don't wanna sound like a hater, but it's ok. I can see how people who haven't heard Steve Poindexter and Musique Records and Hieroglyphic Being might find it groundbreaking -- it kinda straddles the middle ground between that sound, and the abstract side of US deep house like DJ Qu and M. Pittman, w/ a bit of Chillwave enabled haze thrown in. but beyond the admittedly quite cool sound design the compositions seem to me a bit generic at times, I don't get how it "BURIES the competition". i do like the track "Hubble" a lot
he's a good dj btw, plays loads of Flyte Tyme and New Jack Swing and 90s house and stuff
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:05 (2 years ago) Permalink
a lot of the writing about this album concentrates on this "r&b concrete" angle as if "disembodied vocal samples" are somehow this new groundbreaking technique of modern electronic music production, when in actuality it is about the most cliched. hasn't Todd Edwards been "disembodying" rnb vocals since like, 1994?
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:09 (2 years ago) Permalink
u do sound like a h8r and not a very interesting one
have heard first two of those and it's not a close relaish
i wouldn't make claims for splazsh being hugely innovative
u misunderstood a ref to another hyped south london producah who might get called 'r&b concrete' ;_;
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:14 (2 years ago) Permalink
how many tracks on this have "disembodied vocal samples" and how do u discern between those and common or garden vocal samples
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:15 (2 years ago) Permalink
no need to get defensive, though if it helps boost your ILX status by all means. next step "sock master" amirite?
if anything i'm just trying to work out why this leaves me cold when I love so much of the stuff it cribs from. I guess you missed the part where I praised the sound design and mentioned that I like the track "Hubble" a lot, while touching on his excellent dj skills?
and if you can't hear Hieroglpyhic Being in something like say "Bubble Buts And Equations" then I don't believe you've heard Hieroglyphic Being
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:22 (2 years ago) Permalink
havent we already had this convo about james blake, or is this diff somehow
― lyrics is weak ... like clock radio similes (deej), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:26 (2 years ago) Permalink
^^
― BIG SANTA aka the sleighdriver (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:31 (2 years ago) Permalink
missing u know yr shit and have good taste but 'I can see how people who haven't heard Steve Poindexter and Musique Records and Hieroglyphic Being might find it groundbreaking' is the sort of pass/agg trainspotter drivel that's not rly conducive to good ilx
u will know i have not heard 'Hieroglyphic Being' cuz he is third in yr list and i 'have heard first two of those '
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:33 (2 years ago) Permalink
idk about james blake, don't rly care/rate/etc him
there's some talk of actress in one of the rolling dance threads btw, moonship digs it iirc
― zvookster, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:35 (2 years ago) Permalink
no whiney weingarteno on this comment but really feel like most ppl that find this treatment of r&b interesting don't actually dig real r&b
this stuff is still pretty aight tho
― BIG SANTA aka the sleighdriver (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:35 (2 years ago) Permalink
don't rly care about r&b beyond the big singles yuh
i like music concrete tho
of course it doesn't sound a lot like the former, and the schematic owes little to the latter but yknow it kinda works as shorthand for what he's doing
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:38 (2 years ago) Permalink
not sure i get the (any) connection to musique concrete. it sounds like pleasantly spacey/funky idm to me. connect the dots?
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:44 (2 years ago) Permalink
"u will know i have not heard 'Hieroglyphic Being' cuz he is third in yr list and i 'have heard first two of those '"
ok well my point still stands, if you can't hear the influence Steve Poindexter's label, Muzique Records, has had on Actress's album Splazsh then etcetc
sorry if it's "pas/agg trainspotter drivel" to actually know my shit about the subject at hand, but when you say something like "this fuckin BURIES the competition" you shouldn't be surprised that somebody else might say, well actually, there's other stuff out there that already sounds like this and does it better
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:02 (2 years ago) Permalink
god yr slow
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:15 (2 years ago) Permalink
god yr butthurt?
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:16 (2 years ago) Permalink
i didn't come here to argue dude, I'll leave your thread be *waves*
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:17 (2 years ago) Permalink
tsccchhhh
entrylevs
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:21 (2 years ago) Permalink
oh ok, Burial reference, excellent. bravo old chap
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:21 (2 years ago) Permalink
still, I'm not so slow as to realize that "rnb concrete" is fucking lame
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:23 (2 years ago) Permalink
yeah its kinda a lame thread title trinket to get the spesh addled vagrants like yrself thru the door, all counts towards the admission stats tho
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:26 (2 years ago) Permalink
my sympathies, nakhchivan, for post-launch events itt
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:28 (2 years ago) Permalink
ikr
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:30 (2 years ago) Permalink
missing no just needs to chill a lil, i don't wanna scare off ppl who know more about techno than me
yeah apols for missing your pun. keep the ad homs coming though, you'll be reposted in zing thread in no time
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 07:31 (2 years ago) Permalink
Apparently Actress samples Youtube in his beats, tons of tightly edited low bitrate samples stacked layer upon layer.
