The producer known as ACTRESS and his r&b concrète

havent we already had this convo about james blake, or is this diff somehow

^^

missing u know yr shit and have good taste but 'I can see how people who haven't heard Steve Poindexter and Musique Records and Hieroglyphic Being might find it groundbreaking' is the sort of pass/agg trainspotter drivel that's not rly conducive to good ilx

u will know i have not heard 'Hieroglyphic Being' cuz he is third in yr list and i 'have heard first two of those '

idk about james blake, don't rly care/rate/etc him

there's some talk of actress in one of the rolling dance threads btw, moonship digs it iirc

no whiney weingarteno on this comment but really feel like most ppl that find this treatment of r&b interesting don't actually dig real r&b

this stuff is still pretty aight tho

don't rly care about r&b beyond the big singles yuh

i like music concrete tho

of course it doesn't sound a lot like the former, and the schematic owes little to the latter but yknow it kinda works as shorthand for what he's doing

not sure i get the (any) connection to musique concrete. it sounds like pleasantly spacey/funky idm to me. connect the dots?

"u will know i have not heard 'Hieroglyphic Being' cuz he is third in yr list and i 'have heard first two of those '"

ok well my point still stands, if you can't hear the influence Steve Poindexter's label, Muzique Records, has had on Actress's album Splazsh then etcetc

sorry if it's "pas/agg trainspotter drivel" to actually know my shit about the subject at hand, but when you say something like "this fuckin BURIES the competition" you shouldn't be surprised that somebody else might say, well actually, there's other stuff out there that already sounds like this and does it better

god yr slow

god yr butthurt?

i didn't come here to argue dude, I'll leave your thread be *waves*

tsccchhhh

entrylevs

oh ok, Burial reference, excellent. bravo old chap

still, I'm not so slow as to realize that "rnb concrete" is fucking lame

yeah its kinda a lame thread title trinket to get the spesh addled vagrants like yrself thru the door, all counts towards the admission stats tho

my sympathies, nakhchivan, for post-launch events itt

ikr

missing no just needs to chill a lil, i don't wanna scare off ppl who know more about techno than me

yeah apols for missing your pun. keep the ad homs coming though, you'll be reposted in zing thread in no time

Apparently Actress samples Youtube in his beats, tons of tightly edited low bitrate samples stacked layer upon layer.

It definitely seems like a reasonable comparison to the original Musique Concrete guys.

And I'm a big Hieroglyphic Being fan and don't feel that Actress is at all a bad comparison.

With Jamal its huge amounts material to dig through, with Actress: 2 minute long tracks.

Maybe the argument should be between brevity and long-windedness?

hmmm i don't really dig jamal moss very much and i don't think it's a great comparison unless you fixate on certain aspects of actress and the much better end of jamal moss.

the r&b-ish parts ("purple splazsh", "wrong potion") are the bits i like least. love love love the pleasantly spacy/funky IDM parts ("hubble", "bubble butts", "the kettle men"). i loathe the todd edwards influenced parts.

it didn't make my top 10, but it would've made #11 and if i made a list just on amount of time spent listening this would've been in the top 10.

i have hazyville but haven't really given it a listen ... what about his nonplus release? that was sick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbSd7vgG-JA

^^ sounds more like urban tribe to me than burial or todd e

srsly off topic but jamal moss is 75% wack

as is being detroit/chicago nerd, as anyone who witnessed moonship: the early years will certainly attest to

:)

if i did, i would

Apparently Actress samples Youtube in his beats, tons of tightly edited low bitrate samples stacked layer upon layer.

It definitely seems like a reasonable comparison to the original Musique Concrete guys.

is this so? have heard this said of other producers, but not of cunningham. which may be to say, "i haven't done the research," but what's (not) done is done. and yeah, if true, that working process does make sense of the phrase/thread title. plus helps explain the pleasant fuzziness of the sound.

sounds pleasant but it's a little too clever isn't it, calling albums "hazyville" and stuff to bait the hauntology crew?

i just think he's best when he keeps it light, straightforward and beat oriented

I need to dig the album out again and give it another listen, shifted so much stuff around in my room I've got no idea where it is.

This is one of the few albums this year I felt compelled to own on vinyl.

And yeah, Jamal does have that Sun Ra quality control thing going on. When he's on he's definitely on.

