Luomo: The Present Lover

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what're the sources?

anyway i love presents but i'm not sure if i love luomo; i haven't heard the new one but it seems sort of wibbly

In any case my only point w/ stirmonster was that his labelling of the Delay stuff seemed dismissive, lumping it in with the rest of Chain Reaction stable and causing me to wonder what he was hearing in it. I questioned his characterization because I didn't want someone stumbling on this thread who hadn't heard Delay to think that "techno dub" is all there was to it; most of it is beatless. How on earth did I "keep chipping away"? I made one terse post! Then clarified, and invited stirmonster's thoughts, but he never replied.

1) I like it more *and* less than the first album, if that makes sense. It's definitely a compromise - he's given up some things in order to do other things eg. the general pattern here is of really propulsive, obviously disco grooves with intermittent stretches of noisy interruptions vs the really quite organic and comparatively mistake-free glitch-house landscapes of Vocalcity. I don't know if the conscious-mistakes really do it for me that much (eg. I'm a bit ambivalent about the new version of "Tessio", which feels more forced than the original) but the propulsiveness is really wonderful in a way that doesn't contradict the beauty of the first album - especially when he just goes for straightforward tearjerker glory on "So You", "Could Be Like This", "What Good" and "Shelter" (which should be the last song on every mixtape ever).

2) It does have a very strong feel of good taste/catwalk fashion/magazine spread refinement to it. I agree with Ben that this ain't necessarily a bad thing - and I like EBTG as well. Actually this in context with Digital Disco (and maybe Coloma and related stuff) is a shift within the broader microhouse scene towards a conscious, dance-oriented version of New Pop. In my head I'm calling this stuff "neuromanticism".

!

That's some kinda genius (like yer post in general). But is the Gibson reference intentional or not? Compare the cover of the album above with:

http://www.fyifrance5.com/gibson1.jpg

The Gibson reference is 'cos I just recently read Neuromancer - although obviously my meanining is different to his (although in some ways the entire microhouse project is about problematising the Wintermute/Neuromancer split, arguing that it is not inevitable but is still necessary, therefore must be approached consciously, or even like it is an uncertain hero-quest). The pun is too good to be wasted on just one meaning though.

See, this is what happens when I only have mp3s. ;-)

The pun is too good to be wasted on just one meaning though.

Soytenly. :-)

great album

What the hell does William Gibson have to do with Luomo?

problematising the Wintermute/Neuromancer split

EH?

Will the Luomo album sound better than the new Dandy Warhols clip?

Tessio always reminded me of the bass lines of 'Love Action/Don't you want me' Human League with vocals by the Manhattan Transfer. Still a beautiful traxxx.

Will the bomb drop with this album, or will it just be a fart in a bathtub?

But Electroclash? Why? Just cuz it's retro-80's?

I do like the way it looks like she just woke up, right next to me.

Interestingly, microhouse tends to be rather coy about highlighting the new media implemented. If you want do that whole body/digital (i.e. Wintermute/Case) interface/divide, I wonder whether Donna Haraway is the missing metaphoric link, or at least Sadie Plant.

I just wouldn't say that LUOMO is about 'leaving the meat behind', is all.

But the term is catchy - I gotta admit.

(what's with that hero-quest idea tho?)

Does anyone have .mp3s of this Without the copy-protection bleeps?

Argh, Michael, please don't spend too much time thinking about this, as I think I said the first time the cybercult reference is a red herring - I just want to steal the pun. The link I made b/w microhouse and Neuromancer was joking (I just wrote something that tried to explicate it and then deleted it b/c it looked so silly).

"Does anyone have .mp3s of this Without the copy-protection bleeps?"

For the first few songs I just assumed they were part of the production!

"Having finally heard this...it's all right, I guess. But I'm sorta bemused as to what makes Luomo so specifically special or unique in general. Or he is meant to be?"

Um... amazingly luscious and emotive disco a la Armand Van Helden's "Flowerz"? Strictly speaking The Present Lover sounds much less unique than Vocalcity; rather than a new strain of house music this is more like an intensification of house's most central properties, a recreation that can potentially surpass the original formula (see what Reynolds was saying recently about The Associates' relationship to Bowie or My Bloody Valentine's relationship to JAMC - although I don't Luomo's recreation is as radical as in those cases).

This is why I find the self-conscious use of digital errors a bit distracting - as I was sorta saying before the album is better the simpler it gets, the closer it gets to "perfect" house music, all glorious warm basslines, scintillating synth riffs and sighing vocals (apart from the untouchable "Shelter", my current favourites are "Could Be Like This" and "What Good" for these reasons).

In a funny way the most representative track is "The Visitor", despite being beatless, because or how it takes all the ecstastic trembly joy of dance music and seems to compress and intensify it, like ecstatic trembly joy is a very rare property that's usually sold in diluted amounts but Luomo has the keys to the laboratory.