:)
if i did, i would
― Rockcrit from the Tuoms (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 29 December 2010 08:12 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
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 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
his edit of this on Thriller is cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xceQvaDAl08
― missingNO, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 12:01 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
re: hazyville, i like the hardcore references in "again the addiction"
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 02:16 (thirteen years ago) link
and on "crushed", too!
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:17 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
moonship what's your top 10
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:44 (thirteen years ago) link
my top 10 favorite albums this year
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:53 (thirteen years ago) link
moonship what are your top 10 favourite albums this year
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 03:57 (thirteen years ago) link
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 (thirteen years ago) link
your top 10 is lookin more like a top 5
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:11 (thirteen years ago) link
& 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 (thirteen years ago) link
what's your top 10, flopson?
― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:26 (thirteen years ago) link
no dance stuff or anything, and i have difficulty with albums so ten is kind of a stretch but i pretty much love all these
waka flocka flame - flockavellie-40 - revenue retrievinearl sweatshirt - earlgucci mane - mr zone 6/jewelry selectionnht boyz - power triangle
purling hiss - hissteriapc worship - s/t lp and 7" on shdwplypig - magneticsex church - 6 songs by sex churchdrunkdriver - s/t
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:48 (thirteen years ago) link
this demdike stare is awesome
― flopson, Thursday, 30 December 2010 04:56 (thirteen years ago) link
this didn't leave any impression on me the first couple of times i listened to it. i've been assured that it's a grower, tho not sure i care enough to find this out for myself. it's assuredly better than james blake tho.
― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Thursday, 30 December 2010 09:00 (thirteen years ago) link
missingNO: your mentioning of the "slightly unhinged, unpredictable approach to drum programming [&] wildly unquantized percussion patterns on top of straight 4x4 kicks" brings to mind how psyched I was to have learned about Terrence Dixon back in late '08 through Cunningham himself referring to him (along w/ a bunch of other better-known Detroiters, whose approaches I don't hear quite as strongly in Actress' work) as an influence on the 1-sheet blurb for "Hazyville".
Most of the T. Dixon/Population One stuff released on Metroplex and elsewhere that I've heard (from the mid-'90s to recent) has rhythmically really reminded me of Actress, in terms of the funky misalignments, etc.
(Anybody here into Downliners Sekt? A similar-enough aesthetic to warrant asking...)http://boomkat.com/downloads/317164-downliners-sekt-hello-lonely-hold-the-nationhttp://boomkat.com/downloads/367254-downliners-sekt-we-make-hits-not-the-public
― Don't Make Me A Burrito (Craig D.), Thursday, 30 December 2010 14:50 (thirteen years ago) link
Good to see Moonship's list there.
― puff pastry hangman (admrl), Friday, 31 December 2010 19:48 (thirteen years ago) link
what's better
this - FWIW also **BUBBLING** just just outside the top 10, possibly nudging out dbridge or shackleton, FWIW also r&b concréte
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIPQqf4O9j8
or this - is this r&b concréte
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1fDsDsJsQg
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 31 December 2010 23:40 (thirteen years ago) link
downliners sekt have the right sound but the beats are chopped up a little OTT for my taste.
― moonship journey to baja, Friday, 31 December 2010 23:56 (thirteen years ago) link
actress' 2010 top ten features steve poindexter @ #1http://www.boomkat.com/charts.cfm?id=576&gID=11
― sisilafami, Sunday, 2 January 2011 23:42 (thirteen years ago) link
Listening to this now. Not sure I get it - any of it. Tracks have been popping up on random for a while now and they've just sounded like awkward repeating patterns with little structure or development. So I've decided to listen to it as a whole. Don't hear any r'n'b whatsoever. I guess I will have to give it a couple of goes.
― chandelier falling through a bar in a batman costume (dog latin), Thursday, 17 February 2011 00:41 (thirteen years ago) link
what's there to get? it's house music, man. we're hardly talking fucking xenakis here
― missingNO, Thursday, 17 February 2011 02:59 (thirteen years ago) link
I would call Actress neither house music nor easy to get to be honest.
― EDB, Thursday, 17 February 2011 03:20 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah i dont really get it either, i thought it would be a grower...
― just sayin, Thursday, 17 February 2011 09:52 (thirteen years ago) link
It doesn't really become house music until at least the fourth track, and even then it's pretty abstract. Some tracks, that Bubble Butts one in particular, is just plain annoying. Again, I'll def give it another shot, because I've a feeling it's the kind of thing that clicks once heard in context and from then on you can't do without.