Whereas all the Actress stuff I've heard was at least worth listening to more than once.

Hazyville included, some great shit on there.

i read the Youtube thing as well and it definitely goes to explain the graininess and warmth of the album -- kinda like an extreme update of the vintage sampler aliasing you hear on classic NY boom bap stuff

the Hieroglyphic Being/Muzique comparisons I only make with reference to Splazsh. it's that slightly unhinged, unpredictable approach to drum programming, wildly unquantized percussion patterns on top of straight 4x4 kicks, crunchy bass drums and hi hats that sizzle, and insanely unfathomable synth lines. he def has a more refined sense of melody and song structure that is his own, overall the album strikes me as an IDM dude's take on the abstract US house sound that's been popular over the past couple of years or so, that just so happens to fit in with the current chillwave/hypnagogic zeitgeist. despite not being crazy on the album, it's at least an interesting direction

basically though, I wanna hear more things like "Hubble" or "Paint, Straw and Bubbles", and less like "Senorita" or "Purple Splazsh"

his edit of this on Thriller is cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xceQvaDAl08

the r&b-ish parts ("purple splazsh", "wrong potion") are the bits i like least.

OTM ... if there was $$$ to be made from making techno tributes to Prince then everyone would have been doing it years ago.

re: hazyville, i like the hardcore references in "again the addiction"

and on "crushed", too!

this album is so good & not really r&b at all and i don't think people who don't really like r&b would ever mistake this with r&b. feel like the sounds on it are very tube-ey, i visualize a lot of the lines as orange neon lights, something really linear (yet obviously very contorted) about it. way better than james blake although i didn't get the bfd w/ that thread but i also don't know anything about dance music. i've listened to this album on drugs a lot

moonship what's your top 10

my top 10 favorite albums this year

moonship what are your top 10 favourite albums this year

top 10 albums

demdike stare - liberation through hearing
martyn - fabric 50
ben klock - berghain 04
emeralds - does it look like I'm here?
dBridge & instra:mental - fabriclive 50
flying lotus - cosmogramma
shackleton - fabric 55
shed - the traveller
madlib - medicine show volume 3
anthony shakir - frictionalism

top 10 singles

martyn - is this insanity (remixes)
mmm - nous sommes mmm
wax - 30003
eqd - 04
locussolus - gunship

and other than that it was all from 2009: 2562, martyn, peverelist, zomby, the rest of that crew, wax and eqd sides by shed, scion versions, levon vincent, t++, dettmann and klock, function stuff on sandwell, milton bradley, frozen border, etc etc it all sounded as relevant or more this year as it did last year, and generally much more than what i read about in a lot of other dance music year-end lists :-(

your top 10 is lookin more like a top 5

& thanks

actually i forgot some off of my top 10 list

2562 - demons
2562 - rear window
rustie - sunburst
joker - tron

what's your top 10, flopson?

no dance stuff or anything, and i have difficulty with albums so ten is kind of a stretch but i pretty much love all these

waka flocka flame - flockavelli
e-40 - revenue retrievin
earl sweatshirt - earl
gucci mane - mr zone 6/jewelry selection
nht boyz - power triangle

purling hiss - hissteria
pc worship - s/t lp and 7" on shdwply
pig - magnetic
sex church - 6 songs by sex church
drunkdriver - s/t

this demdike stare is awesome

this didn't leave any impression on me the first couple of times i listened to it. i've been assured that it's a grower, tho not sure i care enough to find this out for myself. it's assuredly better than james blake tho.

missingNO: your mentioning of the "slightly unhinged, unpredictable approach to drum programming [&] wildly unquantized percussion patterns on top of straight 4x4 kicks" brings to mind how psyched I was to have learned about Terrence Dixon back in late '08 through Cunningham himself referring to him (along w/ a bunch of other better-known Detroiters, whose approaches I don't hear quite as strongly in Actress' work) as an influence on the 1-sheet blurb for "Hazyville".

Most of the T. Dixon/Population One stuff released on Metroplex and elsewhere that I've heard (from the mid-'90s to recent) has rhythmically really reminded me of Actress, in terms of the funky misalignments, etc.

(Anybody here into Downliners Sekt? A similar-enough aesthetic to warrant asking...)
http://boomkat.com/downloads/317164-downliners-sekt-hello-lonely-hold-the-nation
http://boomkat.com/downloads/367254-downliners-sekt-we-make-hits-not-the-public

Good to see Moonship's list there.

