Originally posted by sljiva
Argh, Bvdub is one of the guys that epitomize all the worst things about dub techno for me - primarily hiperproduction and never-changing sound. Granted, I've not heard all of his material (who'd be so masochistic, the guy released around 10 albums just in 2011), but from what I have I can conclude that there's no bigger music polluter right now than him. If he got his together, concentrate a little bit, put his mind and technical skills to work and spend a year or more working on a single album, maybe he could make something worth listening and appreciating in 5 years time. This way, he's just another dub techno hero - celebrated inside the circle, completely despised or ignored outside.
And this embedded video is still (lousy) dub techno, albeit introspective and focused on the atmosphere. It's nothing new for techno producers to concentrate particularly on the ambient aspect of their music - it has a lot to do with exploring the space and sci-fi themes - one of the main preoccupations of early techno music. People like Juan Atkins (Model 500), Carl Craig and John Beltran did this kind of stuff already in the early/mid 90s, and for me this type of techno is much more interesting than its 4x4, dancefloor variant.
As for difference between this type of music and normal techno/ambient, back in the analogue days Basic Channel had a practice of using their studio as an instrument - in the same vein as King Tubby had 20 years earlier in Jamaica. They would take a track, decompose it and then play with different elements of it - emphasizing some and demphasizing others, adding echo, tape delay or reverb, manipulating percussion and basically reshaping the original to sound completely different without the necessity to start a new track from a scratch. All of their tracks had a set of reshapes/remixes (Radiance I/II/III, Q1.1/I/II/III/IIII) originating from the same source. These days producers probably have a different approach, software based, but the sound itself is still easily recognizable - stripped down, sometimes percussion-less, lots of reverb, hiss and echo etc. Standard ambient/techno is made in a standard way, without any processing afterwards - by means of synths, samplers and sequencers.
I don't see how you can call Bvdub 'the epitome of what's wrong in dubtechno' when like 80% of the stuff the guy released in the last 1-2 years is straight up ambient.
Bvdub is the epitome of everything wrong with laptop ambient. A dozen albums in a year says it all.
Vector A
quote:
Originally posted by Chimney
Let me give same examplee:
[Extrawelt]
^ Love those guys.
sljiva
quote:
Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Bvdub is the epitome of everything wrong with laptop ambient. A dozen albums in a year says it all.
Yeah, but while in laptop ambient scene his whole opus can be nullified with one exceptional Fennesz or Taylor Dupree album, dub techno scene doesn't have anything much to offer to justify his kind of behaviour.
Anyway, from what I've heard even his ambient borrows a lot from dub techno, and his past material firmly follows all of the genre gimmicks, so I see nothing wrong with designating him the expontent of everything wrong with dub techno. It says it all actually when upon the mention of his name, most of people's love goes to second disc of one of his albums remixed by one of the Echospace guys.
SYSTEM-J
My love would go to his EP with ASC to be fair, although that has as much to do with the brilliance of ASC as anything else.
enydo
That EP is ing amazing.
SYSTEM-J
ASC is the most essential electronic musician in the world right now. There, I said it.
enydo
You been following the Auxcasts at all?
SYSTEM-J
No, I'm almost scared to, in case I just stop listening to all other music that isn't ASC related.
Chimney
What are these casts you're talking about? :conf:
EDIT: "Symbol #2.4" is that dub-techno or plain ambient?`
enydo
Ah. Well they're pretty good, tend to be pretty eclectic. I'm up to the fourth one which I think is the most recent. He waits until the next cast to actually up the TL from the previous one.