It definitely seems like a reasonable comparison to the original Musique Concrete guys.
And I'm a big Hieroglyphic Being fan and don't feel that Actress is at all a bad comparison.
With Jamal its huge amounts material to dig through, with Actress: 2 minute long tracks.
Maybe the argument should be between brevity and long-windedness?
― sistern, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:01 (2 years ago) Permalink
hmmm i don't really dig jamal moss very much and i don't think it's a great comparison unless you fixate on certain aspects of actress and the much better end of jamal moss.
the r&b-ish parts ("purple splazsh", "wrong potion") are the bits i like least. love love love the pleasantly spacy/funky IDM parts ("hubble", "bubble butts", "the kettle men"). i loathe the todd edwards influenced parts.
it didn't make my top 10, but it would've made #11 and if i made a list just on amount of time spent listening this would've been in the top 10.
i have hazyville but haven't really given it a listen ... what about his nonplus release? that was sick.
― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:03 (2 years ago) Permalink
^^ sounds more like urban tribe to me than burial or todd e
― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:04 (2 years ago) Permalink
srsly off topic but jamal moss is 75% wack
― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:08 (2 years ago) Permalink
as is being detroit/chicago nerd, as anyone who witnessed moonship: the early years will certainly attest to
― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:09 (2 years ago) Permalink
:)
if i did, i would
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:12 (2 years ago) Permalink
is this so? have heard this said of other producers, but not of cunningham. which may be to say, "i haven't done the research," but what's (not) done is done. and yeah, if true, that working process does make sense of the phrase/thread title. plus helps explain the pleasant fuzziness of the sound.
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:13 (2 years ago) Permalink
sounds pleasant but it's a little too clever isn't it, calling albums "hazyville" and stuff to bait the hauntology crew?
― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:17 (2 years ago) Permalink
i just think he's best when he keeps it light, straightforward and beat oriented
― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:19 (2 years ago) Permalink
I need to dig the album out again and give it another listen, shifted so much stuff around in my room I've got no idea where it is.
This is one of the few albums this year I felt compelled to own on vinyl.
― sistern, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:30 (2 years ago) Permalink
And yeah, Jamal does have that Sun Ra quality control thing going on. When he's on he's definitely on.
Whereas all the Actress stuff I've heard was at least worth listening to more than once.
Hazyville included, some great shit on there.
― sistern, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:32 (2 years ago) Permalink
i read the Youtube thing as well and it definitely goes to explain the graininess and warmth of the album -- kinda like an extreme update of the vintage sampler aliasing you hear on classic NY boom bap stuff
the Hieroglyphic Being/Muzique comparisons I only make with reference to Splazsh. it's that slightly unhinged, unpredictable approach to drum programming, wildly unquantized percussion patterns on top of straight 4x4 kicks, crunchy bass drums and hi hats that sizzle, and insanely unfathomable synth lines. he def has a more refined sense of melody and song structure that is his own, overall the album strikes me as an IDM dude's take on the abstract US house sound that's been popular over the past couple of years or so, that just so happens to fit in with the current chillwave/hypnagogic zeitgeist. despite not being crazy on the album, it's at least an interesting direction
basically though, I wanna hear more things like "Hubble" or "Paint, Straw and Bubbles", and less like "Senorita" or "Purple Splazsh"
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 11:57 (2 years ago) Permalink
his edit of this on Thriller is cool
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 12:01 (2 years ago) Permalink
the r&b-ish parts ("purple splazsh", "wrong potion") are the bits i like least.
OTM ... if there was $$$ to be made from making techno tributes to Prince then everyone would have been doing it years ago.
― NoTimeBeforeTime, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 16:08 (2 years ago) Permalink
re: hazyville, i like the hardcore references in "again the addiction"
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 02:16 (2 years ago) Permalink
and on "crushed", too!
