ricardo villalobos

His stuff on the Perlon comp. is great, and his label put out Further's "Stone Cold", for which I could kiss him.

Actually he's quite kissable in an art-phag sort of way.

Fabric mix sure is good news, hope it has loads of "space children from outer space singing" type of tracks on it.

Somewhat boringly I tend to like Villalobos at his most accessible - but I also love "True To Myself" because it reminds me of Isolee's "I Owe You".

Having said that, his set was fantastic. Which is more than I can say for Sven - the big gurning lunactic."

And the the whole concept is so great: "Ichso", "Duso", "Erso", "Sieso" - that's "I'mlike", "You'relike", "He'slike", "She'slike" in English. That's what weird communication at 6am feelslike.

It's on there though!

the first time I heard some of this newer stuff (Just Chromosul & Duso, I missed "Au Harem...") was a definite "wtf?" moment yes. I hadn't even thought about a CD release. Is he actually planning a new "album" or just going with the flow with all this? I'll try not to think about the 'upcoming' Fabric mix.

it might take a while to get into, but i really think you'll like this one.

love r.villalobos

Best e.p. ever :-D

Slightly more techno than Alchochofa too? That surprised me a little. It's definitely at the same quality level though. I think I'd still give top marks to the former for it's... muscularity?

This, and listening again to Alchochofa the other day and being totally refreshed and surprised (before the thread got revived btw) made me wonder if I haven't overrated the Isolee record too. They seem to come from a similar place, but I think Ricardo might be even more touched with genius/magic/insanity somehow.

i thought i'd lost interest in RV after Au Harem, but this is great.

I'd say the influence has teturned to the dancefloor as...
Early IDM -> Glitch, Micro-House/Techno
Late IDM -> Dubstep??

(maybe)

xp

This e.p. kind of melts the whole damn deal of classifying things anyway. I can even hear Deep House, Trance and Ambient in there at times but it could be the THC hasn't worn off from last nights listen :/

Mid-period IDM (glitch, clicks'n'cuts, late berlin dub) -> ???

I have no idea where wtf "Electro-House" fits here... I think I need to leave this thread because I am very confused.

I think Duso is my favorite track on it! I guess it's "dry" but it's sooo ... twinkly ... not nearly as dark as anything on Au Harem ...

A1  Sieso
B1  Erso
C1  Duso
D1  Ichso

That seems totally backwards now.

possibly this ... ?

Artist - Various
Title - Green & Blue - Mixed By Loco Dice & Ricardo Villalobos
Label - COCOON RECORDINGS
Format - 2 x CD (mixed)
Catalog No. - CORMIX 011
Release Date - 30/01/2006
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't heard the Mix CD but that's surprising I guess. What score did they give to the Loco Dice part of it (as he was on the covermount mix just recently)?

It's tricky for me to reconcile the idea of drugged out sweaty dancing with the mental minimalism I get out of listening to Villalobos on headphones or at home, though. Maybe the pictures of overly-tanned people would help.

e-publications >>> print media as far as 'dance' is concerned for me.

also, they called microhouse "controversial". haha! the NERVE of these germans!

yeah mixmag still sucks and it's surprisingly reactionary and they big up lots of bad music ... blue states-type indie-meets-couchtronica and bad conscious hip-hop and stuff like damon albarn projects and so on.

but i still find it useful ... 1st as a way of finding out about good under-the-radar mainstream house mixes and discs (like, what's kerri chandler up to? ILM / blogosphere is not so good for that).

more importantly, it's good devils-advocate for the lizard-brain. i am afraid if i DON'T read mersh-mags like mixmag and DJ i will wake up one day surrounded by a stack of tresor and cocoon CDs and i will be going "why the fuck am i listening to this clicky-crap instead of brandy or cam'ron?"

IOW mixmag at least has a healthy respect for pop thrillz, something mags like the wire and grooves and even xlr8r and urb sometimes miss out on.

haha, yeah I follow you completely about wanting to keep an eye on the rest of (non-ILM) dance, and that even a bad 'zine can be useful as a barometer of other stuff. Sorry for going off on one there. It's just frustrating as a casual buyer to feel like they're holding so much music back by not giving exposure to "way out" new, changing forms & genres. Dance music conservatism sucks as much as rock mag conservatism I guess.

i only popped the green & blue mixes on briefly but i was sort of shocked at how uneven the villalobos half seemed; i'll have to go back to it and listen again though, because that's a seriously snap judgment.

anyway green and blue. i love the fade in and out, i love the crowd noise, i love the villalobos (sorry, but i skipepd the first few tracks til lthe lil louis tune), but the loco dice side is amazing! sort of cheesy minimal, or the nearest you will get to that. maybe, "ibiza minimal". maybe thats just crap that i thought cos i associate him with ibiza (as per the mixmag cover). but anyway, despite his awful name, im gona keep an eyue out for him. hes playing here in sheff next wek with x press 2 so ill get a better listen. the villalobos side i also love though! the start is a bit weird, but after that it got pretty intense and well, basically techno. it sort of sounds like what i think cologne in 93 sounds like, or stuff that gareth goes on about, or thje sort of thing i think gareth would go on about. like, old techno. theres a really drum heavy bootleg of yellos "bostich" which i subsequently picked up. this cd is great! the liner notes are awful and totallymake me want to live in shiny minimal sexy pool party euro land! just tell me where it is/how to get there!!!! argh

I wonder if that's what Loco Dice's club is like? I heard a Jo Mills set (I think she was resident there at DC10 for a few years until recently) and yeah it was very weird... like really "tasteful" basic house loops but sort-of minimal, and fading in a Kompakt tune every now & then like "Forever Sweet" but not really doing anything with them except fading back out into more really boring house. Odd.

