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The ByteNoise electronic music guide                 Winter 2005 edition
Written by Zoe Blade                                       Public domain

Please send any corrections and suggestions to zoe@NObyteSPAMnoise.co.uk

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                           Table of contents:

Aphex Twin
  Selected Ambient Works 85-92 .................................... 0030
  Selected Ambient Works Volume II ................................ 0112
  Richard D. James Album .......................................... 0172
Autechre
  Incunabula ...................................................... 0222
B12
  Electro-Soma .................................................... 0304
Infinite Scale
  Sound Sensor .................................................... 0347
Leftfield
  Leftism ......................................................... 0383
Ochre
  A Midsummer Nice Dream .......................................... 0443
Vibert, Luke
  Lover's Acid .................................................... 0503

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Album:    Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Artist:   Aphex Twin
Label:    Distance (R&S Records)
Released: 1992-11-01
Summary:  Great to relax to, but may cause headaches.

Aphex Twin has built up a bit of a reputation for composing pieces
of music that are inspirational to other musicians.  In their original,
raw form, however, these pieces are so unorthodox as to barely be
recognisable as music.  In that context, this early album of his
scarcely seems to have been written by the same person as the almost
mythical Aphex Twin.  It is simple, catchy, and - most surprisingly
- accessible.

The album's title seems a bit misleading to me.  The music isn't
ambient in the Brian Eno sense of the word - for that, you'd be
better off with Aphex Twin's later release Selected Ambient Works
Volume II.  A far cry from beatless music that envelopes you, this
is driven by a drum machine and is bass heavy enough to cause listening
fatigue.  In short, it's ambient techno, not ambient.  Having said
that, both are very nice genres.  It's just nice to be prepared for
what you're about to listen to.

So this is an ambient techno album, with two exceptions: the track
named i (yes, a lower case letter "I") is beatless and floaty,
although it only lasts just over a minute.  The track after it, Green
Calx, is at the opposite end of the spectrum: it is noisy and abrasive,
and in my opinion has no place being on an album with the word
"ambient" in the title.  As a piece of music it's not Aphex Twin's
best work, and when put in the context of the whole album it's just
annoying.  Unless you're fanatically devoted to Aphex Twin, you'd
probably be best off leaving it off your playlist.

Other pieces of music to be wary of are Schottkey 7th Path and
Hedphelym; while they're ambient techno, they can also be pretty
scary.  Whether you want to avoid them or not is up to you, but if
you leave Green Calx, Schottkey 7th Path and Hedphelym out, you end
up with a very pleasant album.

Three tracks aside, this is actually very nice music to listen to.
In general it is relaxing and contemplative.  I'll admit that when
I first bought this album, I didn't really get the point of combining
a generally laid back and relaxing soundscape with loud and dominating
drumbeats, but after listening to it a few times the idea has grown
on me, and I've since bought similar albums by other artists (more
on those later).

One of my favourite tracks is Ageispolis: It starts off with a very
simple periodic waveform, drenched in reverb, which is soon joined
by a very loud Roland TR-808 (or possibly CR-8000) and a suitably
ethereal pad, envoking the feelings of both warmth and otherworldliness.
Another simple waveform is then added.  I suspect it's a sine wave,
but even with an oscilloscope I can't really tell: the TR-808 hogs
all the visible activity.  This second waveform mainly provides a
deep sub-bass, occasionally moving up a few octaves, which works
well when it's not clashing with the TR-808's kick drum.  By the
time the rain sound effect appears, you're so absorbed in the melodies
and rhythm that you hardly notice it.  This piece of music is
wonderful, except for the listening fatigue you're bound to get from
listening to it all the time.

Pulsewidth is in a similar vein to Ageispolis, but generally catchier
and more down to Earth.  Ptolemy and Delphium are even further in
this direction, and wouldn't be too amiss on the dancefloor, while
still being good to unwind to.

Albums like B12's Electro-Soma and Autechre's Incunabula are similar
in style to Selected Ambient Works 85-92's better moments, the former
laid back yet good to dance to, and the latter sharing its otherworldly
vibe.  It's a safe bet that even during this early period in Aphex
Twin's career, he was already influencing other musicians.

In summary, this is a very good album for the most part, only let
down slightly by three main problems: its production (in my opinion,
Aphex Twin should swallow his pride and hire a producer to help
remaster this album so that the kick drum doesn't interfere with the
sub-bass, for instance); Aphex Twin's sometimes unusual choice of
scary or downright loud music; and the listening fatigue and ensuing
headaches that some of the tracks can cause.

