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by FoK 03/27/2003, 5:13pm PST |
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Fussbett wrote:
Do any fans of electronic music actually call it electronica?
Good question. I doubt it. I would have just called IDM, but then somebody would have been on me about the assumption of "intelligent."
Anyway, I'm not very familiar and not a fan of the style as well, but here is my outsider review: A lazy Danny Elfman meets a white Aphex Twin.
Well, at least I'm succeeding at the imitating my idols part of it.
I know Aphex Twin is white, but while Richard gets dirrty, your fingernails remain scared of latino B&E thugs. Not just in the style, but even down to your selection of drum sounds. Anemic across the board. The Elfman aspect of course comes from your choice of loopy fun pizzicato strings that say "soundtrack", which I suppose is what you were shooting for. I say lazy because the song never veers from the one thing you establish at the beginning.
There's this structural problem I had, which is "How far to stray from the opening section? How fucking long is this supposed to be?" I decided to aim for 3 minutes, try to make Berry Gordy proud. I get bored if songs are longer than that. I disagree about the "not-veering" bit, though. The bridge takes it in another, kind of twee direction for a second or two. That fact that you didn't see it that way is interesting... it's hard to hear how big the different sections loom for other people - I hear them as gigantic billboards and Proustian-scale chapters of musical text (because it took so damn long to program), but in terms of actual length, the bridge proper is only 10 seconds out of 180. Hmm...
I'd call the song "Breakdown". I know you admitted that it's full of clichés, but the breakdown probably shouldn't be used three times in one 3 minute track regardless of genre. Even one breakdown is suspicious, while two says "I'm out of ideas". Speaking of which, should I count the ending as a fourth breakdown or should I ask you "Hey, when are you going to finished this song?"
See, these are the problems that you run into when you enter a new genre. I know how rock songs start and end, but it seems impossible to start or end one of these electronic things. Listening back to my Squarepusher discs, he doesn't really have coda sections as such. They sort of just end. If I had more tracks to append onto this one (forthcoming) I would just stop in the middle of the second-to-last phrase and start the next track. Re: the breakdowns, I noticed that it was sort of organizing itself into these John Adams-esque sets of ramps, like a musical Excitebike. That's something to work on for the next track.
In closing, I'd never listen to this song again, but if it was my first attempt at the genre, I'd certainly be proud of it.
Thanks for the reacharound I feel like I should be less understanding about all this, but this type of feedback is definitely helpful. Thanks for taking the time. Myself, I'm happy that I finally got this shit to work together. I basically set out with the mission of "use the drum machine and orchestra rack unit together via MIDI. Do not be a pussy. Learn to operate Cubase." So, at least that's behind me.
Thanks again, FoK |
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