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:17 (2 years ago) Permalink
this album is so good & not really r&b at all and i don't think people who don't really like r&b would ever mistake this with r&b. feel like the sounds on it are very tube-ey, i visualize a lot of the lines as orange neon lights, something really linear (yet obviously very contorted) about it. way better than james blake although i didn't get the bfd w/ that thread but i also don't know anything about dance music. i've listened to this album on drugs a lot
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:40 (2 years ago) Permalink
moonship what's your top 10
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:44 (2 years ago) Permalink
my top 10 favorite albums this year
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:53 (2 years ago) Permalink
moonship what are your top 10 favourite albums this year
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:57 (2 years ago) Permalink
top 10 albums
demdike stare - liberation through hearingmartyn - fabric 50ben klock - berghain 04emeralds - does it look like I'm here?dBridge & instra:mental - fabriclive 50flying lotus - cosmogrammashackleton - fabric 55shed - the travellermadlib - medicine show volume 3anthony shakir - frictionalism
top 10 singles
martyn - is this insanity (remixes)mmm - nous sommes mmmwax - 30003eqd - 04locussolus - gunship
and other than that it was all from 2009: 2562, martyn, peverelist, zomby, the rest of that crew, wax and eqd sides by shed, scion versions, levon vincent, t++, dettmann and klock, function stuff on sandwell, milton bradley, frozen border, etc etc it all sounded as relevant or more this year as it did last year, and generally much more than what i read about in a lot of other dance music year-end lists :-(
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:08 (2 years ago) Permalink
your top 10 is lookin more like a top 5
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:11 (2 years ago) Permalink
& thanks
actually i forgot some off of my top 10 list
2562 - demons2562 - rear windowrustie - sunburstjoker - tron
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:12 (2 years ago) Permalink
what's your top 10, flopson?
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:26 (2 years ago) Permalink
gah this album is fucking incredible
very "selected ambient works" imo
― the late great, Saturday, 28 April 2012 17:44 (1 year ago) Permalink
had this locked on repeat since i got it
"N.E.W." is so incredible
― the late great, Saturday, 28 April 2012 17:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
my favorite track on "splazsh" has always been "hubble"
you read my mind mr cunningham and made an entire album in that style
pretty sure one of the tracks on this is a remix of "crushed" from hazyville
― the late great, Saturday, 28 April 2012 17:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
― the late great, Saturday, April 28, 2012 6:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
cosign all of this. never really got into splazsh, really digging this though.
― toby, Saturday, 28 April 2012 18:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
this is really cool
never liked splazsh either
― r|t|c, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
dunno abt these last 4 tracks after 'glint'
kinda feel i need to start from the beginning again to work them out
― r|t|c, Sunday, 29 April 2012 00:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
this is good
― Ms Tum-Bla-Wi-Tee (nakhchivan), Sunday, 29 April 2012 12:15 (1 year ago) Permalink
Liking this, the lord's graffiti and raven are the two that stood out on first listen.
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Monday, 30 April 2012 07:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
Is this streaming anywhere?
― scott pgwp (pgwp), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 04:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
i'm alright with these last four tracks now. i don't enjoy them especially but the juxtapositions they provide lend a sense of consequence to the rest, however gnomic; ie without them this would be a too-well-contained and easily disposable nice bit of idm retro.
i like the middle section in particular, 'jardin' / 'serpent' / 'shadow from tartarus' - 'serpent' is very autechre homage to nokia 3310. in fact a fair few of the tiny insectoid music box melody tracks remind me of lp5/ep7 era ae, moreso than aphex at least.
― r|t|c, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 11:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
jardin is amazing...
― ooooiiiioooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaoooooh un - bi - leevable! (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 11:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
you guys might be interested to check out shackleton's new "music for the quiet hour".
― sisilafami, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 13:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
A new Shackleton already? Still getting a lot of mileage out of the Pinch collab. Another Honest Jon's release? Reading the response on the new Actress album I will definitely check it out, couldn't get into Splazsh..
