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| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Ah, unexpected bump. I actually had a relisten to this one recently and I think it’s pretty solid throughout. By “Zargon” I presume you mean KalGan, and I agree that those tracks are a bit of a weak point, mainly because they go on for so long. I’d just discovered him and wanted to use some of his stuff, but I think 16 minutes or so of samey music is a bit unnecessary. Another thing that stood out playing these tracks on a good system is just how fucking bassy modern drum ‘n bass is, even the chilled out stuff.
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Exactly.
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You call the mix into Reverse Engineering “unfortunate” but Love Cry simply stops dead at the end of the phrase, and the only way I could think to get out of it was to play something that opens with a big wash. So yes, the track selection there was somewhat functional.
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Yeah i noticed that. I've had to deal with tons of tracks like that in my mixes due to the music i chose but to be honest i wouldn't really know how to handle that in a live setting either, as you don't really have the time to lay out good bridging material. It sorts of feels like you could have looped the bare percussion of lovecry and layered it over the intro of reverse engineering, but it probably wouldn't have worked out tempowise. It's unfortunate though because it was a very varied section of music and you really need close to flawless mixing at such a point to keep it all together. At that point it also felt like the rythms were built down enough and you could have gone straight into a non breakbeat section. You pulled off a few good 'reset' transitions at other points in the mix, like how Baja goes into the BoC track, and later when landing party goes into a spoken word section. These are very effective atmosphere builders. You may also have been able to build on the guitar section at the end of lovecry.
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The bit in the middle that was your favourite part... I was going to play more of that stuff and have quite an extended mid-section in a moody, sombre vein but the vibe of the room was starting to feel distinctly morbid and a big group of people walked in during the Pascal Savy track, so I decided to take things back “up” ahead of schedule. In a room full of people chatting and socialising, that “haunting” sound doesn’t really work. I do think this kind of set benefits from a bit of darkness to offset the fluffy ambient prettiness I tend to veer towards, but I also don’t want to turn it into Music For Graveyards. I’m thinking of playing some gnarly glitchy stuff in future sets to try and create some darker contrast without totally flatlining the atmosphere. It’s all a learning curve.
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Playing with contrasts is indeed key for sets like these in my opinion, since you have a very broad range of music to play with you might as well use that to your advantage and make things interesting. I personally didn't feel that section needed to be much longer either, so circumstances seemed to have worked out in your favor there as far as I'm concerned. The thing with dark atmospherics is that for me at least they always come of as far more powerful and gripping then any other forms, it's just something that hits home more then anything else because it feels very real and visceral, rather then dreamy and distant. Maybe we should follow up on that darkness mix-off idea you had a while back sometime.
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I personally was really pleased with the section book-ended by the Solar Fields tracks, which is the psy-chill section in my eyes. The really soft, rounded bass of those tracks sounded great on the system and these tracks transport my mind’s eye to the hyperreal, ultra-vivid “trippy future garden”, to borrow a phrase from Planet B.E.N. But that’s the subjectivity of music made to tickle your imagination, I suppose.
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I dunno. It definitely has its charm, don't get me wrong. But it came at a point were i felt the mix needed something more lively, my attention was wandering off a bit. Divine Ordinance in particular started to grate on me after a while. It was very well done flow-wise though.
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Mixes: Alaé (Conceptional ambient dub)
AOTSE (Experimental)
Listens:
http://www.last.fm/user/bierheld
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