Funny how Mixmag have thrown their weight so thoroughly behind Loco Dice. Even the review that Vahid refers to kinda praises him with faint criticism (if I recall it's something like "Loco Dice's disc doesn't blow us away like his live sets do") - I got the strong sense from that review that some party line was being asserted, although it might just be the one "minimal explosion" enthusiast behind all of the Loco Dice hype.

I suspect it's partly the Ibiza connection, and it's also partly the fact that this guy's rep is blowing up at the exact same time that Mixmag are starting to (belatedly) pay attention to minimal techno - which gives everyone the sense of being on the bandwagon rather than behind it (also note how, when Mixmag talk about Get Physical, they don't seem to be aware of anything pre-"Body Language"). I haven't heard Dice's Green & Blue disc but his Mixmag disc was very good, so it's not exactly undeserving, but it does seem... arbitrary?

I don't mind Mixmag, but maybe that's because all the stuff about clubbing in the UK and Europe is so patently irrelevant to me that I mentally exclude it and just focus on the reviews and interviews etc. When Ministry of Sound started an Australian version of their sub-Mixmag publication Ministry I found it hateful. As per Vahid, I like how comprehensive Mixmag is for house, techno reviews - obv one doesn't really take seriously stuff like the garage reviews (half) page.

I still miss late period Muzik though.

But I think (possibly for this reason) I'm actually going off it a bit now. It's more IDM than it first appears in that it does take some effort to stay totally interested and immersed after many listens. Alcachofa definitely has better 'grooves' overall. Not that I'm in any way dismissing what he achieves on other levels with this ep.

It's almost hilarious to see them all "OMG LUCIANO!"

The Au Harem kinda doesn't, it's very stripped down

I guess it depends on what you consider a hook ... "A Walk in the Park" remix has a catchy vocal bit but it just repeats and repeats and repeats .... (not that that's a bad thing)

I say YES. I have dreams of making something very percussive and exciting and mind expanding and then I realize I can't really do that. Also, today is my birthday.

love this and totally otm per my first listen.

I think that outburst was just trying to put into words how amazingly natural, flowing and organic his music is... like it is literally just pouring out of his subconscious and bypassing the usual channels of technology which leave traces & imprints of the physical craft on the final production.

I wish I really understood anything about production because I'd love to see this guy at work and gauge how spontaneous he can really get. Or how much pre-preparation is involved. Should make it to the next Narod Niki I suppose!

Perhaps as well, whereas before he sort of switched back and forth between "dry & stomping" (e.g. "I Try To Live (Can I Live)", "What You Say Is More Than I Can Say") and that wetter, abstract-tribal sound ("Fools Garden", "Y.G.H"), here the beats are both really kinetic in a house/techno sort of way as well as super-intricate and wet-sounding.

i think the last single he did for perlon really hints at this distinction, but it's more on the intricate and wet-sounding side of things. especially wet..."i was at this one party where sweat was just dripping down the walls" wet. humid and lithe and limber.

i am now kicking myself for not picking up "achso" while i was out music shopping this past weekend. i have been dying for villalobos to do another "808 the bass queen", is this it (albeit a 2006 version)?

have we missed any gems?

"do you have that new ep? / the one dude who has it has like 900 people ahead of me / i demand instant gratification."

hehe =)

philip sherburne in not washing his t-shirt shock revelation.

i listened to achso again last night, and decided that i like "duso" and.... "ichso" but not so much the other ones. i dont really like the one with the wailing guitar all over it.

I love the part on Ichso that Tim referred to as "that awesome sprinkler system sound" .... it's quite the brain sizzler

http://www.musicexpress.com/covers/54840.jpg

:/

"erso" is pretty wicked too, i really like that shivery melody sound.

yeah- it kinda sounds like what would happen if Supersilent made a techno record.

Ricardo in a box.

(thnx Phil Sherburne.)

-- Beta (andybet...), January 25th, 2006.

i think it's the amazingly awesomely amazing cassy britton who sings on "true to myself".

the way I look at it the drums are this big heartbeat / pulse that after a while you don't even really notice (even though they are huge-sounding), it puts you in a sort of trance state where you can listen to the melodic patterns in super-detail

I'm pretty sure I like this on a par with his previous stuff now too.

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=20397

Hot Villalobos in anyone's language.

Achso will probably be one of the best releases of this year in any genre, dance or otherwise. You can almost sense some sort of teleology to it. A departure (though not completely) from his early stuff but basically the logical conclusion of the Au Harem d'Archimede. Achso seems to be the apex, the full realisation of a unique vision. One has to wonder where he goes from here.

PS Villalobos: Techno's first genius of the 21st Century? I thought he was overrated.

time to buy, it i suppose

8A Sieso 11.58
8B Erso 11.19
10A Duso 12.49
10B Icho 13.44

I love the dynamics in this thing though, it's as if every little percussive sound was individually animated.

i can't understand why that is there.

