James Blake, Mt Kimbie, CD/SD

games is 80s retro stylings, james blake and mt kimbie are looking forward not back

cutty calls it, consider it cut(t)

this is the games jam anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXWIVLrHdI8

pariah is similar to james blake and kimbie

cutty otm

*frantically packs all worldly belongings into a suitcase, grabs a fedora and pulls it down over eyes, sniffles, suppresses a tear, takes one last mournful look upon thread, exits*

how is that possible that someone made dupstep that is more boring than burial

how is it possible that your actual opinion is more boring than your attempted zing

i think you misunderstand the term "zing"

how is that possible that someone made dupstep that is more boring than burial

crazy talk (^^^^^^^^^^^^), but whatevs.

(the "burial is boring" part, i mean).

anyway, challop noted

my problem with blake (haven't listened to mt kimble) & stuff like this is that i think the 'r&b influence' is even less present & contextually interesting in his stuff than it was in burial's stuff, outside of "archangel" -- i keep reading people talking about like, when the bass drops in this blake joint & the space opens up in that blake joint and i don't really hear what's interesting about, for instance, the 'false ending' of sorts in "i only know" -- taste is taste obv, but still i don't see what the "ideas" here are

& i know that this sort of comparing apples & oranges, or at least that this kinda dubstep (does it have a genre name? i legit don't know) & purple/wonky stuff have grown out of the same seed but now aim to do some very different things, but in stuff like joker & guido i can see the influence of shit like timbaland & other rap production & see where those dudes have used that as a launch point for their own ideas -- purple/wonky stuff seems to me like the influences are more synthesized & put to use in a more interesting & 'better' way than blake/kimble

but maybe i'm searching for things that aren't there, idk

i hear a lot of r&b and rap production influence in blake/kimbie, and maybe it's just a matter of perspective but i find their beats to be way fresher and more interesting than the stuff that's more obviously influenced by timbo/southern rap beats.

the r&b thing is pretty obvious in tracks like these below, but what really gets me about mount kimbie is their sense of structure and space. the tracks are relatively spare, but everything is exactly where it needs to be, nothing is extraneous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGvuw4s01TU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4JdN6gwotc

maybe kimbie & blake vs joker & guido is a minimal/maximal divide, or introverted/extroverted

idk, i love the xx -- maybe it's more about digging "sound construction" & the use of space -- i find that i like when rap/r&b productions utilize space creatively, but maybe not a whole sub-genre of music that's about the use of space

there's definitely an ambient quality to Kimbie, which is something I like about them, but it sounds like that's not your thing.

such awful music

i feel a dance/rnb purist vs. indie dilettantes (including myself in latter) vibe to this thread. i saw blake compared to htdw the other day and while i felt that was off base, i guess maybe blake/kimbie et al are, at least for me, slightly more about atmosphere than dancing, although upthread that dude talks about blake killing a dancefloor, which, honestly, i feel like i'd have to see to believe.

when i listen to this (micro-step? ughhh) i find myself constantly enthralled by the tiny little details that jump out; when i listen to something like a crazy cousinz mix (nb i'm horribly out of 'step' with most purple/wonky/uk funky discourse) i tend to focus more on the whole track and how it moves

baja what do you dislike about it?

Running with this contrast, you could say Blake/Kimbie and Joker/Guido have different intentions for their music while drawing on similar sound palettes. Jordan talks about introvert vs extrovert; I think home vs "out" also makes sense here. Kimbie especially fall into the post-ecstatic ambience of Burial etc. and I think they do it very well; the best songs on Crooks and Lovers have a more interesting construction than Burial's shuffle+smear though I wouldn't say they have quite the same emotional impact. Purple-wow tracks are plugged in to the energy of hanging out in the street, dancing in the club; listening to them at home feels almost inappropriate.

Blake's music is kind of in the middle for me - I can see it being more danceable than Kimbie, but to me it's less compelling somehow. I haven't yet heard a Blake track I really dig on (well, maybe "Footnotes"). Bear in mind I'm an "indie dilettante" in uptown churl's parlance.

Yeah i feel like Blake is being slightly over-hyped for what he's done so far. For me he hasn't produced anything that's up to the standard of Mount Kimbie's first EP.

i would agree w/ that having relistened to CMYK in light of this thread's revival

i bet he's going to blow up when he eventually makes his piano & untreated vocals record

fwiw not feeling the new one at all upon first listen. honestly my favorite blake moment is his remix of MK's "maybes"

i don't think pariah is nearly as interesting as these guys btw. more danceable, sure, but his sounds and ideas are way more stock.

