummm... well... I actually really liked this... ?

I would pay good money for a John Greenwood artbook. I don't believe one exists sadly...

I am FAR from an expert on mixing and mastering... in fact it's one of the things I struggle with the most... But I can comment from my experience anyway... and some of this might be SUPER obvious that you're already doing (in which case... it's probably just a matter of practice... I tell myself that anyway ? ? The most obvious one is putting some EQ on the whole thing, boosting the sub bass, cutting some of those muddy frequencies etc. Multiband compression has been a real game changer for me. In FL Studio there's a thing called Maximus, it's main function is that you can compress the Low, Mid and High frequencies separately instead of everything being compressed as one big block (but it has that built in too if you need it). I'm pretty sure all DAWs and audio software will have something like that, so try looking up multiband compression for Renoise or whatever you do your final mix/master in (I use Adobe Audition a little bit too and I know if has multiband compression but I haven't really tried it much). Do A-B testing! Listen to someone who you want your mix to sound like. So if you want it to sound like Aphex, blast a bit of Aphex every 5-10 minutes while you're mixing, to re-orient your ears/brain. Even just like... 30 seconds will be enough, you will IMMEDIATELY hear how different your mix is if it's not right. https://www.bandlab.com/ has this free mastering tool thing. You get 4 options for what "flavour" of mastering you want and they're never perfect but hey... it's free... I've learnt so much in the last few years from Youtubers, only one of them I watch uses FL Studio, a lot of the concepts can be transferred to different platforms... it helps to actually see and hear what others are doing rather than just reading about it. Oh yeah and also, Overmorrow was probably my favourite so far, so pretty!

...ok I gotta confess... I did not listen to this in headphones before and yeah... I agree with rek... the use of panning is EXTREME... Thing, is, I know that sort of thing can be really cheesy but I normally really like it, I'm a big fan of old Orbital albums and they moved sounds hard left to right all the time on Snivilisation and In Sides... I dunno if you dig that sorta stuff but it might be a good reference point on how to do it well (IMO). I have my own personal rules on the matter: The song should basically work in mono just about as well as in stereo. So do all that crazy panning at the end when you've basically finished the song. It should be there to help add some atmosphere more than be a main feature. I feel like the bass drum, snare & bass synth should never just sit hard left or right. Unless it's just to highlight a short moment for a second or two, like a little "cut-away" effect. You can often get away with nudging things just a touch left or right, like 10-15% just to get that wider sound stage. Try to balance things out: if the hi-hats are 15% left, put one of the higher melodic sounds 15% right. Like I say... these are just personal rules for me... but might be helpful as suggestions.

These are all good. There's a sort of hazy, "drunk" kind of mood to these which is not usually my preference. But I can say objectively that these are well made. I like that you mix up the ideas quite often, it makes them fun and engaging tunes. Sound design and mix and stuff is generally pretty good but I think maybe the bass drums and snares (or in the case of Fluxus Deluxus, the clap) could be brought up a bit more in the mix. I am interested in Renoise for cutting up breaks. I started learning the demo of the VST "mini" version, so I can still use FL Studio as my main DAW but use Renoise for breaks... it basically works EXACTLY the way I want... and then there's all the stuff about adding effects on individual notes in a sequence... that seems really cool to me.

This is beautiful! Really strong sense of melody and the thing I like the most about it is the overall flow and progression of the piece as a whole. It feels like it tells a story, which is something I highly value in music. It just helps to make it feel really polished. The sound design is really great too, very clean and shimmery with just a hint of organic, warm fuzziness to keep things interesting. Nothing really obvious comes to mind in terms of what to improve or work on... is there any part of your music that you're worried about? Listening to "Now Faster" on soundcloud too, I'm really impressed!

Clearly some algorithm somewhere worked on me cos I started playing Homogenic and Vespertine a lot in the last coupla weeks and then suddenly this came up... That video is rad. The song... Sounds like 3 completely unrelated tracks playing on top of each other. I think it would require multiple listens for it to click. And I have like... 3 or 4 albums to catch up to before this comes out as well...

Here's new one from me, basically a "pop" song with vocodered vocals... an ode to old videogame instruction manuals:

LP5 was my first Autechre album so naturally holds a very special place in my heart. I totally agree that the album as a whole works so damn well, the track listing has such great tension and release... Feels like a really dark story with glimmers of hope. Rae is the first warm hopeful moment, and then it turns in that second half... It's so tragic! Still one of my favorite albums of all time. I think it's their album that has the strongest sense if narrative.

I still have stems from an MC Spatula track that a bunch of us remixed. And one of my fondest internet memories was of Fred McGriff's head coming off and then slowly growing back over time.

Yeah I think 2001 or 2002 for me too... Something like that but not 100% sure...

The vibe I'm getting from the new stuff is kinda like.... the b-sides of Middle of Nowhere... stuff like Doctor Lookout, Beached, An Fhomhair. That stuff was goofy but not quite as much as The Altogether, which I still think was just a bit too much. Spicy is RIDICULOUS sure, but what about the news clips on Smiley? That nasally "This is acid man!"... not to mention the cheesy breakbeats and the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer video... I'm not entirely sure why you lot () think Smiley is the best thing they've done in years and then find Spicy such a surprise... I feel like they're kinda similar in terms of cheesy goofiness. Are they BAD? I dunno... I find it hard to pinpoint what objectively bad music really means... I kinda liked the new album tracks in that mix... all this stuff might grow on me...

As far as I understood, Sean did say that elyc6 0nset was his (and that is was done in one day!). Does that qualify as a "beast"? I feel like it should...

Close Encounters is one of my favourites from the album. There was a point where I got sick of it but then some ambient remix of it rekindled my love of it, and the whole album for that matter. Also sometimes cheesiness can can flip inside out and become fresh again right? To my (admittedly very limited knowledge) there's not a lot of stuff like Close Encounters or Majestic being made these days so if someone put that out now, it would probably be seen as quite refreshing in a sort of retro throwback sort of way. I think I love both of these albums about the same but for different reasons... the mood of them is just polar opposites (obviously intentionally).

Listening to the new one now and at least this one is significantly different to the original, I can barely tell the difference between the "new" Dark Train and the original. Mind you I still wouldn't buy this but it's neat!

Looking forward to the Floex remix! And it's fun hearing Orbitals own reimaginings of their old tracks (even though they're pretty cheesy).

Oh yeah I had a listen to Lunar on Spotify and it was quite lovely ?