ricardo villalobos

http://www.discogs.com/release/635613

also, is minimal techno the new post-rock?

what does that mean? without explaining the question, it just sounds like "is minimal techno actually a bunch of boring and pretentious shit that's tricked us into liking it?"

with that said, i sort of liked what i heard of the autechre tortoise remixes (although i only have them in memory), and i see the similarities, but i think achso has so much more to reveal. all of the tortoise remixes i heard (by anybody) always seemed flat, like they weren't holding anything back, everything laid out for you to see and not really being a very interesting scene. i always liked the original tortoise versions better.

and i don't mean to bring this up as a sociological attack on the listenership or anything, because after awhile, i started to agree with the author. in fact, to this day, i would say "confield" is probably the last great post-rock album. pretty much every track on confield deploys one or more postrock strategies. i don't have the presence of mind to list these out, i may or may not at some time, but i really really think that EP7 and confield are more or less working in post-rock idiom and exploring post-rock structures and tricks.

now, i am just struck by the similarity in sound between recent villalobos and that era of autechre's work, and also by the similarity in mood and artwork and song title and so on between lots of late postrock and the current minimal techno crop (i guess you could even draw parallels like villalobos camp = chicago, kompakt = sigur ros, etc) and i'm just wondering if we could brainstorm on this a bit.

i definitely agree with the villalobos - chicago comparison, though. they are using very similar strategies, and their aesthetics are also similar in sounding both improvisational and structural. i like them both for that reason.

i have to go to bed because i'm too tired to think anymore.

Whoa -- I just went to Bleep to grab EP7 and they're selling Achso now! In 320kbps mp3s, no less. For anyone who wants a legit non-vinyl copy, this is pretty reasonable..

or is minimal techno?

one does not equal the other.

I have no doubt loads of people really like villalobos, people who like minimal techno and people who post here etc. I just meet so many people who say "yeah villalobos" and I doubt they have ever heard him, I realise this is cynical but it'd be fine if people say this about m.a.n.d.y. or mayer cos essentially it's house/techno but villalobos doesn't really fit the crossover mould......

I have no doubt loads of people really like villalobos

okay whatever

This isn't incompatible with the notion that a lot of people listen to Villalobos privately, but that distinguishes him from a lot of other dance music producers, who are probably "listened to" more by people out dancing or downloading DJ sets than by people buying or downloading specific 12 inch tracks.

As I suggested upthread, I hear a lot of references to villalobos which strike me as using him as a stand-in for the notion of creativity in dance music, far over and above artists like booka shade or dominik eulberg or anyone else who is undoubtedly more ubiiquitous on dancefloors.

I guess in some ways what's exciting for me about alot of electrohouse is that it is blatantly obvious what the point of it is, and while it may not be doing massively different things on a literal level to house and techno down the ages (ie people dancing, in clubs) it continues to bring new sounds from different things into these two genres.

I know it's a fairly hardline stance but as a result of the sort of tension and fight between house and experimentation I think the non house output of these artists is kind of irrelevent, to me anyway, it's like......what is it part of, who does it represent?

i don't think minimal techno is the new post-rock because even if the 4/4 kick is removed from minimal techno, there is still too much that is structurally and historically different between the two. there is some overlap, but it seems too general to really draw an explicit connection. i still hear way more techno and disco and south america in villalobos (or luciano or guido schneider) than in pretty much all of my knowledge post-rock combined (which is admittedly not much). maybe i need to listen to "achso" more.

w/r/t a hardline house stance, i think the form sometimes gets tired and needs to be rehabilitated by experimentation.

villalobos' set on that green and blue comp is a perfect example of his populousness. also "what you say is more than i can say". surprised that people aren't talking up the green and blue mix more.

i am down with restless or relentless experimentation because when it works there is just this frission especially in the context of house or techno where the idiom is so strict but there can be that huge payoff in the way tracks mix together. even if such experimentation doesn't work, the reverbations on the culture or other artists are worth it. so if it's deploying post-rock stategies or sampling depeche mode into the k-hole or choppy rhythmic tricks, the ends are the same. the actual sound of tortoise and autechre and villalobos are very different to my ears so i think it is hard to discuss this topic without comparing scenes or methods or culture. the big post-rock record for me is millions now living... and i get the autechre reference in a villalobos review, but autechre have gone way further out in the way they stutter their beats. they seem to be returning to the dancefloor though. (i have been listening to untilted a lot lately). i guess if i had to say one thing these artist's sounds all have in common is their songs can sound as if it they are evolving in real-time, sometimes from measure to measure. but with autechre there are strong hints of detroit techno and electro and the sheffield legacy and industrial music; tortoise feels more formalized and not reliant on software (at least in a live setting), based in a jazz and improv legacy; and villalobos sounds more painterly and decorative like he's cooking something brilliant with rare ingredients, but there is always (on the singles) a strong hint of rhythm in the house/disco/techno tradition. he doesn't sound as hard as autechre or as mathy as tortoise. this is all reminding me of taka taka and how it brings all of these different techniques together (well not necessarily post-rock)

ep7 is one of my favorite pieces of music ever. it sounds so troubled by its own existence.