Plaid - C/D S/D

okay so I sorta gave up on these guys after Spokes, but I decided to grab Scintilli and I'll be damned, this is like everything I want out of a Plaid album (including being LESS THAN 70 MINUTES LONG). are the next two as good as this?

Last two are great. Plaid are cursed by consistency and it seems people lost interest in them. Higlhlights : nafovanny,
Wallet, clocks and the first track on the newer one which has a stranger things vibe

I started off with a copied cassette of Rest Proof Clockwork and when I got the CD never bothered with the end, so I've gone for nearly 20 years of listening to it without hearing the gorgeous hidden track at the end.

ah man that is such a beautiful tune. I can't believe it was just chucked on the end like that. This era is my favourite by them

i've fallen in love with the black dog's "otaku" recently. never got into any plaid albums, despite major love for "object orient". i should try again.

Clocks is one of their finest late period songs. Last two are worth checking out; they fly under the radar but these guys do their thing very well

Clocks is an amazing track. Hell, it might be my _favorite_ Plaid track, but I’m really into somewhat traditional IDM tracks that get occasional club play (e.g. LFO “Freak”).

Oh, Assult on Precinct Zero got club play too. Man, Plaid is super underrated.

Now that I’m thinking about it, the only other track I can think of is the acid edit of Windowlicker. I guess it’s a small genre. 😂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-oVgjE2i4c

great remix

Fucking love that track.

yeah my favourite. plaid are basically my favourite

Thought it was kinda cute how they made a stranger things style track on their last album. Mind you it ruled!

Also one of the plaid guys partner is Mara Carlyle who is so good. They remixed one of her tracks too

I really love the one track that starts as sort of an ambient cut-up collage and then suddenly transforms into hyperspeed Sonic the Hedgehod music

"Dang Spot" I think it's called

I've been on a real Plaid tip lately. Kind of felt like their last few albums were pale retreads of their previous stuff - same sound, fewer ideas - but I've had a large jumbled-up playlist going on in the background and it's still phenomenal stuff with plenty of character.

Would be great to do a Plaid poll, although it would throw into question whether to include Black Dog stuff too.

dont have much of plaid, just spokes.
i need to get more.
ordered the 2 new black dog albums this week.
one is ambient, the other is beats.
really looking forward to hearing them.

Spokes is where their sound started to consolidate a bit. It's a fun album but I'd say their peak was on Restproof Clockwork and parts of Double Figure.

yea Spokes strikes me as the "if you can only get one Plaid album, don't get this one" album

have to say I dig the new Plaid albums quite a bit. I get what DL is saying but I don't really mind a 'retread' of a style which no one else is really able to replicate. plus the new albums are short. which I think is a good thing. even their classic 90s stuff has chunks of filler on it.

definitely filler. the earlier Black Dog and Plaid albums all had short interludes (but they were good interludes). Restproof Clockwork is the all-killer front-to-back best album, but the first four songs on Double Figure beat pretty much everything on it before the album dwindles into some slightly thin, noodly nonsense

Dog Latin otm - spokes is the least essential plaid release and a fitting name - sounds like they’re treading in the mud.

The last two are underrated tho (particularly the latest). Very few electronic artists have as divine melodies as plaid or as much commitment to making abstract ideas tangible.

P brane EP remains essential as well

Reachy Prints has Wallet and Matin Lunaire

I saw them play Wallet in a forest in California once. it was good.

Wallet is so good

omg I just had a big epiphany regarding the title Not For Threes... It's a reference to their split from Black Dog, when they were "three". The subsequent release then was "For Twos"

Would be great to do a Plaid poll, although it would throw into question whether to include Black Dog stuff too.

You should do this! It'd be the excuse I'd need to listen to their post-Spokes output.

