ricardo villalobos

Achso is so good! I've never been a villalobos-obsessive but this makes me want to be.

This release feels very er deliberate in its approach to the rhythm/melody split in a way that feels more like Detroit techno than anything else he's done. It very much feels like the "jam" element of The Au Harem has been shifted entirely onto these really lush abstract melodies, allowing the beats to be a bit more kinetic and physical - the melody on "ichso" make me think of late Talk Talk, while the melody on "Sieso" is total Eno/Orbital/IDM plinkyplonkyness (plus that awesome sprinkler system sound - wow!).

Achso is... astounding!! (Tim get out of my brane)

Best e.p. ever :-D

Slightly more techno than Alchochofa too? That surprised me a little. It's definitely at the same quality level though. I think I'd still give top marks to the former for it's... muscularity?

This, and listening again to Alchochofa the other day and being totally refreshed and surprised (before the thread got revived btw) made me wonder if I haven't overrated the Isolee record too. They seem to come from a similar place, but I think Ricardo might be even more touched with genius/magic/insanity somehow.

at least I'm not mad thinking it's more techno (obviously you now explained while I was writing that other post!).

Tim absolutely spot on about the Talk Talk-ness of "Ichso"; if Mark Hollis came in singing "take my freedom/for giving me a sacred love" it would sit there perfectly. Seiso reminds me alot of something i can't quite place.... Erso seems madly paranoid (in a good way) and is probably my favourite thing here (after 2 listens). Philip, can you say more about why you find the EP "incredibly damaged"? cos i think i agree.

i thought i'd lost interest in RV after Au Harem, but this is great.

Yes "Erso" is awesome too! "Ichso" is probably the weak link if there is one, the track that sounds most like something from The Au Harem - and it's still v. good.

Sorry, I mean "Duso" is the weak link

i thought my "achso" review was going up today, but i guess not. (another 9+ review which will earn neither an abover-the-line featured review or a "best new music." ah well.) it's the best "album" i've yet heard this year. (you know, three weeks in.)

such strange music. Ichso reminds me of "Dogman Go Woof" as well as Talk Talk. i can't get a handle on Duso, really. so dry.

does anyone else find achso surprisingly idm-y?

it's just the busy-ness i think. RED HERRING.

the plonky sieso sounds are very like plaid. maybe scoobs in columbia?

Isn't this where the entire idm classification kind of falls apart? If the more manipulative beat tweaking that Villalobos does and the entire "clicks and cuts" school from a few years back aren't cross-qualified as idm then I'm not sure what should qualify -- unless it's just a token term to mention glitchy stuff that isn't inherently danceable.

Early IDM and Late IDM are such totally different things... I think they really need to be separated somehow.

I'd say the influence has teturned to the dancefloor as...
Early IDM -> Glitch, Micro-House/Techno
Late IDM -> Dubstep??

(maybe)

it's no the glitchiness and rhythms that make it idmy imo (thinking of seiso) but the sounds themselves. i don't think it's a red herring in this case.

xp

surely glitch should be "mid-period IDM"?

I'm surely talking out of my ass, so yeah. Mid-period.

This e.p. kind of melts the whole damn deal of classifying things anyway. I can even hear Deep House, Trance and Ambient in there at times but it could be the THC hasn't worn off from last nights listen :/

2006 influence on danceable electronic music

Mid-period IDM (glitch, clicks'n'cuts, late berlin dub) -> ???

I have no idea where wtf "Electro-House" fits here... I think I need to leave this thread because I am very confused.

it doesn't really work that way so why force it?

idm as methodology more than genre?

Yes, I think so.

""Duso" is the weak link "

I think Duso is my favorite track on it! I guess it's "dry" but it's sooo ... twinkly ... not nearly as dark as anything on Au Harem ...

aww crap, I think I'm mixing up the titles. I thought Duso was track 3. Arrgh.

okay, so, not to be too anal about it but I was starting to get confused. The tracks are listed in the wrong order on Discogs. This is from the Cadenza site.

