ricardo villalobos

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..."