6 ms·

Aphex Twin gave us a peek inside a 90s classic (2017)

191 points by indigodaddy 2y ago

hansjorg 2y ago
The video with the tracker is only part of the final track, it's missing percussion at least. Here's the version of Vordhosbn from the Drukqs album: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ro1aHvhGec&pp=ygUJdm9yZGhvc2Ju https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ro1aHvhGec&pp=ygUJdm9yZGhvc2J... Drukqs is a great album btw, if you're at all interested in music you should give it a listen. It's got everything from tender prepared piano pieces to his signature drill and bass. Syro from 2014 is also an amazing album.
- bellgrove 2y ago
  I love most of his work. Drukqs is his weakest (but still good!) album IMO - Avril 14th is a great track. His Analord series is also amazing and Rushup Edge under another alias - The Tuss.
  - enneff 2y ago
    Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but this take seems absolutely out of pocket to me. Drukqs is Rich’s most well-rounded, polished, and arguably revolutionary project. From a sound design and arrangement perspective it still sounds contemporary, more than 20 years on. It’s also the only one of his albums besides SAW 85-92 of which I like every track (and love most of them). You do you, but maybe give it another dedicated listen and you might change your mind! :)
    - trollied 2y ago
      > Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but this take seems absolutely out of pocket to me Made me laugh. We all have our tastes and loves/hates. Accept it.
      - enneff 2y ago
        Clearly I do accept it since that’s what I said in the quoted text??
    - bellgrove 2y ago
      Interesting... Drukqs was my introduction to RDJ when it was released and to be honest I have never really gone back to give it a dedicated listen. Perhaps his other works stand out more to me because it was released (or I discovered them) later. Thanks for the comment; I'm going to revisit the album and maybe reconsider!
- pentaphobe 2y ago
  Seconded - Drukqs is spectacular! Random tidbit: around when the album came out I chucked it on my friend's CDJs (IIRC I skipped straight to Mt St Michael) - by chance the CDJs were set at some lower speed, maybe 50-75% Highly recommend trying it out - being able to hear how much groove and complexity sits behind those super fast tracks is quite enlightening. We ended up listening to both discs of the album like that, just boggling the whole time The track in question: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kN4zRfnHm8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kN4zRfnHm8 PS. Whilst YouTube has playback speed it's unlikely to give the same benefits - but if you've no other options it could be worth a shot
- glitcher 2y ago
  He's got a catalogue of bangers I've always loved, but Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 was so unique when it was released it really took me by surprise. It was hypnotic, sometimes eerie, other times introspective and beautiful. If you're to believe the account Richard James gave, he claims to have used sleep deprivation and lucid dreaming to compose the album. I used to listen to the entire thing beginning to end on headphones, and I believe it! https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii/ https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-amb...
  - hansjorg 2y ago
    I've spent so much time listening to it, it really is beautiful. Just noticed on Bleep that they're releasing a 30th anniversary expanded edition on the 4th of October: https://bleep.com/release/460396-aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-expanded-edition https://bleep.com/release/460396-aphex-twin-selected-ambient...
    - dr_kiszonka 2y ago
      Nice! #19 (and #21) sound great and/but really nostalgic; remind me of Funki Porcini a bit.
  - bane 2y ago
    SAW2 is maybe one of the most important collections of ambient electronic music ever made. It's an astonishing exploration of the genre. I've thought it to be compared in some ways to Bach's "The Art of Fugue" which pushed its own genre so hard that its often considered to be pinnacle work on Fugues and sort of forced later musicians to move along to newer forms. While I personally prefer SAW85-92, I have to recognize the ways in which SAW2 pushes ambient and electronic music, even today, to areas that force it to be defined and to redefine itself. SAW85-92 sounds very much like a product of the time, but SAW2 sounds absolutely contemporary even today. It somewhat closed the book on Ambient electronica and then shoved that book firmly into the avantgarde. The individual pieces range from unsettling to mind-alteringly beautiful. "...I Care Because You Do" just sort of continues the leap forward. "Start As You Mean to Go On" feels to me like plugging yourself into a power outlet in a hurricane. IMHO, RDJ is at his best when he combines a kind of odd, almost apathetic, idle but tuneful, framework to a song, then ignites it into a frenetic mind blending fire with absolutely bonkers rhythmic lines, or sometimes just leaves it to chill like with "Aberto Balsalm". It's wild to think we're talking about music older than people who have graduated college and are considered almost mid-career in some fields. And yet he's still making mindblowing stuff https://youtu.be/e_Ue_P7vcRE https://youtu.be/e_Ue_P7vcRE
stonethrowaway 2y ago
90s and early 2000s were cemented by works like these. By these I really mean electronica and it’s influence. It had hit mainstream. Warp was full on, having all sorts of artists and releasing their Artificial Intelligence compilation. Darude had just come out with Sandstorm and Digitally Imported radio was taking off with Shoutcast. Elsewhere, Nu-Metal for example was starting to come into its own, lots of new music that we haven’t heard before with all sorts of genre overlaps. Textures that did not exist before. We knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that we were in a musical zeitgeist. Has anything like this ever happened since? I keep chasing the dragon but I haven’t seen anything of this sort occur. It seems like we’ve mostly stabilized and are back to an equilibrium.
- Barneyhill 2y ago
  Yeah... I definitely share the feeling that we've hit a wall in terms of new sounds. Currently I think some of the work happening in the audio/ML space is the most promising in terms of emerging possibilities but things are still moving much slower than I thought they would. Here's a couple projects we've done developing novel audio interfaces that leverage ML: https://github.com/vroomai https://github.com/vroomai - I'm still confident we'll see a breakout use-case in this area soon.
- pentaphobe 2y ago