― chandelier falling through a bar in a batman costume (dog latin), Thursday, 17 February 2011 10:07 (thirteen years ago) link
i particularly enjoy the stretch from "maze" through "let's fly," songs that fans of this type of thing never seem to mention.
― contenderizer, Wednesday, 29 December 2010 05:42 (1 month ago)
THIS, massively. Had forgotten how good 'Maze' is until putting it on again at the weekend.
I see he's on a bill with Demdike Stare and others in Bristol soon, that's hella tempting if I had any money at all.
― the worst dong of the last ten years (Craigo Boingo), Thursday, 17 February 2011 10:47 (thirteen years ago) link
I've been slowly getting into the Splazsh album. Works well on headphones.
― sam500, Thursday, 17 February 2011 11:32 (thirteen years ago) link
Hazyville is good too, if a lot less evolved.
― seminal fuiud (NickB), Thursday, 17 February 2011 11:33 (thirteen years ago) link
Yeah, I heard and liked 'Hazyville' - relatively passively - when it came out, 'Splazsh' was a big evolution though. And it does keep rewarding. Both a grower and with some moments of great immediacy.
― the worst dong of the last ten years (Craigo Boingo), Thursday, 17 February 2011 11:38 (thirteen years ago) link
I'm gonna go to that Bristol show on Saturday I think
― Jari Litmandem (DJ Mencap), Thursday, 17 February 2011 12:01 (thirteen years ago) link
i like that he uses bits of cut up youtube vids or w/e, presumably just the audio but if u play mpeg videos in winamp 2.xx u get some chill ass noise so who knows
― nulty dread (nakhchivan), Thursday, 17 February 2011 12:09 (thirteen years ago) link
this is awful.
― gr8080, Friday, 18 February 2011 00:02 (thirteen years ago) link
people don't know how to troll anymore
― ☠ (roxymuzak), Friday, 18 February 2011 00:08 (thirteen years ago) link
whither phil paterson
― ☠ (roxymuzak), Friday, 18 February 2011 00:09 (thirteen years ago) link
this album is kind of infuriating but a few times listening to it it was the best, i don't know if i would recommend repeatedly trying it too many times -- try drugs maybe?
― flopson, Friday, 18 February 2011 00:30 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah i was gonna say, were u hi?
― ☠ (roxymuzak), Friday, 18 February 2011 00:30 (thirteen years ago) link
i hadn't even heard the album when i made this thread, just the first two or three tracks
i don't like it as much as i did over xmas, but this and his recent singles are p good
― roy stride or die (nakhchivan), Friday, 18 February 2011 00:34 (thirteen years ago) link
I really like this
― corey, Monday, 21 March 2011 12:33 (thirteen years ago) link
New 12" is excellent too
― the worst dong of the last ten years (Craigo Boingo), Monday, 21 March 2011 12:35 (thirteen years ago) link
I dunno if the musique concrète comparisons are apt — it just seems like soulful house-influenced electronic with a fastidious approach to sounds. wonder what kind of soft/hardware he used
― corey, Monday, 21 March 2011 12:35 (thirteen years ago) link
also thankful this doesn't have that annoying cod 90s R&B filtered-synth squiggle that you hear on like everything that gets called dubstep or post-ds
― corey, Monday, 21 March 2011 12:56 (thirteen years ago) link
tho thankfully this isn't dubstep or post-dubstep
― kid 606: the nultness (nakhchivan), Monday, 21 March 2011 19:11 (thirteen years ago) link
xp I saw the action figure via this instagram posthttps://www.instagram.com/p/C76cdnDsTqC/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
― brimstead, Monday, 10 June 2024 19:38 (three months ago) link
Liking this a lot on first listen. Getting the Ae vibes and, I'm not sure he'll ever be bucolic, but Cluster as well.
― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Monday, 10 June 2024 19:51 (three months ago) link
definitely
― he/him hoo-hah (map), Monday, 10 June 2024 19:54 (three months ago) link
Idk if this album immediately strikes me as top tier Actress, but I am enjoying it. Lots of sounds from the RA mix arranged in a more fully realized form, but still pretty stripped back.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Monday, 10 June 2024 19:56 (three months ago) link
Makes me want to hear LXXXVIII again though
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Monday, 10 June 2024 19:57 (three months ago) link
in addition to the always sublime fields of ambient mist with various leaves sputtering around, parts of this evoke whispery minimal stuff like giegling, dial, smallville, etc.. <3
― brimstead, Wednesday, 26 June 2024 15:57 (two months ago) link
this goes places
― brimstead, Wednesday, 26 June 2024 16:21 (two months ago) link