So I took a listen...

I think this set can be summed up thus:

"Ah, nice, ol' Doc Pat's here. Yeah, I can dig on some chill tunes with the odd quirky thing to 'em. Nope, don't see any need to get up from this bean chair. Not a single thing will-

Holy shit! Is that Spiral Tribe over there!?"

*patter-patter-patter*

"Well, that was fun. Now back to- Hey, when did Coldcut get here?"

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Everyone has an opinion. Mine just happens to be a little more informed than most.
Electronic Music Critic: Near-Daily Ruminations Of Music I Own, In Alphabetical Order!
(~)

So, you think I need to go see a doctor? Sound like a serious identity crisis.

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Mixes: Alaé (Conceptional ambient dub)
AOTSE (Experimental)

Listens:
http://www.last.fm/user/bierheld

Definitely listening to this on my long road trip tomorrow.

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Set Archive | TA DJ Challenge

Awesome.

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quote:

Originally posted by Bierheld So, you think I need to go see a doctor? Sound like a serious identity crisis.

Everyone should see Doctor Paterson at some point. His recipes from the land of green ginger be lovely.

___________________
Everyone has an opinion. Mine just happens to be a little more informed than most.
Electronic Music Critic: Near-Daily Ruminations Of Music I Own, In Alphabetical Order!
(~)

I've seen this one in your sig a few times, and since it's been bumped I thought I'd get round to listening to it.

Firstly, this is labelled as a concept mix - what's the concept? Is it simply a mix that "cuts through the heart of music as you experienced it in 2011"? Or some sort of Planet Of The Apes inspired subliminal narrative?

I ask because this mix feels a little aimless and uncoordinated in places. I struggled to concentrate for most of the first half: it was a big mesh of field recordings and samples and occasional snatches of musical ideas that didn't seem to have any notable direction, and it was difficult to latch onto a clear mood. Over the course of the set, a clear structure did emerge: the sudden flourish of ravey material midway through that certainly grabs the attention, and then a breakbeat comedown on the other side.

I appreciate hearing something very out-of-the-ordinary. Technically the mix is also impressive. I tried to keep up with the mixing, and noticed you didn't appear to be doing any beatmixing, relying instead on careful placement of tracks. The result is impressively seamless. The attention to detail is very obvious, but perhaps you got a little too caught up in the details, because for all the trippy sample collage cleverness, the mix seems to lack a bit of focus. I liken this kind of set to an FSOL mix, where they create dense collaged samplescapes, but the FSOL are careful to crystallise the sense of musical journey by playing memorable tracks in full, embedding these stand-out "moments" into the psychedelic sonic environment. I think this mix could have benefited from you eschewing some of the micro-programming in the first half and playing a few more obvious stand-out pieces.

Alternately, why not try making your own ambient material? You've clearly got an ear for sampling and the kind of sore-eyed, peering-at-the-screen-til-5am dedication required. Rather than putting all this effort into DJ mixes you don't seem to promote very vigorously, try going away and making a sample record.

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Mixes:
> Rough & Ready [Modern Trance]
A Different Energy [Good Modern Trance]
> The Edale Mix [Panoramic Beats]
> Live @ Kibosh v6 19.02.22
> Accelerate [Good Modern Trance]

First of all, thanks to everyone who gave it a listen. And for system J, to answer your questions I think it's time to stop procrastinating the retrospective:

To start things off, I'll have to travel back to myself in 2011. It was a year when I had decided to take a different approach to collecting music. Rather then to find accomplished musical pieces, artist and labels, I just scoured the release lists of beatport's electronica section, looking for basically anything that can liven up a mix of any kind, be it intro's, outro's, interludes, samples, recordings, complete music tracks, anything.
This means you end up with a lot of non-music. Really, the concept at that point was to figure out how to utilise those tracks. It is meant as a play on the imagination, trying to conjure images of events and places through sound. The entire mix is structured to be more like a listening session rather then a traditional DJ mix. It went in countless discontinued directions, industrial, techno, breaks, Jungle. It wasn't until the end of last year when I came up with the concept of dub music as an overarching framework to bind modern ambient sound design with ravey euphoric bliss. After I had already worked on it for the better part of a year.

I realised that there was going to be a hurdle for prospective listeners, since obviously the flow I eventually create is going to make a lot more sense to me. I know exactly how it's put together, what the intentions were. But for a new listener it's easy to become overwhelmed with detail, not sure were to follow or what to listen for. Something I've noticed myself when listening to electronica mixes others have posted on this forum.
Accommodating this effect is difficult, all I could do is clarify the sections as much as possible. I did add in the occasional full length to achieve this. Like the tribal throat-singing track and the psy-dub track at around the half hour mark. Those are meant as mini climaxes were the other stuff builds up to.
Despite this, the first half is were I choose to have the most mood swings. The idea stems from how I listened to it during the creation. As I was trying to iron out mixing flaws I needed to pay full attention, so the listening was done in a room at late hours with headphones, a visualisation and nothing to distract me.
This is not necessarily a good thing because I know the majority of listeners won't do the same. Regardless, The flow was contrived that way, the start is wild and challenging because that's when my ears are still fresh and I can pay close attention to detail, whereas the rest of the mix becomes more straight forward as time goes on to accommodate ear fatigue and lapsed patience.

