Aphex Twin's _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ is ten years old

i admit, it is possible you understand timbre, though i'm still not convinced tbh

anyway next time just tell me to fuck off w/o the sputtering outrage and the disparaging of my reading comprehension

Amazing how anti-ambient this discussion became. More solid evidence, I guess, that this album just does not do the job!

\(o_O)/

8===D ~ ~ ~ \(o_O)/

They tried to assassinate my character, they tried to assassinate my swag

how about "spectral nature." let's use that instead of "timbral nature." are we happy now?

What if crut was standing right next to the mockingbird, but iglu was next to the foghorn?

"that mockingbird is quiet, but the foghorn out there is far away"

timbreland feat JT nely futoda
release pirate themed "booty shiver"

I was just curious about how timbre is converted to digital signal if it cannot be measured or quantified.

^

I guess he's saying that it isn't converted because timbre is entirely phenomenological in nature, like color or taste. we kind of just "make that part up" when we experience sound... somehow. i don't really get it, but i'm prepared to admit that i don't know much about the subject.

timbre is a combination of a bunch of different aspects of sound, we might not systematically quantify it, but we do have ways of describing it and it makes sense to analyze it or make observations about it just like we observe the use of color in paintings. we assign "colors" of noise based on how the sound is distributed on the frequency spectrum.

I've had this album playing quietly in the background as the skim this thread. I can hear it, but only if I want to hear it.

Hear a disc-rotted version of SAW II

though it quickly devolved into a clusterfuck, i'm glad that somebody took a whack at this album. i say that because i've never quite known what to make of it. it's often lovely and does generate a pleasant sonic atmosphere, suitable to gazing lazily off into space while imagining slow-motion industrial processes. despite that basic appeal, it often reminds me of the new-age meditation records a friend of mine used to own, simple recordings of vibrating bowls or drawn-out synth noodles. like SAW II, they were lovely and rather indistinct, useful in the provision of a certain atmosphere, but usually too elementary to reward active engagement outside their intended, meditative context.

i often wonder about time, place and chemical context in trying to come to grips with aphex twin's ambient music. at the time, this seemed to be a specific culture's chillout soundtrack of choice, the washed-out shadow of the dance music its audience might have been enmeshed in a few hours before putting it on. its appeal in dilated circumstances is undeniable, and i can see why EDM fans would choose this version of tones & drones over, say, sitar noodling, tibetan bowls, new age synths, or w/e. what i can't see is how SAW II is all that much more interesting or worthy of attention than than any other generally pleasant environmental music.

certain tracks do stand out (e.g., "stone in focus"), though given the context, it may miss the point to praise them for it. most do not. it seems to me that SAW II lacks the basic musicality and close focus on timbral and textural detail that makes eno's ambient 1 so rewarding, but i suppose that's subjective. i like it, on the whole, but it's hard for me to justify the idea that it deserves special recognition outside its obvious significance in its moment and influence on others. which in turn brings up the subjectivity of all artistic appreciation, the ridiculousness of any attempt to objectively "justify" any of it. people seem to think a great deal of it, and i suppose that has to be enough.

eno's ambient 1 is apples and oranges to this in my head. the comparable eno record is "on land" imo

^^ otm

It's a fair point to compare this with new age albums, but then why can't we lump Eno, Koner, Labradford, and plenty of others in there too? If you ask me, these distinctions between "new age" and "real" music have to do with marketing and image more than anything else. I heard an album by Zero 7 about 10-12 years ago that I felt could have easily have been a generic album of elevator music made explicitly to be innocuous background sound. But that's not the way it was marketed at all, and thus, not the way it was received.

eno's ambient 1 is apples and oranges to this in my head. the comparable eno record is "on land" imo

granted. i picked ambient 1 mostly because i like it a lot. agree that ambient 4 has more in common w/ SAW II - especially in generally sounding like what you might hear with your head underwater.

Another comparable to SAW2 that occurs to me is some of John Fahey's late-period ambient/droney playing. "Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today" and "Untitled with Rain" from Red Cross, especially. Maybe some aspects of Womblife.

