Song Review: Autechre - R Ess

Many artists follow all the classic pop music rules and recipes to get into the favor of the masses. Others just do what they like, and some, like Autechre seem to do only things that go against those rules and recipes.

R Ess, the first track of their newest album Oversteps for instance, starts with a fade in of almost 1:30. Once the melodic synthesizer part is at its peak volume it is time for the beats to slowly fade in as well.

On the left ear we hear the direct sound of the synthesizer, while the rest of the sonic panorama is covered in an ocean of reverberation as the muffled kick drum and crispy snare come in at the center. Towards the end of the track we are treated to some extra low frequencies, it is hard to really call it a bass line.

Compared to some other, rather complex Autechre songs it is quite easy to nod your head to the beat of R Ess, while enjoying the pitch shifting synth tones, even though some snare drums will not be where you expect them to be.

Autechre’s Oversteps is the first album I bought online in a higher-than-CD-audio quality: 24bit/44.1kHz at bleep.com. I really think as storage and bandwidth capacity increase, online music stores like the iTunes store should at least offer an option to buy uncompressed, or at least lossless formats.

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She Loves You Yéyé in Journal de Nîmes N°4

Although I do write quite a lot on the web, it is wonderful to see some of my words actually printed on paper. In November last year I wrote an article about Japanese music in Journal de Nîmes, the quarterly paper of denim inspired boutique Tenue de Nîmes in Amsterdam. For the newest, France-themed edition I again wrote the music section, and this time it is called She Loves You Yéye, after the Yéyé movement in French music. You can click on the image above to read the article.

I did not intent to write a complete overview of French music, as that would be a book full of content. Rather, I chose a few French artists which inspire me in some way or another. Next to my contribution this issue holds a Paris city report, a little history of the shirt, The Faces of Neal Cassady by Piet Heijden Hume and much, much more. 

Song review: Ben Frost - Híbakúsja

It is time for something new. Every now and then I would like to write a review of a song. Not a whole album, just one song. In these reviews I will focus on the feeling those songs give as opposed to rating them for their quality, so you could say they will be very subjective.

For one person a certain sound might be completely annoying while for another the same sound might bring back beautiful childhood memories. I hope you will enjoy reading my reviews, and they will make you curious of what it will sound like and what images it will bring up in your own mind. We start off with Híbakúsja by Ben Frost: 

A strange, modified piano starts playing a sequence while the brass section blows haunting tones over the repeating notes. Dark winds surround the stage as something takes over the melodic elements. After a while I realize it might be a huge double bass as I recognize the rambling of the strings when they are played too loud. But instead of a gentle jazz combo this sounds more like a massive sea monster playing the moorings of the ships in a harbor.

The texture of the sounds is beautiful and round unlike the digitally distorted sounds Frost tends to use a lot - and yes, we hear those later on in Híbakúsja as well, hard panned left and right. While this is all happening the monster keeps breathing and hissing and only loosens its grip about a minute and a half before the end of the song, when a quiet string section lays down its soft tones in the background and the rattling comes to an end. 

Híbakúsja is the fourth track on Ben Frosts latest album By the Throat.

Website: Building Sound

We can discuss the right use and effectiveness of sound on websites, and in most cases we will hear background music and interface sounds, but the Building Sound website is using sound in a way I have never seen (or heard) before!

As we mouse over the colored horizontal bars on the website we hear the name of each menu item. The length of the bar gives an indication of the length of the item we will hear when we click on it. It is fascinating to see how easy it actually is to navigate this site without any textual information. 

The implementation is done well, although the site leaves some things to be desired. What if we surf the web with the sound turned off? And to be honest, there is a lot of background noise in the files and the intonation of the voice we hear is not very compelling. Nonetheless, a great idea.

Via Joachim Baan

Journal de Nîmes - Otherworldly Sounds

Denim inspired boutique Tenue de Nîmes celebrates her first anniversary with the third edition of the quarterly paper Journal the Nîmes. I'm honored to be one of the contributors to this Journal, with Japan as main theme. 

I wrote an article about Japanese music, combined with reviews of two Japanese artists - YMCK and Susumu Yokota. So if you are in Amsterdam, head to the Elandsgracht and grab one, while Menno and René guide you through their collection of beautiful garments, or click on the image to read it online.

Put your sounds in the clouds with SoundCloud

As you might have noticed I use the SoundCloud player on my website. For website owners it’s a nice way of offering streaming audio without having to worry about hosting and the use of bandwith. I’d like to share my experiences with this review.

What's SoundCloud?

As a artist it’s great to have a professional looking way of sharing music with fans, label owners and venues. You can create a set of tracks on SoundCloud to embed it on your MySpace page, a much better sounding solution than the standard MySpace player.

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