A1  Sieso
B1  Erso
C1  Duso
D1  Ichso

:(

That seems totally backwards now.

ambrose

possibly this ... ?

Artist - Various
Title - Green & Blue - Mixed By Loco Dice & Ricardo Villalobos
Label - COCOON RECORDINGS
Format - 2 x CD (mixed)
Catalog No. - CORMIX 011
Release Date - 30/01/2006
------------------------------------------------------------------------

got 2/5 in mixmag. they said it was like "waiting for a bus that never arrives", and accuse villalobos of being lost up his own butt. looking at the tracklisting, it does not seem entirely unlikely.

Mixmag eh? What does The Sun think?

t/s: mixmag vs e-snobs

sorry... I thought you were saying they gave Ach So 2/5.

I haven't heard the Mix CD but that's surprising I guess. What score did they give to the Loco Dice part of it (as he was on the covermount mix just recently)?

we don't get mixmag distributed in the us anymore ever since the end of the electronica revolution. is it still about tits and e and 'clever' captions of pictures of people displaying these things?

It's tricky for me to reconcile the idea of drugged out sweaty dancing with the mental minimalism I get out of listening to Villalobos on headphones or at home, though. Maybe the pictures of overly-tanned people would help.

xposts - Oh forget it. I'm not going to be made to feel a snob because I think Mixmag is a load of crap. I suppose it's the 'prole' mag is it? Still a fucking embarrasment most of the time. DJ Mag tries harder and is a bit better, but I hardly think any of them are especially good right now.

e-publications >>> print media as far as 'dance' is concerned for me.

anyway, not to derail this...

they didn't review the 2 discs separately - the sense i got was that they gave locodice 3/5 and villalobos 1/5 and averaged it out to 2/5.

also, they called microhouse "controversial". haha! the NERVE of these germans!

yeah mixmag still sucks and it's surprisingly reactionary and they big up lots of bad music ... blue states-type indie-meets-couchtronica and bad conscious hip-hop and stuff like damon albarn projects and so on.

but i still find it useful ... 1st as a way of finding out about good under-the-radar mainstream house mixes and discs (like, what's kerri chandler up to? ILM / blogosphere is not so good for that).

more importantly, it's good devils-advocate for the lizard-brain. i am afraid if i DON'T read mersh-mags like mixmag and DJ i will wake up one day surrounded by a stack of tresor and cocoon CDs and i will be going "why the fuck am i listening to this clicky-crap instead of brandy or cam'ron?"

IOW mixmag at least has a healthy respect for pop thrillz, something mags like the wire and grooves and even xlr8r and urb sometimes miss out on.

as jess pointed out a long time ago, "some basic deep house manouvres" were what raised the listenability level of taka taka far above its peers.

"maneuvers"

also, they called microhouse "controversial"

haha, yeah I follow you completely about wanting to keep an eye on the rest of (non-ILM) dance, and that even a bad 'zine can be useful as a barometer of other stuff. Sorry for going off on one there. It's just frustrating as a casual buyer to feel like they're holding so much music back by not giving exposure to "way out" new, changing forms & genres. Dance music conservatism sucks as much as rock mag conservatism I guess.

controversial! that's awesome, i wish someone would ask me for a quote on that. do you hear me, world?

i only popped the green & blue mixes on briefly but i was sort of shocked at how uneven the villalobos half seemed; i'll have to go back to it and listen again though, because that's a seriously snap judgment.

i love green and blue! thats not the one i was thinking of, the one i was thinking of is made up i think.

