ricardo villalobos

"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 ..."

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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