― willem, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 14:02 (1 year ago) Permalink
The new Shackleton is out on his own label:
http://boomkat.com/cds/523774-shackleton-music-for-the-quiet-hour-the-drawbar-organ
― btw didn't i braek ur heart (NickB), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 15:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
i keep thinking of the word "palimpsest" in relation to this album, like what you get after coming home at 7am and all the music you've heard all night is still rattling around in a jangly smear inside your head
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 2 May 2012 16:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
I LOVE THIS
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Saturday, 19 May 2012 18:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
I just picked up R.I.P yesterday and want to add to the chorus of praise... This is immediately more engaging and satisfying to me than Splazsh--more beauty, more restraint, more detail, more melodic development. It's a lovely record that it's hard to imagine any other producer making. I think it may even be a "deeper" record than Splazsh but without the sheen of inscrutability that led so many people to keep on and keep on with it; R.I.P is more immediate without being any less complex.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 7 June 2012 13:30 (11 months ago) Permalink
timely reminder for me that this is a good rainy day album
― r|t|c, Thursday, 7 June 2012 13:37 (11 months ago) Permalink
i agree that it sounds a lot like autechre, especially the one track with the annoying birdsong sample sound and a couple others i can't recall are very much like the subtler confield-era stuff
― the late great, Thursday, 7 June 2012 15:26 (11 months ago) Permalink
I can see where that comparison comes from, but this is so much warmer and more luscious to me than Autechre.
― Clarke B., Thursday, 7 June 2012 16:47 (11 months ago) Permalink
Think I prefer Splazsh tbh - this is okay, but very similar in vibe to Oversteps-era Ae but not as involving. Might need a few more spins though.
― Scary Move 4 (dog latin), Thursday, 7 June 2012 17:44 (11 months ago) Permalink
This is really good - his production style certainly lends itself to moody atmospheric numbers far more than it does the more beat-driven dancefloor-based material. "Tree Of Knowledge" sounds like lurching brostep recorded to a tape deck via a microphone pressed against laptop speakers to my ears.
― boxedjoy, Friday, 8 June 2012 10:06 (11 months ago) Permalink
R.I.P. is going to save the lives of so many cracked-out kids, you know at 4am when the drugs won't let you sleep and no music sounds right - this will be the only album they can listen to
vahid otm
― hot slag (lukas), Sunday, 20 January 2013 09:33 (4 months ago) Permalink
whenever I listen to this it feels like a watered down version of madlib beat tapes, I wish I could get into it because in theory this is like my favorite shit
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Sunday, 20 January 2013 18:03 (4 months ago) Permalink
which madlib beat tapes are these?
― bass, Sunday, 20 January 2013 20:24 (4 months ago) Permalink
I love this record. Keep coming back to it.
― Hutton dressed as Lahm (LocalGarda), Sunday, 20 January 2013 20:32 (4 months ago) Permalink
new 12" "silver cloud" is some beautiful sinister fuzzed out fucked-up mutant techno
― clouds, Friday, 25 January 2013 23:51 (3 months ago) Permalink
is it as good as the la dusseldorf track of the same name
― moët plaudit (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 25 January 2013 23:56 (3 months ago) Permalink
Yeah this is great - nice to have some longer tracks from him.
― toby, Saturday, 26 January 2013 06:54 (3 months ago) Permalink
"voodoo posse chronic illusion" is so so good
― keef qua keef (Jordan), Friday, 15 February 2013 15:50 (3 months ago) Permalink
yep
a new afx album would be nice but actress is kinda supplanting the old 90s greats imo
― polski smak (clouds), Friday, 15 February 2013 16:00 (3 months ago) Permalink
still unsure how I've listened to and enjoyed this dude's music for over two years but only found out a few weeks ago that he played professionally for West Brom
― Julian-Joachim Roedelius (DJ Mencap), Friday, 15 February 2013 16:19 (3 months ago) Permalink
― keef qua keef (Jordan), Friday, February 15, 2013 3:50 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark
absolutely addicted to this at the moment
― Number None, Friday, 15 February 2013 18:11 (3 months ago) Permalink
Even more intriguingly, it’s known that Cunningham was previously a footballer due to embark on a career with West Bromwich Albion, before injury forced him to retire from the sport at the age of 19 (a “crushing decision to make,” he says). What business, our inner snob demands to know, could a one-time professional hoofer of balls have making music as obtuse, as formally brilliant as this?
had no idea about this, rmde at the pleb who wrote that anyway
― every soulless meta poster is a ✰ (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Saturday, 16 February 2013 03:03 (3 months ago) Permalink
http://peterkempsrecordreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/actress-harrier-attk-gershwin-roy.html
also found this charming review by some pensioner
― every soulless meta poster is a ✰ (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Saturday, 16 February 2013 03:04 (3 months ago) Permalink
Remixes of Legowelt: https://soundcloud.com/clone-nl/legowelt-elementz-of-houz
― Chewshabadoo, Saturday, 16 February 2013 03:06 (3 months ago) Permalink
his boiler room mix is still my all time favorite dj mix
― the late great, Saturday, 16 February 2013 03:29 (3 months ago) Permalink