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Album:    Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Artist:   Aphex Twin
Label:    Warp Records
Released: 1994-03-07
Summary:  Sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary, but always otherworldly.

Filling up an impressive three records or two CDs, Selected Ambient
Works Volume II contains a lot of music.  This is just as well, as
it's also a vast departure from Aphex Twin's other output: it is his
only work in the beatless ambient genre (one or two unobtrusive
rhythms aside), save for the odd track here and there on some of his
other releases.

On one hand, most of this album sounds as if he has just discovered
the delay and reverb effects and is subsequently using them as the
actual basis of every single track.  It also sounds as if he still
hasn't gotten to grips with mastering in general, with clipping and
painful resonance present, and an overall amateur sound marring the
final result.

On the other hand, it's also one of the most original albums to sneak
its way into a fair few households, at times beautiful and at other
times downright scary, but always alien and mysterious.

My favourite pieces of music from this album are the first and third
tracks.  In the first, snippets of lush vocals, a pad, and a plucked
instrument all gently fade in and out, filtered with a varying cutoff
point.  While this piece of music is very repetitive, this isn't a
problem.  It's something you could listen to while having a bath,
giving a massage or even drifting off to sleep.  In short, it's
absolutely sublime.  If anything, it somehow seems to end all too
quickly, after almost seven and a half minutes.  Likewise, the third
track is what contentment would probably sound like if it was a piece
of music.  It's about as relaxing as anything by Brian Eno, which
is really saying something.

Some of the other pieces of music on this album are a stark contrast.
The rather scary fifth track - distant drones and reverberated,
almost tribal, percussion - wouldn't feel out of place if you listened
to it while looking at some of H. R. Giger's artwork.  Similarly,
while little more than a simple arpeggio and some sustained notes,
the seventh track still manages to sound unsettling.  Like the rest
of the album, these pieces of music are simple, but very effective.

Richard D. James has a habit of lying in interviews, so I doubt
there's much truth, if any, to his claim to have been inspired by
sounds he heard in lucid dreams he had when he was creating this
album.  Nevertheless, it does have a certain resemblance to a long
night's series of dreams: each of these pieces of music can put a
vivid image - and accompanying emotion - in your head that, although
totally irrational, seems to make perfect sense at the time.  I can't
explain why, for instance, the nineteenth track (or twentieth if
you're lucky enough to have the limited edition brown vinyl edition)
reminds me of a puddle-filled, sunny village just after a bout of
rain has finished.  It just does.  Similarly, I can't explain why
such simple and repetitive music is so vivid, inspiring and emotionally
engaging.  It just is.

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Album:    Richard D. James Album
Artist:   Aphex Twin
Label:    Warp Records
Released: 1996-11-04
Summary:  Harsh, complex beats and quirky samples never sounded so good.

First off, this album was apparently almost entirely written on a
computer.  While a fully integrated digital environment can make the
music writing process much easier, some people are adamant that
purely digital sounds lack the warmth of old, analogue keyboards.
To grossly oversimplify a holy war, many people prefer the aesthetic
qualities of sounds that are imperfect as they sound more natural
and give the ear little details to relish in.

So naturally, Richard D. James released an album that not only
sounds somewhat harsh and abrasive but also sounds like it contains
a lot of cheap samples and a fair few homebrew ones, from orchestral
sounds that won't fool anyone to samples of the ZX Spectrum game
Jetpac - including the noise of it loading.  Surprisingly, the result
is actually rather good.  Maybe he wanted to prove that high quality
sounds aren't as important as original ideas.  Then again, maybe he
just wanted to see what he could get away with.

Like much of his other work, the eponymous Richard D. James Album
is more like a sketchbook of ideas than a finished album.  If you
want to listen to something instantly accessible then you'd be better
off listening to one of the many groups he has influenced, but if
you're persistent, this quaint little album just may grow on you.

As far as its sound goes, it mainly consists of intricately programmed
drum samples that are far too fast and complex to actually be played
by a real drummer.  Once you manage to stop focusing on this insane
percussion, however, it actually makes a weirdly appropriate backdrop
for the melodies and bizarre sounds that make the album so good.
(Incidently, two of the melodies also featured on the mythical demo
tape Melodies From Mars.)

This album's actually surprisingly coherent for Richard D. James,
which makes a pleasant change.  It even rises to a suitably manic
climax with Girl/Boy Song, which sounds partly orchestral and partly
like a drummer having an epileptic fit.

While not easily accessible, Richard D. James Album is original and
very interesting.  It's also pretty humourous in places, which is
quite impressive for instrumental music.  It won't be to everybody's
taste, though, so it's worth listening to it before you decide whether
to buy it or not.