It certainly flows as a proper "album" experience to me also (which was why it seemed so wrong and less impressive when i accidentally listened out of sequence!)

http://www.discogs.com/release/635613

also, is minimal techno the new post-rock?

what does that mean? without explaining the question, it just sounds like "is minimal techno actually a bunch of boring and pretentious shit that's tricked us into liking it?"

with that said, i sort of liked what i heard of the autechre tortoise remixes (although i only have them in memory), and i see the similarities, but i think achso has so much more to reveal. all of the tortoise remixes i heard (by anybody) always seemed flat, like they weren't holding anything back, everything laid out for you to see and not really being a very interesting scene. i always liked the original tortoise versions better.

and i don't mean to bring this up as a sociological attack on the listenership or anything, because after awhile, i started to agree with the author. in fact, to this day, i would say "confield" is probably the last great post-rock album. pretty much every track on confield deploys one or more postrock strategies. i don't have the presence of mind to list these out, i may or may not at some time, but i really really think that EP7 and confield are more or less working in post-rock idiom and exploring post-rock structures and tricks.

now, i am just struck by the similarity in sound between recent villalobos and that era of autechre's work, and also by the similarity in mood and artwork and song title and so on between lots of late postrock and the current minimal techno crop (i guess you could even draw parallels like villalobos camp = chicago, kompakt = sigur ros, etc) and i'm just wondering if we could brainstorm on this a bit.

i definitely agree with the villalobos - chicago comparison, though. they are using very similar strategies, and their aesthetics are also similar in sounding both improvisational and structural. i like them both for that reason.

i have to go to bed because i'm too tired to think anymore.

Whoa -- I just went to Bleep to grab EP7 and they're selling Achso now! In 320kbps mp3s, no less. For anyone who wants a legit non-vinyl copy, this is pretty reasonable..

or is minimal techno?

one does not equal the other.

I have no doubt loads of people really like villalobos, people who like minimal techno and people who post here etc. I just meet so many people who say "yeah villalobos" and I doubt they have ever heard him, I realise this is cynical but it'd be fine if people say this about m.a.n.d.y. or mayer cos essentially it's house/techno but villalobos doesn't really fit the crossover mould......

I have no doubt loads of people really like villalobos

okay whatever

This isn't incompatible with the notion that a lot of people listen to Villalobos privately, but that distinguishes him from a lot of other dance music producers, who are probably "listened to" more by people out dancing or downloading DJ sets than by people buying or downloading specific 12 inch tracks.

As I suggested upthread, I hear a lot of references to villalobos which strike me as using him as a stand-in for the notion of creativity in dance music, far over and above artists like booka shade or dominik eulberg or anyone else who is undoubtedly more ubiiquitous on dancefloors.

I guess in some ways what's exciting for me about alot of electrohouse is that it is blatantly obvious what the point of it is, and while it may not be doing massively different things on a literal level to house and techno down the ages (ie people dancing, in clubs) it continues to bring new sounds from different things into these two genres.

I know it's a fairly hardline stance but as a result of the sort of tension and fight between house and experimentation I think the non house output of these artists is kind of irrelevent, to me anyway, it's like......what is it part of, who does it represent?

i don't think minimal techno is the new post-rock because even if the 4/4 kick is removed from minimal techno, there is still too much that is structurally and historically different between the two. there is some overlap, but it seems too general to really draw an explicit connection. i still hear way more techno and disco and south america in villalobos (or luciano or guido schneider) than in pretty much all of my knowledge post-rock combined (which is admittedly not much). maybe i need to listen to "achso" more.

w/r/t a hardline house stance, i think the form sometimes gets tired and needs to be rehabilitated by experimentation.

villalobos' set on that green and blue comp is a perfect example of his populousness. also "what you say is more than i can say". surprised that people aren't talking up the green and blue mix more.

i am down with restless or relentless experimentation because when it works there is just this frission especially in the context of house or techno where the idiom is so strict but there can be that huge payoff in the way tracks mix together. even if such experimentation doesn't work, the reverbations on the culture or other artists are worth it. so if it's deploying post-rock stategies or sampling depeche mode into the k-hole or choppy rhythmic tricks, the ends are the same. the actual sound of tortoise and autechre and villalobos are very different to my ears so i think it is hard to discuss this topic without comparing scenes or methods or culture. the big post-rock record for me is millions now living... and i get the autechre reference in a villalobos review, but autechre have gone way further out in the way they stutter their beats. they seem to be returning to the dancefloor though. (i have been listening to untilted a lot lately). i guess if i had to say one thing these artist's sounds all have in common is their songs can sound as if it they are evolving in real-time, sometimes from measure to measure. but with autechre there are strong hints of detroit techno and electro and the sheffield legacy and industrial music; tortoise feels more formalized and not reliant on software (at least in a live setting), based in a jazz and improv legacy; and villalobos sounds more painterly and decorative like he's cooking something brilliant with rare ingredients, but there is always (on the singles) a strong hint of rhythm in the house/disco/techno tradition. he doesn't sound as hard as autechre or as mathy as tortoise. this is all reminding me of taka taka and how it brings all of these different techniques together (well not necessarily post-rock)

ep7 is one of my favorite pieces of music ever. it sounds so troubled by its own existence.

