playbynumbers
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Posts posted by playbynumbers
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checking back on this thread, years later haha . . . just posted a bunch of my photos on valaea.tumblr.com!
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here for my annual post lol . . . hoping to find some great/obscure electronic stuff through this thread.
a rough year imo, i'm only really in love with pye corner audio . . . ambivalent about #2 and below.
1. pye corner audio - let's emerge
2. weyes blood - hearts aglow
3. burial - streetlands
4. toro y moi - mahal
5. big thief - dragon new warm mountain
6. spiritualized - everything was beautiful
7. the smile - a light
8. daniel avery - ultra truth
9. rafael anton irisarri - sacred hatred
10. sarah davachi - two sisters
11. daniel rossen - you belong there
12. huerco s. - plonk
13. raum - daughter
14. ramin djawadi - westworld s4 ost
15. aldous harding - warm chris
16. beach house - once twice melody
17. alvvays - blue rev
18. wet leg - s/t
19. father john misty - chloe
20. weeknd - dawn fm
21. the 1975 - bfiafl
22. plaid - feorm falorx
23. james devane - beauty is useless
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Honestly tempted, I have some extra cash lying around and could always resell if needed lol. Can't recall seeing this for sale in the past year or two
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1. pausal, melatonia
2. basinski, lamentations
3. autechre, SIGN/PLUS
4. alessandro cortini, memorie i / ii
5. desert squid - shanghai / hong kong
6. cults, host
7. daniel avery, love + light
8. the 1975, noacf
9. rafael irisarri, peripeteia
10. eric skodvin, anbessa
11. dumont, people on sunday
12. multicast dynamics, ancient circuits
13. ricardo villalobos, mandela move
14. richard devine, systik
15. salem, fires in heaven
16. fleet foxes, shore
17. no joy, motherhood
18. shinichi atobe, yes
19. ana roxanne, because of a flower
20. alva noto, xerrox vol. 4
21. juliana barwick, healing is a miracle
22. grimes, miss anthropocene
23. soft pink truth, swgosstgmi
24. nin, ghosts v
25. real estate, the main thing
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On 10/28/2020 at 9:51 AM, BaggerMcGuirk said:
$22.50 for the record, and $13.71 for shipping...
Has anyone here found a more cost effective way of grabbing this, or is this just part of the price we pay for electing Trump?
I buy most of my new vinyl on Amazon at this point -- PLUS is $24 with free shipping on Amazon
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On 10/17/2020 at 10:40 PM, yekker said:
Hey, it's playbynumbers
I stop by about once per year lol
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2 hours ago, fumi said:
Regardless of whether you like PLUS or not, it does make a very compelling contrast to SIGN. Maybe reordering the tracks from both albums into a playlist would be a pretty cool experience.
Off topic: I still can't understand how AE can put out two albums in the space of a month, BOC can't put out a single fucking track in seven years. It's gonna be the same as TH - they set themselves up to fail by making the wait too long and consequently giving fans unrealistic expectations.
I'm off to make my PLUSIGN playlist.
pleasantly surprised by SIGN and actually even more annoyed by the lack of BoC. I've already tried to accept, over the past 15 years, that we'll never hear the pre-Twoism stuff but seriously why are they not releasing any new music by this point? I know that artists don't have an 'obligation' to their fans but when you look at Aphex's soundcloud or Ae's release schedule, I dunno . . . they could at least communicate with the fans, or something? I wouldn't even mind if they just explained the gap
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Literally cannot choose, I think a tie between '5/9/78', 'Left Side Drive', 'Dayvan Cowboy'
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Ae are incapable of releasing a bad album but I dunno man . . . getting some Oversteps vibes with this one, not loving it
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given that I hadn't heard of this thing and had zero expectations, I'm pretty happy with it (haven't heard of a lot of these bands). also there is DEFINITELY at least 10-15min of interstitial BoC music in here.
with all that said I have to admit that I'm sort of annoyed that BoC has released one album in the past 13 years, and that it was their worst album. a proper new release would have been nice.
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Secondly, my take on Sesh1 is the following. Fuckin' hell they've done it again! It's true that their music is not as groundbreaking as before & it seems that we've heard all these sounds before (elseq, AE_LIVE), but the level of sound manipulation is top notch. Nothing really comes close. These little manipulations of melody on North Spiral, when each bar differs is great. What I miss in general are heavy hitting moments (like Irlite or gorgeous oversteppish melodies). Of course, there are hooks here and there, but overall, I think that the NTS is even more autistic/internal than their older listens stuff. Music seems supercelebral. It requires attention and focus on the process and lacks the immediate short bursts bliss (Altibzz anyone?). Alco mentiioned jazz as a reference and I agree. This is just not the Kind of Blue jazz, but more like On the Corner thingy! I'm sure it will grow on us. Just give it a bit more time and let it sink in.
jazz is a perfect analogy in quite a few ways ... it's probably telling that I can't stand jazz (despite many listens over the decades), so maybe that's the problem
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With all the chat back and forth about Max/MSP and that lads' system I'm left wondering do we actually know what they're using just now?
if they've changed systems, then I'm very surprised by how similar the sound/palette is to AE_live, elseq, and (to an extent) Exai.
anyway I'm definitely still hyped about the new music tomorrow
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So to say something sounds like Max/MSP is analogous to saying a game plays like it was written in C++, or that a film script appears like it was written in Final Draft. Max can create and manipulate sounds (and data), but it doesn’t have a sound.That it is max/msp does not make it inherently good/interesting/noteworthy. That, I agree with, but I'm not sure who's arguing against that here.
