listening notes

Stuff I've been checking out:

The first Moderat EP - Auf Kosten Der Gesundheit. It ain't revolutionary or anything, but you gotta admit the pads on "Russian Courier" make you wanna...

After listening to that, I started checking out the other bpitch control stuff, which ain't all that bad - being a fan of jizzmaster pads, I like Apparat a good bit (when there's no singing). iirc Alex, you went to one of this label's shows ...? This whole label is pretty much new to me. I'm sure this is old news to everyone else, but I'm a few years behind. Shut up.

I work with a guy who's way into Warp stuff, but he listens to more of the fringe-ish stuff in that family (think Plone or Leafcutter John) instead of the Big Ass Motherfuckers We All Listen To. He recommended I check out Foma by Lukid, which is OK, I guess. I think it's more background music to my taste, but there are a couple decent tracks on there. This to me sounds more like my mental vision of what dubstep is, though I have no idea what constitutes dubstep because

a) the only thing I can point to and say "that's dubstep" is that Boxcutter record everyone bought (Oneiric), and that's only because that's what the critics said about it

b) my experience with dub is generally the old-motherfucking Trojan Records / Lee Perry shit

c) I wouldn't know what two-step is outside of the "line dancing" context.

I get the whole "there's some shit from other records or made-up stuff, maybe vocals, maybe beats, and there's lots of delay or spring reverb so springy it might as well be delay or assloads of chorus and phaser on it" connection to dub, but... the lack of shitty improvised effects kinda ruins it for me. Maybe I need to listen to some Mad Professor, or something (?), but I always loved dub the most when it sounded like total ass and you could tell some dude made it in like 2 hours. There's a great place in Portland to go for beer, grease, and irony called Dot's, and every week or so they'll have a night where all they play in the restaurant are really old motherfucking dub / reggae records. I have no idea who most of the artists are, but the shit is golden, even taking into account the feel-good sentiment jammed into some of it.

Also, apparently there's some whole genre out there called Skweee, which is like dubstep, but more electro, with some kind of tenuous connection to RnB and funk...? I dunno. You can listen to shit at KlickTrack, though. I haven't really listened to much of this yet but figured I'd throw it out for discussion, because frankly that name is retarded (in both a good way, and a bad way).

and, yeah, even though I've resisted using pretty much every so-called "legitimate" digital music service out there with a vengeance, and wouldn't crack iTunes if it weren't for That Fucking Phone which I have, I have to say Lala is actually pretty decent. The music uploader thing is pretty buggy but just the prospect of not having to lug around a giant hard drive whenever I want access to my music library is ... enticing.