But I guess it also gives a sense of how different techno is today than 10 years ago. It's so much more niche now, so someone with a sound as uncompromising as his can be that big. And that niche is clearly catering mostly to people who like uncompromising club music and don't necessarily need melody etc. (also shows how druggy that niche is).

The other day I sat down with fruity loops and tried to replicate even just one bar of "ichso". It's impossible! The amount of detail in these tracks is totally extraordinary, not that this is necessarily a good thing, but I can't help but be reminded of how in the early days of jungle producers would talk about spending weeks just crafting a beat - it seems to have that level of intensity.

postrock / postrave song-building method 101

1. begin with building blocks of some accepted genre
2. introduce elements of new genre as the song progresses until the two mesh
3. song falls apart as elements stop meshing

(if i haven't metamorphosed into a being of pure logos by the time i'm done)

i can just see him disintegrate into a million tiny drum sounds and float out the window.

haha...brilliant.

(seems I'll have to try that exact combination of tracks)

kinda funny to recall Jess's initial dismissal of The Au ("a slog" on his blog) in light of how he now considers Villalobos the "first genius of the 21st century" or whatever.

anyway: i find "The Au Harem..." infinitely more interesting than "Alcachofa". It's probably got a lot to do with listening to it at home rather than in a club situation - listening to it as an LP - but it's got all these subtleties that make it sound different every time i hear it.

"Achso" is the same really, although that has an overall different sound but then i guess Villalobos meant for "Achso" to be played out a bit more, seeing as it's vinyl only and whatnot.

I was only today comparing Confield to minimal techno with some other people, although i think that "The Au Harem..." is far more Autechre than "Achso". The percussion on "Miami"!

And no, i've never taken ketamine. Although when a friend did, he requested "a creamy ball to get inside". Hmm.

"But history has done a curious thing to Spandau Ballet. It's made them more interesting. I think that's a valid way to listen to music, by the way. I think lots of things get more interesting when you add some time to them. To hate something now and like it three years from now isn't so much hypocritical as it is critical."

Also I think the song order doesn't help. After the first track there's several tracks in a row of very minimal four-to-the-floor stuff with very subtle rhythmic shadings. It only really breaks out again on "Miami" and "True To Myself", which perhaps a lot of listeners don't hang around for.

some of the other ones are good but there's not much about them to latch on to .... you couldn't even say "the one with the fizzing sprinkler noise" or "the one with glisteny Orbital IDM chimes" like you can with Achso

Could someone point me to this please?

The track 'que belle epoque 2006' is a remix right? So is 'lazer@present' also different from the original?

anyway, without looking up old threads/reviews, i think au'harem has proved to be a real grower for lots of people - certainly for me "hierklon" was the only thing that stood out at first, but now it's one of my favourite albums of the last few years.

also, i feel like "miami" offers lots of possibilities that no-one else has explored, although i'm not really sure how to make that statement more precise.

re villalobos and autechre - i've had that comparison in my mind for a long time (maybe back to au'harem?), but less in the sense of the actual sound and more in the relationship to their peers - e.g. au'harem to the other microhouse i was listening to was somehow like mid/late 90s autechre were to other idm. but possibly this just shows how shallowly i engaged with these genres! i definitely disagree with this trend to single out villalobos as the only innovator in town, but i do think that he was an eye-opener for a lot of people (esp with au'harem).

what else? oh, i've taken ketamine, but only by accident, and i din't find it worked that well with this kinda music (or indeed sound full stop). these days i find that this stuff's best listened to on sleeping pills - stay up really late until your super tired, then take some sleeping pills, stick au'harem on repeat on your headphones and drift off into the warmth...

i had a jazz guy slamming his beer on the table telling me that villalobos was "such shit. not even music. djing is not even playing music..." the other day.

Something about him interests/annoys/intrigues people who don't follow dance music so closely?

although mp3s never do justice to the low end of vinyl records...

ha, i totally misread that at first and was bewildererd as to how you found everything else more accessible.

i can see how he'd particularly annoy a jazz guy.

really? pretty much all i listen to these days is villalobos-style stuff and jazz, so i find that rather odd.

"let we go" is totally k-hole, yes. it's tracks like that and i guess also that mathew jonson/the mole speicher effort that make me want to learn to use ableton and make huge 5 hour mixes (or maybe even just edits) to do pure maths to/listen to when really tired.

Villalobos reminds me of Miles Davis and Sun Ra though.

indeed - i'm sure it only feels like this thread is linking in with loads of others, either real or imagined, but i think this music does raise the issue of there only being so many things that one can spend time and effort gaining an understanding/appreciation of, and it wasn't clear at first that au'harem was one of the things that i wanted to take that effort with; but having done so, i've automatically done the same with other villalobos releases (eg chromosoul, which doesn't seem to get mentioned much round here). i'm sure there are tonnes of other minimal-related things that i'd appreciate if i made the same effort with them.

all of this has just reminded me of this:

geeta in london nov 27-dec 2: FAP? (Little Duke, Roger St, Clerkenwell, 29/11)

i strongly suspect that i'll never know what that 7am record was, or if i've heard it since. this still bothers me sometimes.

we can pay credit to ricardo's endurance though. the guy is almost undoubtedly the worlds best when it comes to playing at a messed up afterhours looking like a sweat-soaked casualty of gurn.