anyway green and blue. i love the fade in and out, i love the crowd noise, i love the villalobos (sorry, but i skipepd the first few tracks til lthe lil louis tune), but the loco dice side is amazing! sort of cheesy minimal, or the nearest you will get to that. maybe, "ibiza minimal". maybe thats just crap that i thought cos i associate him with ibiza (as per the mixmag cover). but anyway, despite his awful name, im gona keep an eyue out for him. hes playing here in sheff next wek with x press 2 so ill get a better listen. the villalobos side i also love though! the start is a bit weird, but after that it got pretty intense and well, basically techno. it sort of sounds like what i think cologne in 93 sounds like, or stuff that gareth goes on about, or thje sort of thing i think gareth would go on about. like, old techno. theres a really drum heavy bootleg of yellos "bostich" which i subsequently picked up. this cd is great! the liner notes are awful and totallymake me want to live in shiny minimal sexy pool party euro land! just tell me where it is/how to get there!!!! argh

"cheesy minimal" haha

I wonder if that's what Loco Dice's club is like? I heard a Jo Mills set (I think she was resident there at DC10 for a few years until recently) and yeah it was very weird... like really "tasteful" basic house loops but sort-of minimal, and fading in a Kompakt tune every now & then like "Forever Sweet" but not really doing anything with them except fading back out into more really boring house. Odd.

haha i found out i have a few weeks til my villalobos review runs which gives me time to possibly snip the parts where i compare him to coltrane and morton feldman :-O

he reminds me more of MARTY feldman
http://www.traversino.com/joe_maini_website/images_maini/marty_feldman.jpg

hahahaha

I'm still thinking (despite rinsing this out all fucking day today) that it loses something in being so micro-techno, next to the more uncontrolled & thick Alcochofa... but I can't work out what yet. It's so unfathomably accomplished though. You know when you hear music and just think "yeah, that's why I could never make music myself..." makes you feel very mortal.

The IDM connection with the Villalobos EP is I think routed in its similarities to early IDM's approach to melodies over some variation of 4/4 beats - esp. that initial post-Detroit sound.

Funny how Mixmag have thrown their weight so thoroughly behind Loco Dice. Even the review that Vahid refers to kinda praises him with faint criticism (if I recall it's something like "Loco Dice's disc doesn't blow us away like his live sets do") - I got the strong sense from that review that some party line was being asserted, although it might just be the one "minimal explosion" enthusiast behind all of the Loco Dice hype.

I suspect it's partly the Ibiza connection, and it's also partly the fact that this guy's rep is blowing up at the exact same time that Mixmag are starting to (belatedly) pay attention to minimal techno - which gives everyone the sense of being on the bandwagon rather than behind it (also note how, when Mixmag talk about Get Physical, they don't seem to be aware of anything pre-"Body Language"). I haven't heard Dice's Green & Blue disc but his Mixmag disc was very good, so it's not exactly undeserving, but it does seem... arbitrary?

I don't mind Mixmag, but maybe that's because all the stuff about clubbing in the UK and Europe is so patently irrelevant to me that I mentally exclude it and just focus on the reviews and interviews etc. When Ministry of Sound started an Australian version of their sub-Mixmag publication Ministry I found it hateful. As per Vahid, I like how comprehensive Mixmag is for house, techno reviews - obv one doesn't really take seriously stuff like the garage reviews (half) page.

I still miss late period Muzik though.

Philip's right Achso is definitely very, very un-pop... really deep listening if you can get on board.

But I think (possibly for this reason) I'm actually going off it a bit now. It's more IDM than it first appears in that it does take some effort to stay totally interested and immersed after many listens. Alcachofa definitely has better 'grooves' overall. Not that I'm in any way dismissing what he achieves on other levels with this ep.

Mixmag is alot better now than at any point in the last........I dunno how many years.

It's almost hilarious to see them all "OMG LUCIANO!"

xposts - That said... the track which seems most IDM (not to hand so I forget if it's the second or third), and least danceable, is probably the best IDM track I (didn't) hear in the entirety of 2005!

This EP is amazing, I love it, especially "ichso". Is all Villalobos stuff so hook-skimpy? Not really a complaint, just newbie curiosity...

Alcachofa kinda has hooks

The Au Harem kinda doesn't, it's very stripped down

I guess it depends on what you consider a hook ... "A Walk in the Park" remix has a catchy vocal bit but it just repeats and repeats and repeats .... (not that that's a bad thing)