I'm not that familiar with Eno's ambient work, but from what I can remember about his albums and those with Cluster, Roedelius etc that I've had the opportunity to sample, is that while they do compare to certain moments on SAWII, Aphex's album is so much more variegate in mood. Each track is drastically different in its imagery, making it far more than a new wave chill out record. There are tracks that are genuinely jarring or frightening, others that are plaintive, lonely, sinister, crepuscular, claustrophobic, airy... a real chocolate box of ideas. No two tracks make me think of the same thing, in fact I recall inventing my own titles for each one, based on what it would make me think of - e.g. 'child emperor', 'skywalkers', 'dawn battle', 'dwarf machine', 'grass snake' blahblahblah. Don't think I could do that with any other ambient record I've heard.

It's a fair point to compare this with new age albums, but then why can't we lump Eno, Koner, Labradford, and plenty of others in there too? If you ask me, these distinctions between "new age" and "real" music have to do with marketing and image more than anything else.

otm. i don't intend to disparage new age or any other form of ambient/environmental music. just pointing out that there's an awful lot of this music out there, much of it is quite successful on its own terms, and that the appreciation of aphex twin's ambient music rarely seems to take much account of this larger context. the same applies to eno et al. i guess i'm wondering what the evaluative criteria for assessing this sort of stuff might be. beyond "i just like it", i mean.

the same questions can be asked of minimalist abstract art, i suppose, with as little hope of resolution. what makes a rothko more intrinsically interesting than any other smear of appealing color? once you strip away the secondary, "extra-textural" considerations (the artist's stated intent, historical/cultural context, ideas of importance and influence), it's hard to say beyond one's personal perception of beauty or specialness.

...Aphex's album is so much more variegate in mood. Each track is drastically different in its imagery, making it far more than a new wave chill out record. There are tracks that are genuinely jarring or frightening, others that are plaintive, lonely, sinister, crepuscular, claustrophobic, airy... a real chocolate box of ideas. No two tracks make me think of the same thing...

this is an interesting point. it's true that SAW II is much less consistent in tone than the ambient albums that preceded it, less seemingly interested in conjuring and maintaining a smooth sonic environment. tracks like "rhubarb" pick away at my attention rather insistently (and unpleasantly). this quality makes it harder to "fall into" than the ambient albums i like best.

lol, i mean "[radiator]" or w/e. THE SECOND ONE. IT GOES BONKY BONK.

I've never really listened to this album as an "ambient" album, as such. It's too varied (which makes it to jarring), too discordant, too ... tactile to confuse with sonic mush. Like, did I see someone upthread deride this album as being formulated with synth pre-sets? Because that's not what I hear. I hear a lot more diversity, at lot more rough around the edges bits, which is one of Eno's key strategies, too. Keep it dark. "On Land" is a good comparison, because that album is weird, dark and diverse, too, though it's more, I dunno, organic sounding than this one, which is a purely (probably) electronic piece, albeit deliciously analog in nature.

I had never knowingly heard "Selbstportrait" until yesterday, but the element that caught my ears as SAWII comparative was not the melodies or prettiness but the pop and crackle of the vinyl in the rip I downloaded.

I think the first two Selbtportraits have kind of a lo-fi sound regardless of what format you get them in. They're definitely a good comparison (as is a lot of Roedelius stuff in general)

Obviously the occasional beat or two is another element that sets SAWII apart from many of its predecessors.

being boring shite is another element that sets SAWII apart from many of its predecessors

;-)

I'm not that familiar with Eno's ambient work
― Scary Move 4 (dog latin), Friday, June 8, 2012 1:33 PM

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"...it often reminds me of the new-age meditation records a friend of mine used to own, simple recordings of vibrating bowls or drawn-out synth noodles. like SAW II, they were lovely and rather indistinct, useful in the provision of a certain atmosphere, but usually too elementary to reward active engagement outside their intended, meditative context."