Debris "Static Disposal"!! omg. I wonder if that guy will start the site back up, no new ones since February ....

sorry, back to Ricardo ....

I think this is correct but I think this has more to do with the way in which "we" tend to talk about dance music and experimentalism and etc than the quality of the music - not that this delegitimates the claim.

That was the point of my mammoth post on dissensus comparing the two - I actually find both equally exciting but, rightly or wrongly, villalobos is exciting in ways that make many people (critics esp) grope for the word "genius" rather than, I dunno, "hot shit" or something.

This is what I said:

"This is what I meant when I was talking on that other thread about the difficulty of proving vanguardism. It's not so much that vanguardism doesn't exist, but that - at least today - its claim is always plausibly (but rarely finally) refutable. There is in all contemporary music a certain component of revivalism or repetition, and this becomes a sticking point for people (or not) depending on their willingness to accept the presence or echo of that which is being repeated - e.g. dub and reggae in dubstep.

Dance music provides some good examples of this. When I think of two of my favourite current producers - Ricardo Villalobos and Booka Shade - it's immediately clear that Villalobos is the one being lauded as vanguardist (to the point that I felt moved to complain on ILM that in critical terms he's becoming the Outkast of German dance music). But the argument could be made that Villalobos's Achso ep, as awesome as it is, is just reviving 80s Jon Hassell and early nineties "intelligent" techno (Black Dog and early Autechre are probably the key reference points).

Booka Shade, meanwhile, are arguably reviving disco, early UK (acid) house, early trance, early rave and detroit techno - so their reference points are maybe A Guy Called Gerald/808 State, Eye Q Records, early Warp/Ital Rockers etc, with a dash of Detroit and early Orbital in there too.

Both are providing a pretty clear "twist" on their influences in terms of recognisable production nuances and immediately recognisable sonic signatures. Neither tend to straightforwardly revive one sound in particular, but carefully combine their influences (Villalobos's "Ichso" is a Jon Hassell/Talk Talk collaboration with Black Dog on production; Booka Shade's "Manderine Girl" is, I dunno, Carl Craig gone trance through a white noise filter).

So how do we distinguish between the two?

The audacity of the translation of influences? Villalobos is drawing on stuff from further outside house's legacy, but it's not really outside techno's legacy. His chosen sources may appear to come from more disparate genres, but they actually blend together quite easily and smoothly - whereas with Booka Shade the influences rub up against one another quite forcefully and delightfully ("Mandarine Girl" and esp. the new track "In White Rooms" do quite amazing and unexpected things with tearjerker trance riffs).

The freshness of the source material? Is Jon Hassell less played out than early A Guy Called Gerald? Hard to say...

The transition of the source material from a genius context to a scenius one? Maybe, but in doing so Villalobos is increasingly being distinguished as "genius" rather than "scenius" anyway.

The radicalism of the new production stamp? Villalobos is more openly, ostentatiously idiosyncratic and epic, but I think Booka Shade are just as impressive and interesting finally.

These aren't unanswerable questions, but they're complex ones, and every juncture I just see personal taste bleeding through.

Mark's definition of vanguardism - the creation of new populations, the redefinition of the very concept of music - avoids this trap, but it does so by skirting the entire field, equally rejecting both options as being mere product. Which is fine, but it leaves us with a vacuum as to what critical language we can use to talk about these rejected options. And there is music we all like which falls into this category - Junior Boys for example, or Ariel Pink, or..."

ps did my package get to australia?

dissensus requires patience i think, you have to adjust to a different speed whereby there may be one interesting new thread per month as opposed to one every couple of days at least here.

(Vahid perhaps your polemaesthetic is strident pro-smeariness!)

godammit i wish this had been released as a 12" instead of chromosul

http://www.roskilde-festival.dk/object.php?obj=4e342774&code=1

Isn't it the long (9 mins or more) unfolding of larger musical pieces from "micro" structures?

Probably why I like it as much as any other reason. I've heard enough recycled sounds of all that "golden age of IDM" stuff.

"He's perfectly content with forming luscious, pensively roiling, ten-minute grooves that double as some of the most organic-sounding electronic productions imaginable ... all patterns of percussion, save for the bumping tubs of bass thrum, could come from folk-dancing marionettes. The splats of harpsichord-like acoustic guitar seem wind-generated..."

sherburne on "confield"

"Autechre are part of a movement of artists exploring generative composition, harnessing algorithms and complex programming to create tracks that warp and morph independent of the producer's will. To whatever extent that method was used in creating Confield, the album certainly sounds like an automaton's creation. "VI scose poise" opens the album with a skittering cadence of ball-bearing rattle, seemingly without logic or repetition ... Confield's lithe processes slip nimbly from measure to measure, creating themselves anew at every turn ..."

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So are Ricardo & co going to avoid the mistakes of the past on their further excursions?

I totally hear the Black Dog tone coming through Luciano's stuff incidentally, fwiw.

dude, remember house music? house is a feeling!

Looking forward to whenever I get round to hearing Au Harem(House?) Luciano's SFHFi(House?) or Taka Taka(ah.. House!) though.