I think what you're saying is that they're just noodling around on max/msp instead of writing music proper. But then, I'm not really sure what max/msp has to do with that. If they were noodling around on elektron gear or max/msp or a banjo doesn't really make a difference.
Anyone who says that Autechre's recent output is "just how Max/MSP sounds" and is just a result of Max/MSP is fooling themselves - go try to make something in it that sounds anything even remotely like AE, I dare you. Have fun starting with just a square wave oscillator. It's going to take you a while to not even get close, because the primary appeal of their recent output is the subtlety of control they have
to be clear, not Max/MSP as such, I mean the giant network of coding that they've built WITHIN the program which seems to have locked them into a relatively limited palette of ideas/sounds, as they're using ONLY this custom programming/coding/setup within Max/MSP. something like 'draft 7.30' had so much more texture/variety/etc than all their work since 2012 imo.
so their recent elseq + ae_live + nts.live style doesn't break new ground? Awesome, I'm extremely happy to hear this because that must mean there is lots of other music just like this
Where is it, I'd love to buy it all
new ground for Ae. I don't mean they need a completely new sound for every album but there was something novel/fresh about all their albums up until Exai
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>what I'm saying is that writing circles onto lined paper is not "painstakingly crafted music". it's certainly painstakingly crafted as, like, drawing or writing? but not as music, or at least it's certainly not coming across that way
>playing with codes
>codes
let's say that I'm a novelist, and that I invented an absurdly complicated word processing program, and then used that program to write a few long, rambling first-draft novels that didn't break any new ground ... would it matter how complicated my word processing program was? I don't care if Rob and Sean are literally creating a new programming language from scratch, the music is all that matters
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It isn't even the length of tracks/releases or style that's the problem, it's an alarming lack of hunger and exploration in their music, something that has been prominent regardless of the style or mood on a given release (started waning around Exai) Maybe it's just they're getting on a bit, what are they almost 50 now? They've found software/hardware that they like working with and they're comfortable doing this kind of music and releasing it at their leisure. It's a bit of a shame, but then again it had to taper off at some point right?
to the responders above, I feel you, but ... ^^ this. they stopped exploring in 2012-13 ... maybe NTS will end up being amazing in the end, but I dunno
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I think it still is painstakingly crafted, maybe even more than before. Everything they do happens within parameters they set, every detail is exactly how they programmed it. Sean says:
what I'm saying is that playing with coding in MaxMSP is not "painstakingly crafted music". it's certainly painstakingly crafted as, like, computer software? but not as music, or at least it's certainly not coming across that way
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I'd presume this is because their influences (unconcious or otherwise) for this material are not 99% of electronic music producers. Just a random sampling of names from the solid steel mix for example, Bernard Parmegiani, Peter Rehberg, Mark Fell, Asmus Tietchens. Its not contemporary pop music..
Not sure where you are get the impression its not edited. Length and repetition can be used to effect, they don't equate laziness.
If you're skipping to a random 30 second selection of any of their music, including Confield, you might get the impression that "its all garbage noise", "i miss when they wrote real music" etc
right, and all of those artists generally release 8-hour blocks of mp3s rather than albums? I own quite a bit of Mark Fell's work, those are definitely albums
if I listen to 30 seconds of any album prior to 2013 I can tell precisely which record it's from, because each record was distinctive and new, back then, and also had way more depth
Ae has released very long tracks before (Ts1a, Sublimit, Garbagemx), the length has nothing to do with it; if they're doing painstaking editing and shaping, I'm certainly not able to perceive it. the new stuff is just sort of hollow, as many people have been saying in this thread
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see they would have to ‘go back’ tho
dunno, a different POV could be that these kind of hyper-anally edited micro-glitched dsp wankfest IDM albums.. well they were done.. they’re fun and mind blowing to discover etc.. SP’s Go Plastic, Aphex Twin stuff.. but they also have this kind of early 2000s bedroom producer smell, and it’s a bit of a funny smell. Maybe a bit of cum stain in it.
the bois have done super meticulously precision edited musics in the past, it’s basically what you would expect from them, if your expectations are based on what they did in the 2000s.. like 10-18 years ago.. it’s a long time lol!
