Juan Atkins has never had a S&D thread...

some of that stuff just sounds like it's sufficiently sophisticated "intelligent" dub techno/house that would be shopping mall music except that it's too depressing.

your comment is trite and lazy

perhaps you think so. just because something is ultra well produced and lush and coming from a very respected stable/part of the world does not make entertaining, that's my point. there's very little to get excited about and a lot of it is completely useless music for djing with. where is the rhythm?

what was your reason for dislike?

"shopping mall music" is a lazy thing to say. but "completely useless for dj'ing" is, i guess, at least arguable

where is the rhythm vahid?

http://www.dynamicflight.com/avcfibook/communication/3-5.gif

those would all make good UR track titles

haha

i like "guard against daydreaming"

i listened to this again tonight and i think that compared to a lot of dub techno this set of remixes is actually *unusually* rhythmic, especially compared to the other recent batch of echospace releases

Mike Huckaby's S Y N T H Mix

^^ ps everyone is creaming themselves whenever they see this after a track name but imo this new huckaby direction is not that great

The "Starlight" remix was good, if completely by-the-numbers. So yeah, I agree with you.

"Now the dust has settled on the first wave of that Detroit techno thing, it's his music that shines the most."

Ten years ago, I would have not accepted any answer other than "Derrick May", but now, I'm convinced that the most valuable treasure trove lies in Kevin Saunderson's work. Atkins' complaints in the 1994 Wired interview about commercial radio not accepting techno are a bit baffling, considering that KS had supplied the blueprint for radio-friendly techno years earlier.

"by the numbers" is exactly what i thought

Ten years ago, I would have not accepted any answer other than "Derrick May", but now, I'm convinced that the most valuable treasure trove lies in Kevin Saunderson's work. Atkins' complaints in the 1994 Wired interview about commercial radio not accepting techno are a bit baffling, considering that KS had supplied the blueprint for radio-friendly techno years earlier.

thing is they really do set their own stalls out so well, each one covering an area (not in terms of what their tracks do but in how they sound doing it) the other two tend don't so much (with some exceptions no doubt e.g. when i heard Atkins 'Other Side Of Life' i wished Inner City had sounded a bit more like that)

i don't know if Atkins had in mind the kind of music Saunderson hit with when he said that but yeah if he meant 'why can't we hear 'Game One' or 'Star Dancer' during drive time?' then altho i agree with him that would be 'unrealistic'

"by the numbers" very meaningful. good to see the trite criticisms shot down convincingly with that ray of meaning.

RS: 12 | Guns n' Roses: Chinese Democracy

They had this ranking all gift-wrapped and ready to go by September, didn't they?

whoa, wrong thread, sorry!

"by the numbers" is at least saying something about the music in relation to other musics, whereas "shopping mall music" just tells us about the listener's social prejudices

in relation to the listener's opinion of other musics you mean?

a lot of shopping malls play a sort of house music that you don't hear in clubs too much, which is heavy on melody, eg all those "bargrooves" compilations. I agree with the above poster that dub house/techno in 2008 (esp the Detroit guys like Scott/Huckaby etc) is veering towards this territory, albeit with a great deal more respect given. it's some seriously gloopy shit which is great to listen to but can't imagine dancing to it apart from perhaps way afterhours.

As to whether calling something shopping mall music denotes prejudice, think you're jumping the gun there.

think you're grasping at straws there

great counter argument, ffs, for someone who rebukes so freely you also rebuke pretty lazily.

you honestly think the "starlight" remixes set sounds like bargrooves?

sorry to be lazy, but if that's honestly what you think i'm not going to bother putting in the work

No I honestly think what I said above. Don't bother putting in the work then, for all I know you're actually asleep. The sheer amount of times "this is wrong" is thrown about without any worthwhile discussion on dance threads around here lately is a fucking joke...

you said it's "shopping mall music", i'm telling you it's not, because unlike isolee or lindstrom or michael mayer you're not actually going to hear those in a shopping mall (i heard all three of those in major chain mall stores this year)

you're telling me it's "more melodic" than other dub techno. actually, i disagree. i won't argue that the source material ("starlight" itself) is more melodic than most dub techno, but compared to other recent high-profile releases (like, say, "the coldest season" or the recent mikkel metal album) the remixes of starlight are pretty spaced out.

but even compared to monolake or maurizio tracks ...

I said it's equivalent to shopping mall music...techno with no purpose.

also you've way reduced several other points too, where did I say it was "more melodic than other dub techno"?????

a lot of shopping malls play a sort of house music ... which is heavy on melody ... dub house/techno in 2008 ... is veering towards this territory

maybe if you hate all ambient techno, this really isn't the right thread for u?

http://videodetective.com/photos/118/004966_3.jpg

x-post

fine vahid, you tell me what I'm saying by selectively editing and then argue with that. far be it from me to stop your narcoleptic zings.

(tim otm)

oh, ok, here's your original with MEANING PRESERVED!

a lot of shopping malls play a sort of house music that you don't hear in clubs too much, which is heavy on melody, eg all those "bargrooves" compilations. I agree with the above poster that dub house/techno in 2008 (esp the Detroit guys like Scott/Huckaby etc) is veering towards this territory, albeit with a great deal more respect given. it's some seriously gloopy shit which is great to listen to but can't imagine dancing to it apart from perhaps way afterhours.

anyway what proportion of juan atkins infinti / model 500 output is dancing vs listening music, do you think?