Yes please do. Plaid are underrated these days

I wish Plaid would do more vocal collabs. One of the rare mostly-instrumental electronic acts who are actually good at playing to their collaborators' strengths. Might invigorate their sound a bit more too.

yeah I still have no idea what to make of their 3 recent albums. they are very pleasant and actually a bit more consistent than their 'classic' stuff but they also feel like they were written by AI

totally. that's the best summarisation I've heard of their recent stuff. it's not bad, it just doesn't fill me with the same sense of joy or fun as before.

i still think scintilli is great, the more recent 2 are just okay

Scintilli sounds like a greatest hits rather than a new album - it's a great listen but a bit disappointing as their first proper studio album for several years after Spokes. Reachy Prints is too slight but has Hawkmoth. Digging Remedy has a bit more meat on it but there's nothing truly memorable on it - I just like it chiming away in the background

Ya'll are mad if Wallet and Matin Lunaire do nothing for you

wallet is excellent yes

Matin Lunaire and Hawkmoth I'm a big fan of. Need to relisten to Wallet

idk the best part of the new Plaid stuff is listening to how the background elements interact with the foreground. they really do a great job of with whole "sync up every 4 measures" thing

a couple of new tracks today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBpVycuV7xM

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

a bit harsher and more abrasive than the stuff they've been doing lately. second half of "Maru" is wonderful. "Recall" almost sounds like they're going for a Gantz Graf-type sound.

dud

heres another one. album is due out in a couple days. anyone who's into the band has heard this sort of track many times before, but it's still pretty good. and the visual component is nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSzH4DMo618

I know the guy who did the video, really excited that he got to do that.

I like the track a lot more than I expected to, but also idk, it seems like it would work best as video game music.

Maru is so fucking good, best thing I've heard from them in years.

New one is simply one of their best albums. It isn’t just good or great. They really delivered.

Ach... I dunno. It's about as good as the last one. I really don't know what's been going on with this band in recent times. Their music is ambiently enjoyable to me; unobjectionable, but I listen to each new release a total of about 2-3 times and there's rarely more than 3 moments that really stand out beyond the usual Plaid-by-numbers sound. This one's supposed to be a concept album about our relationship to plastic, but it doesn't sound any different to the last one.

I do like it. I am enjoying Crown Shy and The Pale Moth because they seem to include instruments that are a bit different, but the diversity and sheer fun isn't there any more. Get some guest singers in please!

Nah, they need to retire and just repress their classics. Having guest vocalists is the strongest “jumping the shark” indicator for electronic producers.

Yes but it used to work lovely when they got Mara Carlyle or Bjork to do the odd bit. Gave the albums a nice bit of anchoring. Plus they were good at it. I dunno, they just need to do something new or at least a bit different.

Like the last song, Praze, I'm sure I've heard this tune at least three times before on previous albums

you're definitely right about that, there are a few moments on each new one where I wonder "haven't they used this exact chord progression before?", which does their music a big disservice, since their stuff is still intriguing & hits a pretty unique zone. I think of their new music as being the aural equivalent of the 'spinning dancer' optical illusion, the beats & melodies kinda shift & invert themselves based on how you listen to them. only Autechre comes to mind as a group that does something similar. at the same time these new albums add pretty much nothing to their legacy. but I haven't heard the new one yet.

Plaid are like certain IDM acts such as µ-Ziq and Squarepusher (and even Boards of Canada to an extent) where there's some pretty obvious melodic motifs that have now become stylistic identifiers. I've always felt they've lacked the textural or timbrel uniqueness that goes along with it for those other artists, which is why they often get the "video game soundtrack music" label and sound a bit more generic.

This album seems to offer up some new sounds and more acoustic instrumentation but also couples this with their tightest, most focused arrangements in years. Very little noodling here, and more than a few unique song and sound ideas. Really stoked with this new one and feel it's their best since Spokes, and I've dutifully been following them the entire time. Definitely something special here.

When Scintilli came out, I wrote a fairly long and boring review in the Quietus comparing them to Autechre and how each band's trajectory has followed parallel but entirely different timelines.

BTW, feeling that they do have an album of remarkable work in them, I started making a playlist of Plaid's best stuff from the last ten years. I can't say I've listened to the later albums enough to really be able to discern what the true highlights are though. Any glaring omissions, or tracks I should simply leave off? I'd rather make it under 70 minutes (i.e. album length) if possible https://open.spotify.com/user/1153731601/playlist/2PSCZXrZuV22bRyTahthcX?si=8kGcDLf9TYy_DDW2vOPQgA

So I dug this out again this morning and it sounds really good in the car. I might have been quick to judge too harshly. It's not a million miles away from what's gone before but it's certainly a software upgrade.