Contenderizer, I don't really understand this line of thought... I mean, do you know of a piece called "Music on a Long Thin Wire" by Alvin Lucier? On one level, it's just, well, a recording of the hum made by a huge wire strung across an auditorium. On the other, it's a sublime and enveloping sound environment that's undeniably engaging. Is this music "simple" or "complex"? The set-up and execution is simple, sure, but there is a level of "holy shit" awe that I'd argue is pretty complex. We can have complex responses to simply created music, in other words, and ambient is a genre that I think is very ends-oriented--if the music takes me there, I don't worry a bit about what's behind it. You bring up Rothko later as well, and I think his popularity w/r/t other minimalist color-field painters is indeed hard to explain by formal assessment alone--but I also think it's no accident that he's so beloved and popular. It's the fact that "one's personal perception of beauty and specialness" is shared by so many persons.

I often think SAWII an ambient record like Metal Machine Music is an ambient record.

I kinda think of SAWII as an ambient record like I think of Victorialands as an ambient record.

Which is not entirely facetious, as that was the path that I first came to both SAWs, from the ethereal end of 'gaze and the dronier end of drone.

And it strikes me as the same kind of thing - lots of shoegaze, etheregoth, drone, whatever bands have since tried to do what the Cocteau Twins did, and they never really got it right, because they got the drifting prettiness down OK, but they never got the undercurrent of terror that is shot through the Cocteau's ecstatic beauty.

SAWII often strikes me the same way - that it's not just chillout, there's often an undercurrent of sadness, or creepiness, or aggression, or more often good old Celtic hiraeth - sorry, that's me letting the ~personality~ get in the way of the music again - but this is an undercurrent through all of Aphex Twin's music, the way that that element does come through, no matter what style he's working in. It's not that I'm lionising a record *because* it's a Richard D James record, it's because all of Mr D James' records have that vein of hiraeth which I find so beautiful and appealing.

Well, to explain a bit I don't think I've heard enough ambient in the first place but have a strong idea of the type and types of music (so when it goes blurs into Lucier and devotional buddhist chanting).

However I do think of both albums as very unsettling except there is far more variety in SAWII -- but that's only because MMM is a set of continuous streams of sounds and SAWII has different tracks/melodies.

But what both do share is a strong core sound with undercurrents that undermine it at the sametime -- so I agree that in SAWII that there is an undercurrent of creepiness/agression in a seemingly elegiac core whereas MMM has an undercurrent of serenity in an aggressive and very nasty core set of sounds.

The comparison to MMM is intriguing. One of my favorite Eno observations was his connecting ambient music with the overdrive of metal. Basically, once music goes far enough in the other direction, toward in the red noise and aggression, it sort of transmutes into a similar warm blanket of ambient sound.

But what both do share is a strong core sound with undercurrents that undermine it at the sametime -- so I agree that in SAWII that there is an undercurrent of creepiness/agression in a seemingly elegiac core whereas MMM has an undercurrent of serenity in an aggressive and very nasty core set of sounds.

This seems very otm to me. I've always thought MMM was a very warm/approachable/listenable record and wondered if it was just me being weird.

For me, I guess ambient has never equalled "chillout", so while I see those undertones of aggression/creepiness/etc in SAW2--and they're a big parrt of what I love about the record--they don't somehow make it not ambient for me. I don't look to ambient to relax, I look to it to immerse myself.

Well, all music can be ambient music, then. I'm not averse to that reading.

I don't think those undertones of aggression/creepiness/sadness/hiraeth make SAW2 *not ambient* - I think that they make it good, interesting, evocative, lasting ambient as opposed to churned out by-the-yard stuff.

Yeah, that's what I said a few posts above. This is no guy pressing random pre-programmed mush pads.

Anybody who grew up playing Metroid will feel absolutely no need to justify SAW II's beauty.

http://gamingirresponsibly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Samus.png

http://gamingirresponsibly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Samus.png

Why is Richard wearing a bikini again?

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdqVIqn-Pfnp1f2p-uheXFP40hgUrnuid68KB-5YMP5Anhk6j9cw

had planned to do a big is this cunt banned yet? compilation but the obviousness of the referents outweighed the effort of the compilation

Weirdly, listening to Loveless makes me think of Super Metroid. SAWII is synonymous with Five Letters From An Eastern Empire in my mind

wll u know yr the same old hangman who ratnalises hope