(i do like the dubstepped-up amens on that new track though)

"crooks and lovers" = lamb (remember lamb?) for 2010

except it's not corny bullshit?

(i didn't remember lamb, i had to youtube it)

Seeing Mount Kimbie tonight :D

Hope they don't sound like 2010's equivalent to Lamb, though.

uh

it's the less tracky, song-oriented, wistful defanged indie home-listening version of popular dance music

how is it not - by definition - corny bullshit?

what do you mean by "defanged" exactly?

they don't really write "songs"

i mean if mt kimbie bit your leg it wouldn't hurt (unlike if, say, dizzee rascal bit your leg)

they do too write "songs"

with words? that you can sing along to? like what?

do all songs have words?

I do actually sing along to "Maybes". Sounds pretty weird but whatever

yeah i mean noone wanted to say "IDM" did they ...

still, a little disappointed we're revisiting this debate in 2010. baja do you only listen to "pure" forms of every genre? or do you only listen to dj mixes of club tracks?

I'm probably not especially qualified to make this assertion, but it does seem that Lamb, as a poppy-ish, more fluffy take of drum n' bass as a post dn'b thins maps on pretty well to the fact that mount kimbie is a poppy, more fluffy take on dubstep, as a post-dubstep thing.

it's the less tracky, song-oriented, wistful defanged indie home-listening version of popular dance music
Can't help but agree with this, though it doesn't impede my enjoying it.

Okay, I haven't actually heard their album yet, so who knows.

i don't see it as reviving any old debate so much as ongoing trolling stretching from crap like "microgoth" and "soft sad techno" all the way to abominations like this thread.

the jr boys had 1 good song, get over it

oh no he dint!

<3

Oh great vahid's "home listening" rant again

xpost to baja

haha ok man if it makes u feel good inside troll up this thread

fwiw i love listening to hardcore dance music at home. i hate the idea that all home music has to be low-key or something

but obviously there are extra-musical concerns playing out here, so, yeah.

would lounge in a chillout room playing maybes

ok, first of all, this isn't about home listening vs hardcore dance. seeing as my all-time favorite label is mo'wax (closely followed by various ambient techno labels from UK / detroit) and i own more than 80% of the catalog, i think that's a bit of a red herring.

really, i'm just opposed to music that suxx.

truth is, these days anybody can slap some heavy grainy washed-out noise effects on a soft-baked, half-assed, underwritten pastiche of actual good music and then call it witch house, chillwave, post-dubstep, what have you. and people will just hoover it up the way they hoover up any sort of design whatever that references midcentury stuff (and i say that as somebody who has books on case study houses) or any sort of clothing whatever that is vaguely associated with heritage or americana.

so yeah, obviously some extra-musical concerns playing out here because i can't fathom how anybody could find anything intra-musical to like about this shit.

what i really want to do is precisely articulate why i think, say, mo'wax and boards of canada are legitimate expressions of this impulse and why

basically it just comes down to invention and novelty, i guess. and when i hear this stuff there's no shock of the new or anything, it's just like "oh, look, someone made a chillwave version of uk garage" and then i just get that same creeping feeling of lameness i get when i read interviews with these guys and they list their influences like "terry riley, grizzly bear, the xx, joker, todd edwards" OMG

that makes more sense. for me, i'd been checking out dubstep etc. for a few years, and i was interested but nothing really caught me, and it's not something i ever hear when out dancing (well, at this point there are a couple dubstep nights around here, but it's something you really have to seek out).

when i heard mount kimbie it was actually a revelation, i realized it was exactly the version of this music i'd been looking for. really musical, incredibly detailed, organic sounds. it's not really a surprise since i've always been a sucker for the artier "home listening" side of dance music, so if that's what offends you on a philosophical level, fine. but the "intra-musical" stuff is precisely what is so strong about this band to me.

so maybe i meant "that makes less sense"

so you like this music better because it's more musical

thanks geir

cause rap is just people talking over other people's beats, right?

the people want ART

ok "musical" is not a very helpful term, but i use it to mean tasteful (in a good way) and good at their craft, good at making everything have an effect, good at making decisions. i think i started saying that because drummers toss that term around to describe other drummers.