????

I'm really interested in this comparison, since it's based on my two favorite producers at the moment. Probably the only two that I've kept a determined watch on.

I'm not entirely convinced about this idea that Villalobos' influences blend easily. While they create an impression from the outset of a compositional whole, I think the actual production internally emphasizes disorientation and perspectival hallucination. He routinely highlights discrete elements that operate almost like feedback, temporarily frazzling and distorting the mix (throughout 'Sieso' or 'Let We Go', for instance).

If Villalobos is a smooth blend, this would only be in terms of pattern rather than perspective (particularly when he presents a point of view that is rapidly shifting, scanning). A classic sonic trope here would be the splayed snare as informational pattern on 'A Walk In The Park (Villalobos 'Til Thursday Rmx)', which catches both elements in motion.

This is opposed to Booka Shade I'd say, whom I find much easier to 'focus' on. While they have an aesthetic of the trance-riff as a evolutionary hinge (In White Rooms, Mandarine Girl, most obviously), the music always feels consistently 'out there' and clearly placed. Their embrace is a emotive hold.

So I realise I'm merely enforcing (somewhat boringly) the very consensus position on Villalobos that you're quite rightly attempting to disrupt, but to seperate out 'production' from 'influences' seems disingenuous considering the two artists involved.

Plus, I just wanted to mention that snare-sound that I so love, and mention some other things that Villalobos makes me think about, and want to write about.

Mike I think this is an important point to make - actually with Villalobos and Booka Shade both, I think that when we are tempted to talk about "influences" we should usually actually talk about "production" (by which I mean, what may seem as deliberate influences may be organically developed production choices). My discussion above is a bit artificial because I'm trying to magic up a neat example of how discussions of influence (and their relationship to the notion of vanguardism) are less straightforward than they appear - or they should be less straightforward than they appear, at any rate.

"Basically everything is house music and there are different versions. Even techno music is a different version of house music, it's a little bit faster and more aggressive. I try to be somewhere in between techno and house, and the reality is that everything is based on house. I would say I'm a house DJ for sure. And all this click-house, and micro-house and bleep-house, it's only to sell better the product, you know? At the end, everything is obeying the rules of house -- the breaks, the snaps, the snare-drums, the high-hats. Everything is absolutely house. You can substitute different sounds -- instead of a normal high-hat, you can use a click or whatever, but it's all house."

for listening to. there are very few villalobos records i'd play out as i rarely get to play late enough at night for them to work on the dancefloor. they would probably clear most dancefloors i play for but i love listening to his music wheras i can't imagine lazing about reading a book with booka shade on in the background. there is a world beyond the dancefloor ronan. :-)

thats not true but its what i aspire to

Villalobos is kinda talking out of his ass here, particularly if you consider the roots of both of these genres. HIS version of techno might be sped-up house, but to generalize like that is silly.

the producer as composer
background noise: a history of sound art
echo and reverb: fabricating space in sound recording, 1900-1960

i find that villalobos works perfectly as background music!

Production company 'Perky Park Music' emerged out of the artist-songwriting-production team of Merziger, Kammermeier and Hayo, which - as synth-pop band 'Planet Claire' - generated chart hit "Heaven in Your Hands" in 1988, alongside two albums.

The house/techno euphoria of the early 1990s brought the team to Frankfurt. From that point onwards, they produced literally scores of club tracks on internationally acknowledged labels (such as Harthouse, Touché, R&S, Noom and Music Man). One of those club hits, the trance classic "Una musica senza ritmo" by 'Degeneration', was recently re-released in Europe, the USA and Japan.

The increasing popularity of electronic music eventually led to songs which the trio wrote for international pop acts like 'Culture Beat'. Many of these songs made it into the German and international charts. "Rendez Vous" turned into the biggest radio hit for Culture Beat (Top 4 in the airplay charts). The hit single "Walk the Same Line" and several songs for the albums "Metamorphosis" and "Inside Out" also originated from Perky Park.

In 2001 the team returned to its roots in the club music scene. In collaboration with DJ act M.A.N.D.Y. (who are DJ duo Phil D. Young and PatBo) they worked out a unique new club sound, which is being honed and perfected since the establishment (together with M.A.N.D.Y. and DJ T) of their own record label 'Get Physical Music'.

Together with M.A.N.D.Y., Perky Park is continuing to produce successful remixes in the dance charts, such as for Silicone Soul ("Right On"), Galleon ("So I Begin"), Sugababes ("Round and Round") and Daniel Bedingfield ("Gotta Get Thru This").

In the field of dance-pop they recently landed a hit - together with 'Heaven 17' singer Glenn Gregory and electro legend - under the pseudonym 'Goldpeople': "Music Don't Stop".

The trio recently relocated their studio to Berlin, where - alongside the generation of various club and commercial hits - Perky Park produce advertising music for several consumer products companies including Sony Playstation.

The outfit also have their own publishing company - 'Edition Perky Park' - which is connected with Warner Chappell, the world's largest publishing house.

URLs: http://www.perkypark.com
Aliases: Booka Shade, E.F.O., Electric Fruit Orchestra, Fake Divine, Futura (6), Goldpeople, Opus 808, Superstring, Temple Of Light, Tony Travolta, Zulu
Members: Sola Fides
In Groups: Soulkeeper

Not really.

