Tuesday 4 August 2009

Review: Zomby, One Foot Ahead of the Other EP

10 comments:

  1. I'm amazed that someone can write so much about someone changing the settings on an arpeggiator.

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  2. Interesting review, and excellent blog overall. The EP left me unsatisfied, though, and I wrote a review about it here - http://igloomag.com/reviews::1846::Zomby_One_Foot_Ahead_Of_The_Other_EP_Ramp_

    Let me know what you think. Cheers!

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  3. Does this mean I can retire? I jolly well hope so! :-)

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  4. ha! oh please don't retire. I was just a little caught up in what I saw as the unique and rather innovative musical intrigue of this particular EP, and though I found what you said about ganja compelling and persuasive and perhaps appropriate, I'm keen to discourage any sense that this is music for and by giggling stoners playing with gameboys, the conclusion some readers potentially then coming to being that it only really sounds good or musically viable when you're high, which is a sort of thought-terminating aesthetic isolation.

    The Impostume presumed that comment was down to paranoia about one of your posts and it wasn't at all - in fact when you said that classical music was on a life support machine I really agreed. As soon as I've moved house I'm gonna write a series of related posts, one of which will aim to evaluate the current state of classical music and its role in that Paul Morley documentary and the recent 'classic goldie', where Goldie had to write an orchestral piece - both of which made a load of telling and questionable aesthetic assumptions. glad to hear you had a good holiday.

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  5. Dude can't even figure out a proper way to end a track... 'let's just fade it.' Title track and Expert Tuition have the same beat. I'll bet on 9/4/09 you regret some of this review.

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  6. I thought Helter Skelter ended quite effectively and innovatively, and an unceremonious ending seems appropriate for suggesting the perpetual motion of shifting, minimalistic patterns (Zomby is really into the similarly abrupt Philip Glass). Those two beats aren't exactly the same though they are pretty similar, but actually I liked the cohesiveness of the EP, the one style being thoroughly explored, the internal differences being only subtle. I found it a positive thing - frank, minimalist and economical rather than just lazy (quite a bold move considering that the expectations of listeners such as yourself are perhaps more prevalent). I'll grant that such things can be seen as lazy from the most conventional points of view, but this EP (and Zomby's work as a whole) suggests a different way of listening.

    What's happening on 9/04/09? Today isn't it?

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  7. Not really sure of your intimacy with electronic music but if you can't hear how the title track and expert tuition have the same beat with slightly different eq then you might be right about that 'different way of listening' thing. I actually like this ep just don't understand the need to intellectualize it... I dont see the boundary pushing that you might but still find it to be a fun listen. A month from your OP, thats 9409

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  8. Yeah it was the EQ I was talking about when I said it was different. Sounds like the same loop perhaps, but different EQ. Like the manipulation of the MIDI signal of one row of pitches with effects like arpeggiators (if that's how it's done): subtle, minimalist changes, which can be as musically satisfying and pleasurable as a more maximalist richness. They're different ways of listening, I feel this EP rewards the former, but both can be good.

    I was getting worried that 9/4/09 was gonna be Judgement Day or something...

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  9. DOM said...
    I'm amazed that someone can write so much about someone changing the settings on an arpeggiator.



    Everything is notated by hand or played on keys, nothing is ever mechanically reproduced by settings or sampled and looped..rather the only mechanic used is the sequencer itself,

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