What if sitting down and staring really hard at waveforms in a waveform timeline editor really isn’t a lot of fun anymore to the bois..?
the newer ae things are loose and more open, the quality is absolutely there but it’s different from the past. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
somehow literally 99% of other electronic musicians manage to release polished <80min collections of music ... ???
Why do you think they stopped editing themselves? Doesn't "elseq" probably mean "edited live sequences"? I'm sure that they ARE able to go back and edit what they "jammed" live. Tho it's not really a jam as there was a long programming process beforehand.
slightly cleaning up live jams does not = painstakingly crafted music, which is what we had from 1993 to ~2012.
when i play a random 30-second selection of anything from exai / elseq / ae_live / nts, there's just not enough difference, the sonic 'playground' is way too similar ... i.e., as i said, they're now enslaved to whatever weird semi-AI they've written in MaxMSP, such that they literally stopped buying hardware and don't make music outside of MaxMSP now.
i mean, in general, i was intrigued by elseq and i think it was an interesting idea to edit live jams and release a massive mp3 album; not a bad idea, and the tracks are pretty good. but they're literally just doing "elseq two: electric boogaloo" at this point, like, here's eight more hours of the same effing thing (obviously some differences but meh)
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I don't agree with you because I LOVE Elseq 1, 4 and 5 to death, but I completely see where you're coming from pbn.There isn't the same sense of progression or change in sound between NTS and Elseq like their stuff used to have. My hope is that there is still an album proper at some point, I can't see them continuing to be entertained by this format forever. Long tracks are great, but I like shorter more focused tracks too.
for sure, it's autechre! so of course elseq is still not bad at all, I listen to half the tracks from elseq regularly (esp. 4 and 5). autechre at their worst are still amazing, I just wish they would go back to the 'polished album' format. there's just not enough depth to the jam session stuff imo
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yaaaaawn ffs man, it's just the same MaxMSP noodling as elseq and the live shows ... can I get some actually new Ae please
To me it sounds very different from elseq and ae_live somehow. I know that there are some paths that must be the same, some of the sounds sound familiar, but all in all the overall feel of nts session 1 is different than from elseq and ae_live
Definitely a more evolved version of the elseq stuff. Obviously tied in with AE_LIVE/Exai too, but to me this (so far, of course) is like elseq, but good.
yaaaaawn ffs man, it's just the same MaxMSP noodling as elseq and the live shows ... can I get some actually new Ae please
Agreed, this format of dropping large chunks of impromptu material doesn't seem to bring out the best in them, almost sounds like they're running on autopilot these days. It's alright, but doesn't intrigue the listener in on a journey of discovery in the same way a lot of their other stuff does. Quantity over quality/length over depth? Still, as always it'll be interesting to see what happens next
look, for sure NTS is better than elseq + Ae_live, but it's not that much better.
everything after Exai (and arguably a bit of Exai) is just = Sean and Rob literally stopped using anything but MaxMSP as of 2011 (as confirmed by the Resident Advisor interview from a couple years ago).
in other words, all of their music is now just half-assed jam sessions within the same limited palette of their own programming within MaxMSP, they're coasting along with the same sound at this point, doing $50 mp3 cashgrab bullshit. maybe the problem really began with quaristice 'versions', so much garbage in there ... i guess that was when they decided to stop editing themselves (because people are willing to pay for studio outtakes and jam sessions, i guess?)
I've listened to these guys since 1998 and love their first ~8 albums so it's just a bummer to me honestly
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yaaaaawn ffs man, it's just the same MaxMSP noodling as elseq and the live shows ... can I get some actually new Ae please
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the new Esprit album (200% electronica) is the bomb
in general I have to say, Vaporwave is the only genre that I've actually been excited about in the past few years
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Finally broke down and listened to more than 20 seconds of some vaporware. Feel more ashamed than anything, but there was some cool sounding stuff.An album from HKE called "This" was actually good.
Any of y'all got a top 5 greatest vaporwave albums you could share?
Literally just discovered this genre last week, mainly into death's dynamic shroud so far (this guy is amazing); don't have a top albums list yet but maybe check out Dream Catalogue ... probably this is obvious
2023: Your favourite music
in Music Discussion
Posted · Edited by playbynumbers
well okay, time for my annual single post on WATMM lol. hope everyone is doing well, not sure how many old folks like myself are still here haha.
1. lucinda chua - yian
2. m83 - fantasy
3. olan mill - half sea over
4. alexandre bazin - innervision
5. george clanton - ooh rap i ya
6. nitewind - midi drift [edit: technically a vinyl pressing of a cassette album that came out a couple years ago . . . ]
7. black rain - obliteration bliss
8. travis scott - utopia
9. lana del rey - ocean blvd
10. aphex - blackbox life recorder
11. olivia rodrigo - guts
12. clark - sus dog
13. sigur ros - atta
14. boygenius - the record
15. tyler, the creator - estate sale
16. city of dawn - liminal space