"Basically everything is house music and there are different versions" = OTM (but that's just me.)

echo and reverb: fabricating space in sound recording, 1900-1960

that's sounds like an interesting read. Who wrote that?

xpost

yeah. while this is true re: Au Harem, more work went into Alcachofa in this regard. the prettiest two tracks on that -- 'ygh' and 'Black Conga' -- are CD only (the former having never been on vinyl, ever). the vinyl version of 'Hierklon' is even more, uh, 'home listening friendly' than the CD edit -- there are large stretches where the kick just drops out and it's just extended guitar/hand percussion interplay. why he didn't kick one of the 'Tenemarc' tracks off the CD and include that instead is puzzling.

I reckon you can view Alcachofa as more of an artistic 'statement' -- more thought seems to have gone into its layout. (by the way, anyone who's not heard the 3 vinyl only extras on it should -- I can YSI if needed)

yes please!

http://www.discogs.com/image/R-344629-1108150413.jpg

worked well with

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0140442731.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

this morning on the bus

I don't really see him as being entirely out on his own, or as an isolated example of "the only guy doing something innovative in dance music" when Isolee, Luciano and a lot of others orbit close enough by him in the same musical micro-universe.

Didn't Orbital get similar kinds of stick for everything they did post-The Brown Album? They might not be 100% suitable, or sublimated to the purposes of rocking a crowd, but I'd still have difficulty calling them "not dance".

And if you're thinking "ah, but that's not that innovative" just repeat the mantra "he made it in his bedroom, on a laptop, for nothing!! and it's sold like a proper record!" as if you'd never heard of such a crazy idea before... I get the idea people at large (in the UK?) have very low expectations of what it means to break new ground in dance, that they can still recognise as something they know.

Of course, this is why we need people like Booka Shade & James Holden... but Ricardo should hardly be kicked to the curb for not bending to the accepted way of doing things. We need mavericks!

*(I don't mean as a rule, that it's ALL they should do, and never touch 4/4, disco, vocal house or other "cheese" (scare quotes))

and who in the photo has the worst hair?

http://www.theoriginalsoundtrack.com/art/svenvath.jpg

http://www.theoriginalsoundtrack.com/art/svenibiza.jpg

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6318/282lk.jpg

This is so reminiscent of Louis Armstrong's attitude towards bebop. From the liner notes to the C'est Ci Bon: Satchmo in the Forties box set: "He spoke out against his new, young rivals for the only time in his career. Bebop, he claimed, ruined jazz and everything he had done to popularise it. It denied people the simple pleasure of melody that always gave jazz its accessibility and appeal." The author points out in the preceding paragraph that "bebop was exciting, energetic, tense, precise, sophisticated and somehow less easy on the ear. It was an expression of a new post-war age, and it was a music to listen to, rather than dance to." (my emphasis)

sorry for the run-on.

of course! i mean, i'm honestly mystified by this statement. why would you listen to music that didn't move you? i don't listen to dance music to ID the superficial features of it; i don't listen to music for reasons of fashion or anything else. i listen to it because it moves me in a deep way. i agree that there are a lot of different ways to be moved, but i also sympathize with ronan's point of view that central to the idea of house and techno is a four-to-the-floor functionalism, and that this functionalist aspect of villalobos' music these days is, for the most part, not there. that's not always true--i was reminded recently of a fantastic old track that Villalobos did in 1996 under the name of 'richard wolfsdorf,' called MDMA (ha!)--it's interesting sonically, but it's also bangin' as fuck. it's not like those two impulses need to be at odds with each other.

that said, i really do enjoy villalobos' current music. i am not against what he's doing; i'm all for him expanding his mind and expanding ours along the way. but i really don't react well to this romantic and reductive idea of villalobos as the sole auteur, as the only sentient lifeform in an otherwise dead and dessicated musical field.

wow, i don't feel this way at all. that is indeed silly and simple.

Susan I think it's this bit which is causing confusion. It sounds like you're suggesting that most dance music is just a technical equation, and that people dance to it because they recognise the equation as equalling "dance music"... but are not at all being moved by it.

Is that not what you were trying to say? What were you trying to say?

(I'm not trying to be patronising BTW... I think it can be very difficult to talk about this sort of music in a manner that is clear enough that it's not going to give rise to misinterpretations)

Tim, by the way, if you ever visit Singapore you MUST go to Zouk on a wednesday night. They play a medley of 80s music and pop hits thats in a strict format and every single song has a whole set of special moves that go with it. All the boys stand on one podium and all the girls on another and they do 'question and answer' moves at each other, all in perfect synch. It's like an entire club full of people doing DDR.

Ha ha this makes me think of Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" - everyone loves the chorus but they dance hardest to the spare "oh oh oh oh oh oh oh na na" bit straight afterwards.

:O

But wait...an average Villalobos track is 12 minutes long, so this will be 7 max 8 tracks, no?

I just like the lo-bandwidth compatible flash previews (sometimes months ahead of the release dates).

I agree with this:

"i DO think that villalobos is accomplishing things w/ polyrhythms, timbre, and non-repetitive elements that few, if any, other producers in techno are doing."