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Album:    Incunabula
Artist:   Autechre
Label:    Warp Records
Released: 1993-11-29
Summary:  Sublime and otherworldly enough to warrant a listen.

If B12's Electro-Soma is background music, Autechre's Incunabula
takes you on a journey.  Best listened to with headphones and your
undivided attention, it's an ethereal soundscape above all else.

The first track, Kalpol Introl, is a crescendo of breathtaking beauty.
Sparse, squishy bass sounds run through a delay take centre stage,
soon joined by an atmospheric pad and quirky, hissing percussion.
The overall result is as sublime as it is otherworldly.

Overlapping with the end of Kalpol Introl is the beginning of the
slightly more down-to-Earth Bike (if you were hoping to include them
in a randomised playlist, I'd recommend joining these two tracks
together, as they go well together anyway).  This is where a regular
drum machine makes its first appearance, providing a more familiar
type of percussion: a repetitive rhythm.  Combined with the sort of
synthetic bassline that you feel more than hear, and delayed melodic
synths with quick envelope settings on the higher frequencies, this
is another wonderfully atmospheric track.

Autriche starts off with an inviting, warm pad and distant talking,
swiftly accompanied with another rhythm on the analogue drum machine,
but in my opinion spoils it with the inclusion of a grating timbre
for the main melody.

Bronchus 2 sounds like someone plucking a long, twangy, metal cable,
drenched in delays and reverb.  This one just leaves me with the
feeling that I missed the point of the track entirely.

Basscadet is rhythmically more upbeat, yet with a haunting atmosphere
and a distorted timbre that all add up to create a jarring sound.
Slightly scary stuff.

Eggshell is much more my cup of tea.  It's more laid back and sounds
to me more like it's trying to convey a sense of wonder than fear.
By all rights, it should sound too repetitive: a mere two chords
provide the musical setting for nine minutes' worth of music.  By
the time the second melody arrives, however, Autechre have proven
they can pull such a feat off.  The music flies by all too quickly.

In my opinion, Autechre sound like they're trying too hard to be
clever with the confusing percussion at the beginning of the next
track, Doctrine.  It soon starts making sense when put in context
(albeit a rather loud context).  The actual melodies and harmonies
are nice for the most part, as long as you can get past the loud
clanging of the rhythm.

Moving on, Maetl is slightly more calm, yet still fueled by a clangy
beat.  Its melody seems almost bittersweet, and once the pads fade
in, it fits in much better with the album's overall spooky, otherworldly
feel.

At over eleven minutes long, the next track, Windwind, is an epic
offering.  Its seemingly unrelated components, which fit together
so well, feel like a continuation of the opening track.  The epic
pad, combined with all the interesting underlying parts, creates a
soundscape that makes you wonder just what untold adventure inspired
this piece.

Lowride chills you back down again.  While not breathtaking, it
provides a much needed rest.

The last track, 444, is another dramatic affair.  Using intense
harmonies, it takes you on a final journey before letting you go.
The unintrusive rhythm takes a back seat to the delayed synthetic
sounds playing the strange music.

Whether I would recommend this album depends on the individual
listener.  It has its bad points as well as its beautiful moments.
Personally, I found the sublime journey that the album took me on
to be worth tracking it down.  I tend to only listen to roughly half
of the tracks that it has to offer, but I wouldn't want to part with
them.  It's a quirky release worth at least a listen by anyone curious
as to how unusual music can sound while remaining good.

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Album:    Electro-Soma
Artist:   B12
Label:    Warp Records
Released: 1993-03-29
Summary:  Consistently good, but never great, ambient techno.

B12's album Electro-Soma is very similar in style to two other albums
released by Warp in the same year, namely Autechre's Incunabula and
F.U.S.E.'s Dimension Intrusion.  All three are albums I'd recommend
to fans of ambient techno.

For anyone unfamiliar with the genre, this album consists of laid
back instrumental music made with eighties synthesisers.  The
ubiquitous Roland TR-808 provides a substantial amount of the
percussion.  A few of the sounds on Electro-Soma can be heard on
other artists' albums, such as The Prodigy's debut Experience, so
it sounds like B12 have used at least one or two presets as well
(not to mention what sounds like a sample from Brian Eno's Apollo:
Atmospheres and Soundtracks).  Within this framework, however, they
have managed to come up with something sufficiently different to
warrant giving this album a listen.