I love the exchange between nakchivan and missingNO that kicks off this thread!

Incredible album, "Save" has been running through my head all day (or some meager echo of it, memory can't really capture it).

I've been asked to produce the new Lighthouse Family album.

— AZD (@ctress_a) October 8, 2021

The thing about Actress is that his music is always mixed almost entirely in mono.

I realise it's an aesthetic, but I find it really hard to listen to.

I find his music far more challenging than, say, Autechre

Was gonna say that I feel exactly the opposite. I haven’t listened to a lot of Autechre tho, and this thread made me realize I’m only familiar with about half of Actress’ work. I also appreciate the sort of aimless quality of some of his music, which some here seem to regard as a weakness of his style.

wow i got weird on this thread, sorry! i'm still not a huge actress fan but like small doses. generally still think there is more style than substance and i don't find it challenging at all really.

lol i was being unreasonably combative myself, i do like you map <3

hey, thanks brad! i like you too. :)

I love the exchange between nakchivan and missingNO that kicks off this thread!

― the article don, Saturday, 7 November 2020 17:33 (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

i didn't love it at all, it was needlessly hectoring on nakchivan's part (which was apparently their thing despite being a beloved poster so more fool me i guess) and caused several days of psychological torment (yeah, i'm a weak one fr). obv my opinion and the way in which i stated it was shit but idk it did feel a little unsafe there for a minute as a neurodiverse person who has faced a lifetime of bullying (yah i know you don't really gaf about us beyond boilerplate please don't kys platitudes lol but still seems relevant) ... anyway i wish i hadn't stumbled upon this thread in the archives and wish i had never ever posted on this website but what are you gonna do (mods, pls do me a favour and delete/ban my account, ty)

probably my favorite musician of the decade. thick smoke always hanging in the air

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

Actress & Mount Kimbie - 'AZD SURF'

Not really into Mount Kimbie but this is very nice

probably my favorite musician of the decade

After working on my ballots for the 2010s poll I think I agree with you

I didn't totally get Karma & Desire at the time and felt like I was missing something after I read the posts here, but it finally clicked while I listened to it while falling asleep last night. I think now that it has its hooks in me it may eventually replace RIP as my favorite, but time will tell. What a strange and unfriendly record this is. Are the people who compared it to Drukqs just talking about all the piano stuff, or the odd, seemingly random approach to sequencing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4Miu5PuZg

Happy he's back. I like this track, though I remain convinced he'll never again reach the heights of R.I.P.

new album... incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crlGL-2hObw

hit that spdiff

This is great, listening to it constantly.

His set performing with Autechre in Sydney was a trip - began very disjointed and accumulated atmosphere and complexity, a lot like that track above. Dude was BUSY.

https://i.imgur.com/LQmxUqZ.jpg

yeah, excellent album. kinda glad it's not as emotionally intense as the last one.

he’s one of the best

the best. sounding great as always. can’t wait to give it a full listen.

Saw him back at the 2013 Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival at really sick venue that is no more. Was by far the best thing I saw there and was this incredible constantly evolving series of beats and atmosphere that had me thinking he was the closest I'd seen to an Autechre set by someone else.

Them playing together would be amazing! So sad I wasn't in Sydney in time for that show.

really makes the lo-fi/hi-fi distinction meaningless. neither annoyingly polished nor carelessly murky. also, unlike autechre, there's a distinct emotional core that unifies the music. it's also politicized without being didactic. what im saying is, it rocks

can't believe it's been almost 15 years since this thread was started. "r&b concrete" is still an alarmingly concise and accurate description.

How is it politicized?

probably my favorite musician of the decade. thick smoke always hanging in the air

― brimstead, Wednesday, 3 November 2021 17:30 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

one of my faves of the century. new album roolz

it totally roolz. and the deluxe LP edition comes with an lp copy of 88!

Funny, this one didn't immediately strike me as much as previous albums, but I went back to it after reading the praise on this thread and it definitely clicked the second time, enough so that I immediately ordered the LP. I think headphones really helped me appreciate this album, and I'm not typically a headphones kind of person

love this new album and also his recent mix for Mixmag

i really love this album but it always leaves me wanting to listen to Motorbass