I don't think it's necessarily flawed, I actually got a PM from pozz yesterday who thought I had nailed it. But challenging it is. Honestly I didn't think many people would like it much which is why I don't bother with promoting it. It was done because it felt like an achievement, as much as other people enjoying it is a clear boon and a really good feeling, I was content the day I finished it.

So, in a nutshell. The concept is to create a listening session with powerful, imaginative music. It's More about the journey itself then the actual destination.

Now, about the production thing. I don't know.
Truth is I'm not all that fond of the technical side of things.
When I look at the arrangements in the mixing software, it's basically all nonsense to me. I'm not good at the whole visual synthesis thing. Everything comes from listening, changing things and listening to them again. Pretty much every collage and transition is derived through experimentation, just trying random things together in an attempt to find chemistry were it's least expected. Getting something right is purely the result of complete fluke.
This is also why I opted to leave everything running at it's natural tempo, as warping/beatmatching things gets me nowhere. I'll just spent a lot of time trying to make things work together that weren't meant to be in the first place, a futile effort. All I did is some copy+paste editing, lot's of EQ'ing and an occasional reverb wash here and there.

So yeah, I don't feel comfortable taking the step to producing from scratch.
It's funny you should mention FSOL, Because he did get me thinking about things with this quote

"We were never musicians, we were just collage artists"

Makes me think that maybe I should give it a go sometime.

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Mixes: Alaé (Conceptional ambient dub)
AOTSE (Experimental)

Listens:
http://www.last.fm/user/bierheld

Last edited by Bierheld on Oct-14-2012 at 14:24

I listened to this during my road trip, and honestly, I felt utterly confused, but strangely happy. I felt like I had gotten eaten by a computer. And initially, the computer was practically digesting my brain, feeding strange, otherworldy sounds to me, as the digital spiders crawled all over me and eggs from face huggers were bursting around me. Distorted throat singing was happening, and other oddities until BOOM, I am shat out of electronic purgatory and thrust into a German Tekno Klob where my brain is assailed by endless varieties of Hardcore, Hard Breaks, Techno and Acid. I spend the rest of my digital sub-reality stomping fools with the Techno Viking while occasionally becoming swallowed again by the spooky auditory graveyard in cyberspace.

In conclusion, I would partially agree with Jack in saying that this mix lacked focus, almost in an Attention Deficit Disorder way. The fidgety, glitchy soundscapes are immaculately composed, but drowned out by the stomping, ravey club bass. I have a feeling the mix would have been much more successful if the two ideas had been separated, with a greater focus on field recordings and glitchy dubs spectrums, and then a completley different mix of old school rave with your signature mixing style.

But taking it as a whole, this mix is definitely not for the inexperienced listener. These sounds require you to pay very close attention to the small intricacies within vastly complex sound structures, and even though raving is required, there are still details that should not be overlooked. In essence, I listened to the entire mix with this expression on my face:



I did enjoy it, however. One of the more unique sets I've ever heard. Thank you very much for the music.

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Set Archive | TA DJ Challenge

Well it's good to see that it still tickled you even though you were confused. That's all I could have hoped for really.

About making too separate mixes out of it. Neh.
For one the rave mix would be a problem, The stuff went out of fashion long ago and not much of it is still being made. I doubt I could have found enough stuff to make a full set out of it without having to resort to copious amounts of filler or classics we've all heard before. It's not how I like to find music anyway, I never specifically search for one style of music and I don't want to either, it's no fun to me.

As for the ambient part, I could have easily stopped at some point or continued in the same direction, but I wouldn't want to either. Variety is the spice of life, I do have a case of listening ADD but that really because of the music itself, when you listen to it a lot and get used to it your perception of EM as a whole changes really, boundaries start to fade and you start to realise that there really isn't much difference between the genre's and styles. It's not an easy thing to explain.
I might have another crack at it later as I'm planning on doing a video with some more comments on how and why I did things.
Might help people understand it a bit more.

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Mixes: Alaé (Conceptional ambient dub)
AOTSE (Experimental)

Listens:
http://www.last.fm/user/bierheld

Okay, got it done yesterday. I was crippled by a fierce cold and dodgy volume settings but it should be audible for the most part. For the people that are interested:

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Mixes: Alaé (Conceptional ambient dub)
AOTSE (Experimental)

Listens:
http://www.last.fm/user/bierheld