Electro-Soma's sounds evoke cyberpunk imagery while the melodies are
pleasant and laid back.  The fact that it still manages to sound
futuristic (in my opinion, at least) is pretty impressive considering
it is now over ten years old, and was made with synthesisers that
weren't even new when the album was released.

While certainly not the most groundbreaking of Warp's early releases,
Electro-Soma manages to be consistently good.  I never found any of
its tracks to be great the way some of Incunabula's are, but I never
found any to be bad enough to warrant pushing the track skip button
either.  Just because none of Electro-Soma's tracks amazed me certainly
doesn't mean it should be overlooked: every cut on it is good, and
finding an album so consistently enjoyable is pretty rare.

Electro-Soma serves as a good introduction to the genre, and as the
perfect background music for doing anything geeky and chilled, such
as programming late at night.  Best of all, it's perfect for drifting
off to while lying in bed with your eyes closed.  Recommended.

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EP:       Sound Sensor
Artist:   Infinite Scale
Label:    Toytronic
Released: 2005
Summary:  Pleasant, well-polished music that's both warm and glimmering.

For the most part, Sound Sensor consists of relaxing music that
doesn't demand your attention, yet stands up to scrutiny.  Fans of
Boards of Canada will feel at home with this release.

The first and last tracks feature IDM-style over-the-top percussion
contrasting pleasant melodies.  In my opinion, these tracks are OK
but nothing special.

The second track, Ghost, is a well-balanced mixture of elements,
with no single sound fighting for your attention.  A warm sub-bass
and a simple rhythm compliment the pads, melody and quirky noises
well.  The end result is a very pleasant piece of music.

In-Motion is a warm, beatless affair with pads and glimmering sounds.
It's very enjoyable, although again, nothing amazing.

The other two tracks are my favourites.  With Infinite Scale's simple
use of acoustic drum samples to augment the warm, inviting main
music, these tracks sound uncannily like some of Boards of Canada's
output.  These two pieces of music alone justify the purchase of
this EP.

Considering the fact that this is Infinite Scale's first release,
it's surprisingly well-polished.  It's also a joy to listen to.
You'd be well advised to keep an eye on him over the next few years.
Just like Ochre's A Midsummer Nice Dream, released by the same record
label, this is an exceptional debut.

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Album:    Leftism
Artist:   Leftfield
Label:    Hard Hands (Sony Music)
Released: 1995-01-30
Summary:  Instantly accessible yet keeps you coming back.  A classic.

I can almost imagine that Leftism was designed to be an ambitious
showcase for the delay effect, and if it was ever intended as such,
it certainly succeeds at making the delay seem like a valuable
instrument in its own right.

The music on this album is a melting pot of different styles and
influences, fused together by dance beats, Roland TB-303 basslines,
luscious pads, and the ever-present delays.  The rhythms are usually
very simple, based around the 4/4 time signature and a pulsating
synthetic kick drum.  While this should make the album become tedious
very quickly, it somehow manages to instead make it instantly
accessible while still standing up to repeated listening.  Perhaps
it is the mixture of different genres that keeps me coming back to
this album, or maybe it's Leftfield's use of vocals.

It seems that, for whatever reason, songs work better than instrumental
music in modern records.  Maybe people like the familiar sound of
another voice, or perhaps the images invoked by a good lyric help
emphasise the emotion invoked by the accompanying music.  Whatever
the reason, a sung lyric (as opposed to a single line repeated again
and again, or no vocal at all) can really make a piece of dance music
stand out from the crowd.  Leftfield must have known this, because
they included plenty of songs on this album.  Original and Inspection
(Check One), for example, are amongst the most catchy tracks on
Leftism, and probably many people's favourites.

It seems odd to me that dance music is often instrumental.  The fact
that the people who compose it are seldom singers opens up an
opportunity that seems almost unique to the genre: being able to
pick a different singer for each song.  Leftfield certainly took
advantage of this freedom.  Earl Sixteen, Papa Dee, Djum Djum, Toni
Halliday, Danny Red, John Lydon and Lemn Sissay all provide vocals
for this album.

The individual tracks are nice, but Leftism is a good example of the
whole being greater than the sum of its parts.  This is an album
that you can listen to all the way through without a pause.  This
isn't just due to the quality of the music, but also the pace of
each track and the order they appear in.  After the first two cuts
reel you in, Melt calms you back down again, giving you a rest before
the album builds up momentum again.  Melt isn't just filler either,
and has found its way on many chillout compilations as well as fitting
perfectly into Leftism.  Once you're feeling sufficiently relaxed,
the tension slowly rises all the way to the climactic Open Up, before
calming you down again with 21st Century Poem.