I must say those sound like way upmarket shopping malls. I associate Bargrooves with hairdressers and cafes more. Dub-techno with neither: I sort of think of dub-techno as th stuff they play at vinyl stores as a counterpoint to the uptempo stuff. Or maybe that's just the only place I tend to hear it in public.

I think my point is pretty clear but you've making it overspecific to this particularly Huckaby remix when I was speaking more generally as the part in brackets shows and my specification of "dub house" does too. I think there is a lot of very well sound designed stuff which is functionless listening music, which runs the risk of just being "lush" and little more.

My point wasn't necessarily related to comparing this music with other dub-techno...as for Atkins/Model 500 I'm not sure I'd care to specify on that because it's not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make. Again I took up on the Huckaby remix cos it's an example of what I'm talking about, not specifically cos of the Model 500 connection.

When people are making 4/4 music that doesn't actually work in clubs it's kinda suspicious...not least when people heap praise upon it endlessly. Obv some of eg Scott's productions are not like this, but the tendency is there. (NB I'd also add someone like Lawrence to the mix here, or hell Move D)

maybe I should have said "shopping mall muzak"

I'm not suspicious of the music itself, a little bit suspicious of (or at least distant from) the discourse that automatically bigs it up.

It's Boomkat discourse basically.

But my suspicion is probably not productive: I love the Move D and Benjamin Brunn album but resisted checking it out for quite a while because of this.

I guess the other reason that "bargrooves" doesn't work as a point of comparison for me is that that implies a certain communal functionalism (even if that functionalism is its unthreatening pleasantness) whereas what I infer in people's fanboyism for neuvo dub-techno is an identification with its air of privation.

I sort of feel like this discourse wants a replacement for Pop Ambient albums, which it can't continue to endorse given Kompakt are so overground now.

To be sure, Kompakt occupied this role circa 2000/2001.

In other words the test is: what is the techno that you can buy at "out music" record stores? It's definitely Echocord etc. at the moment. They stopped stocking Kompakt et. al. in 2003.

the techno you can buy at "out music" record stores is dubstep

Ha yeah that too.

Not necessarily a diss - obv I liked Kompakt in 2001!

"whereas what I infer in people's fanboyism for neuvo dub-techno is an identification with its air of privation"

privation analogous in meaning to "out music" record stores?

i think tim means exclusivity

or maybe he really means privation, i dunno ... though i doubt there's anybody who seriously thinks dub-techno is a healthy aesthetic ordeal in the same way ∅ records are

i have a suspicion about nuevo dub techno because it's like, "we're here. again?" like lots of other techno and house this year. however i appreciate the way the arc of time has descended on the music and a de facto lazy suspicion (my own, i mean) is often proved wrong by the quality of the tracks. it's not "shabby chic" ya know? faux aged or reliant on credibility thru association. it's like real chic: expand on or within the details of an artist/label's output, create a micro-genre, and do it with exceedingly high quality. like the mikkel metal album for example or even the "starlight" remixes in question or andy stott or the coldest season, which has become one of those go-to albums for me when i can't decide what else to play.

xp, ha

A little bit exclusivity, but also "privation" in the sense of, I dunno, isolationism. But obv not as extreme as a lot of stuff in out music stores. This stuff is the out-music equivalent of chill-out perhaps; which makes dubstep the out-music equivalent of those bass mixes designed for playing from your soup-car speakers while patrolling the block.

it's so formulaic, some of the dub techno, even when I like something on say, Sandwell District it's like, this is just a big slab of music with a very clear dimension of gloom to it but there's no multifacted way to like it, it's just so easy to praise lazily.

maybe it just depends on whether you like your musical pleasure with rigor or your pleasure to just be floaty and nice (have the words "warm blanket of fuzz" ever been used to describe this music?). depends on the day, right? btw, my listening model is almost always daydream-mode. xp, again.

you know, i'm generally skeptical of most dub techno because i feel like Basic Channel did it best. however....

"a lot of shopping malls play a sort of house music that you don't hear in clubs too much, which is heavy on melody, eg all those "bargrooves" compilations. I agree with the above poster that dub house/techno in 2008 (esp the Detroit guys like Scott/Huckaby etc) is veering towards this territory, albeit with a great deal more respect given. it's some seriously gloopy shit which is great to listen to but can't imagine dancing to it apart from perhaps way afterhours.

― Local Garda"

is straight nonsense. perhaps it is best experienced when played on a system that allows the bass to properly pummel you, but that shit when done right is deep dance music 100%. Patrice Scott (can't see why he is getting lumped in with dubby shit) and Mike Huckaby are definitely doin it right.

"I sort of think of dub-techno as th stuff they play at vinyl stores as a counterpoint to the uptempo stuff. Or maybe that's just the only place I tend to hear it in public.

― Tim F"

this probably goes without saying, but you are simply listening to the wrong disc jockeys.