... but I think it's also true of producers like Trentemoller, Dominik Eulberg, Gabriel Ananda, James Holden (and I imagine you do too). As to whether one can asign a ranking w/r/t how unprecedented and accomplished each of these producers is, well it's beyond my capabilities but maybe someone else here can try it.

In this sense I don't think it's so much that people are somehow incorrect in the way they engage with RV; it's more that there's an assumption that he's the exception which proves the rule (being the rule that dance music is creatively moribund)... whereas in fact he and several other producers form a sufficient number of exceptions to undermine the rule's application in the first place. But to have this demonstrated to you on a regular basis requires a certain level of energy invested in regularly engaging with this particular scene, and a lot of listeners have to make the judicious assessment that they're going to focus their energy elsewhere, and allow RV to stand in for everything they're else they might be missing.

obviously i would fight this allegation tooth and nail. i don't know, maybe i'm not reading closely enough to all the above; i just don't see where anyone, even jess in his fanboyest moments (and not like i don't have a lot of them too, believe me) is arguing that villalobos is the ONLY one doing anything worthwhile in house/techno. i think it's quite recognized that he's part of a general tendency that links trentemoller (maybe, i'm still unconvinced), eulberg, (ananda? i don't see him pushing in the same directions), holden, luciano, schneider.... to me what makes villalobos stand out from the others (though luciano and guido schneider do follow him here) is the pursuit of a line that diverges from, say, standard 16-bar structures, and the intensity which which he pursues that line of flight. and i do think he's something of an auteur. but by saying that i don't dismiss either his peers (who may be working in parallel, tangential, or wholly different directions) or the collective impulse that makes any of these people's aesthetic successes possible...

seriously tho, i will spare jess and others. but i liked some of the comments soul seduct made re: rv and dance.

I do think this is OTM (Phil's paragraph too) - but I think that (as you imply here Jess) it's about different strategies and objectives etc. Whereas the difficulty in discussing this stuff in terms of genius is that - unless disclaimers pre-interrogating the notion of "genius" such as yours and Phil's are regularly re-iterated - it tends to slide into mere prescription and exclusion... we move villalobos off the playing field altogether and evaluate him separately: his point-of-difference is the new playing field rather than a strategy or gameplan for success on the pre-existing playing-field. The word invites a calcification of assumptions. Which is not to say it shouldn't be used, but that I don't trust just anyone to use it!

(Is it boringly pre-neo-rockist of me to advocate that we focus on what RV and other producers do rather than what they are?)

Anyway my issue is not w/r/t Jess (who is legitimately trying to work out how and where "genius" can be applied; it's not like it's somehow automatically wrong to think rv is better than anyone else) but with the notion that european dance music is now anti-vanguardist and ricardo is the sole exception - and I've seen this notion propogated on several occasions apart from on blissblog.

It's like the ideal moment is when an aesthetic has become clearly defined but there is still lots of room for manoeuvre. Obviously yer 'genius' types buck the mold and can occur at any time, but for volume of quality I think this holds true.

Phil, have you heard "Childish Dream"? It's like Eulberg remixing the sparkly track on Achso (sorry, I've never gotten a handle on which track is which). And the live version of "In Personliche Glucksmelodie" is totally insane...

http://www.soulseduction.com/common/item_detail.php?ItemID=160464

I think techno will become like jazz (if it's not yet there). You'll have a breakthrough act every now and then a lots of decent/good purists who will delight the connoisseurs.

fantastic but i havent heard the original (if there is one) how does it compare?

And yeah, while Phillip is right to note that Villalobos has gone the furthest away from traditional house and techno structures, he's hardly consistent on this point - three quarters of The Au'Harem to thread... Perhaps the irony with Ricardo is that he actually sounds most er "pop" when he is trying to avoid straight four-to-the-floor material - against Ronan's question I'd assert that with Ricardo pop and off-kilterness are not inversely proportional, though I do sympathise with Ronan's general position.

In related news I have finally wholeheartedly fallen in love with Tobi Neumann's Pass Your Bedtime, after finding it a bit impenetrable for the longest time. Now I'm not sure why I couldn't really get into it, it's so beautiful. And the second half is like my very exact definition of minimal/ketamine/etc... perhaps not as self-consciously epic as the Achso material but just as beautiful.

Actually I've been really enjoying Neumann's own faux-Villalobos/Luciano productions of late.

yes

when I say he's "head of the pack" rather than "genius" it's ... because it still makes as much or more sense to me to talk about all this music in terms of networks of producers and label aesthetics and the like

double yes.

and any mix that contains this sun ra quote can't be bad:
"the music is different here, the vibrations are different... not like planet earth... planet earth sound of guns, anger, frustration... there is no one to talk to on planet earth to understand... it would affect their vibrations, for the better of course... equation wise, the first thing to do is consider time as officially ended... we'll work on the other side of time... we'll bring them here through either isotope, teleportation, transmolecularzation... or better still, teleport the whole planet here through music..."

For some reason I haven't been able to get into the Neumann although I like his productions (esp. Dinky - Acid in my Fridge)

No tricky but I really want to! I may have to order it specially. Also I'm gonna download your most recent posted mix to check your claim of influence.

My thoughts - it's lovely and strange. held together by a great krautrock vocal line.

12 minutes of gorgeousness that requires the full deal .. not just the snippet on that Suck My Deck set.