I'd recommend this album to anyone who likes dance music, and at
least one or two people who don't.  Although it seems very simple,
this is perhaps somewhat misleading: few albums keep you coming back
for more as often as this one does.  It's a deceptively humble
masterpiece.

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Album:    A Midsummer Nice Dream
Artist:   Ochre
Label:    Toytronic
Released: 2004-11-29
Summary:  IDM with sublime melodies.  Great for fans of the genre.

The first thing that struck me about Ochre's album A Midsummer Nice
Dream was that the rhythms were very similar to Aphex Twin's in
style.  Fans of works such as the Richard D. James Album and the
Come To Daddy EP will certainly feel at home listening to this.  One
of the songs, Low Grav Freefall, even goes as far as to mimic part
of Bucephalus Bouncing Ball.

The harmonies and melodies are generally more charming than the
majority of Aphex Twin's output, however.  If anything, the sound
of the melodies is more reminiscent of the main instrument in
Radiohead's Everything In Its Right Place: something that can fulfill
the role of a piano, and perfect for sublime melodies, yet completely
synthetic sounding, bearing no resemblance to a real piano at all.
Similarly, the pads gracing tracks like Brancaster Coast and Eleven
are similar to those of Kid A's Treefingers.  It's certainly more
accessible than either the Richard D. James Album or Kid A (except
for the latter having vocals), being more on a par with the likes
of Boards of Canada.

As far as the sound goes, it is better produced than the Richard D.
James Album and more consistent than Kid A.  The playful rhythms
often employ a solid (presumably Roland TR-909) kick drum, rooting
their otherwise idiosyncratic nature in a familiar sound.  Meanwhile,
clean sub-bass timbres help to give this album a pristine, modern
feel.  The percussion is generally quick and snappy, while the
instruments as a whole are clean and polished.

At first, I found the rhythms to sound a little contrived at times,
due to a lack of focus on the downbeat in some of the tracks.  If
you drift off for a second (which is easy to do with an album like
this), it can sometimes be a little hard to work out where the beat
begins.  This doesn't particularly deter from the album's enjoyability,
however, as the melodies and harmonies are usually the focus of
attention, with the beats merely providing a welcome distraction.
After listening to this album several times, the complexity of the
rhythms ceases to be a hinderence.  Instead, it helps keep the album
interesting.

Drink Malk is the odd track on the album: it provides the kind of
acidline that is familiar to most fans of electronic music.  Rather
than showing it off with a solo, however, Ochre chose to populate
the mix with melodies that fit in well with the rest of the album.
The title track features a solo of the piano inspired instrument,
while Brancoaster Coast and Eleven are ambient affairs consisting
solely of pads, giving the listener a much needed rest.  The rest
of the album sticks to the formula of pairing Aphex Twin style beats
with sublime melodies.

With A Midsummer Nice Dream, Ochre proves that melodies can still
play a more important role than knob twiddling, even in music rooted
firmly within the IDM genre.  Recommended.

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Album:    Lover's Acid
Artist:   Luke Vibert
Label:    Planet Mu Records
Released: 2005-04-04
Summary:  Upbeat and loud acid house.

This surprisingly coherent album is a compilation of the three 12"
EPs '95-'99, Homewerk, and Lover's Acid, all reordered and fit onto
a single CD.

The music is upbeat and loud; if it stuck to simple 4/4 rhythms with
less fancy sequencing, it would be a perfect mindless floor filler
for clubs, but it's more intelligent than that, occasionally getting
sidetracked by Aphex Twin style tangents.

This album isn't particularly accessible.  The first few times I
listened to it, I wanted to like it a lot more than I did.  It is
growing on me, though.  If you're going to judge whether or not to
get the album based on just one track, I'd recommend giving Acid
2000 a listen.  It's probably the easiest track on the album to get
into.

Lover's Acid is a bit cheesy in places, but judging by the vocal
sample "Can you imagine where you will be in the year two thousand?"
I think it's safe to assume that Luke Vibert is being satirical in
his use of the occasional cliche - a wise move considering that the
music is probably better off with them included.

The star of this series is undoubtedly the distorted Roland TB-303,
although the suitably tough drums and accompanying breakbeats come
in a close second.  The fact that a lot of the percussion sounds
like it was performed on something other than Roland drum machines
is pretty refreshing.

If you hate TB-303 acid lines, don't even bother looking at this.
If you love them, though, it's probably worth checking out Lover's
Acid as it does provide a refreshingly original perspective on acid
house - quite a feat considering how long the genre has been going.

If you're into acid house or IDM, you might love this, but it's
definitely not for everyone.

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