  If you find the dragon I hope you'll let us know! I've a suspicion that what's missing is those early producers drew inspiration from a diverse set of non-genre (or non-electronic) art, and also were driven at least partially by the lack of good experimental electronica in their early years (scarcity breeding experimentation or something?) Whereas nowadays most people are (justifiably) inspired by a preponderance of music _within the style they're creating_. Pair that with a strong focus on "how to sound like X" style tutorial content and I imagine it's tougher to extricate yourself from Building A Product long enough to invent. I often feel kinda retroactively jealous of how much amazing tutorial content is at our fingertips these days, "you can learn anything!" but do wonder if the relative isolation and drought in those early days was perhaps more of a benefit to prolific output than this abundance of input is. Much easier to consume than produce - unless there's nothing to consume :)
- 2y ago
chungus 2y ago
I can still remember the first time I listened to aphex twin when I was 12. On my Sony discman. I've been listening for decades...
pentaphobe 2y ago
Very cool to get a peek behind the curtain! I've never been as productive and free as when I was mind-melded with FastTracker2 in the 90's For a peak couple years I was generally writing 100s of (unrefined) 5-14 min tracks every month. Total unbound freedom to experiment at (close to) the speed of thought. For anyone who's not had the pleasure, It's like when you first get good at touch typing and find you can suddenly put down thoughts dozens of times faster than ever before - it frees up your self-expression and gets The Censor out of the way. Renoise is pretty cool, but I never fully glommed with it to the same level - might be time to try again! Recently started playing with a Polyend Tracker - pretty neat to feel those old synapses waking up. There's no way it can ever approach the speed of full keyboard-operated Tracker programs but the chance to revisit that beloved workflow in a solid and portable unit is so far really compelling.
- dsclough 2y ago
  Hope you managed to preserve these, I’d be keep to take a listen if they’re hosted online somewhere. I’ve been using renoise for 15 years on and off and while nowhere near 100s of tracks a month I fondly look back on the first year I used it similarly - that combination of youthful energy and tracker software is really something special. Renoise has come a long way and is a joy to use.
  - pentaphobe 2y ago
    Alas most died on boxes of floppy discs which succumbed to a flood I recently discovered some 50 odd floppies which survived, and a couple old 5" hard drives - so I'm hopeful! I assume most of the data will be pretty patchy by now (if not totally gone) but I'm gonna try some forensic recovery If I manage I'll put the survivors somewhere for sure :) Anywhere I can check out your renoise stuff? Always keen to find new stuff to boggle at
    - avtar 2y ago
      Not the person you were replying to but here’s someone who still uses Renoise for releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud
throwaway992673 2y ago
When life throws me lemons I play aisatsana on piano.
deng 2y ago
See also this video from Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) on the software used by Aphex Twin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIOBBodoic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIOBBodoic
- krmblg 2y ago
  Not sure if that dove evolution parody video got me introduced to the flashbulb’s works initially but I sure enjoyed Kirlian Selections/Tape and Our Simulacra and for some reason came across Benn on numerous occasions (mostly HN related) in the past decade (didn’t know about the YT channel until now though)
- spacechild1 2y ago
  That was an interesting video! I knew that he used SuperCollider because he was trolling the SC mailing list under the pseudonym "eric hard jams" with some really nasty messages - until he got kicked out eventually. He and James McCartney, the creator of SC, also know each other personally.
skrebbel 2y ago
Wow this really blows my mind. I used trackers nearly every day when Drukqs was released and somehow I felt that Aphex Twin just had to have access to stuff I didn’t. Obviously that was kinda true, cause he had synths and teenage me couldn't afford those, but still, turns out it all boiled down to plain old tracking, just samples. No special effects, no fancy overpriced sequencer orchestrating a million pieces of gear, just… samples. It really blows me away.
- kristiandupont 2y ago
  I feel similar! I made tons of tracks, mostly with Impulse Tracker, and I liked listening to it myself but I had this belief that a record company would never accept something that was made in a tracker because it wasn't "professional", so I never even considered trying to release anything.
nonrandomstring 2y ago
Does anyone on this list know Rich? A few years ago I ran into a zip file of Pure Data patches allegedly from the twisted mind of Rich James. They were absolutely mental (lookng at a pd patch lets you see directly into the composers mind) I've always been curious if they were really his.
- ofalkaed 2y ago
  Possibly the patches released by Autechre, I have seen them mislabeled as Apex Twin. Can you link or share them somewhere?
  - nonrandomstring 2y ago
    That might make sense. tbh they sounded more like Plaid/Black Dog so maybe Autechre. I'll have a dig but unlikely I'll find them in the abysmal heap. iirc they were posted via the old puredata forum so maybe check wayback.
    - ofalkaed 2y ago
      Doing some digging and all I found was some patches doing Autechre like things and the Autechre patches where Max/MSP patches from the EP7 era that came out around 2008 and were supposedly leaked but I remember Autechre releasing some patches within the last decade, not finding anything though, search engines are not what they were and neither is my memory. I forgot all about Plaid and Black Dog, thanks for the reminder. Can't find a working link to 2008 EP7 era patch. Later I will dig out the old hard drives and see if I have them saved somewhere.
  - enneff 2y ago
    Autechre never really used PD so it’s unlikely to be them.
    - ofalkaed 2y ago
      >never really used Are you saying they don't use it or do use it just not a great deal? I am fairly certain I first learned about pd back around the turn of the century from an interview with Autechre where they mentioned using it but I have no idea to what extent they used it. It might have been Max/MSP for the patches which often can be easily run in pd with some minor changes and sometimes works just fine without changes.
krmblg 2y ago
Back in the mid to late 90s tracker stuff was what I considered "how techno was made" (I got an A grade for a presentation in "music" subject at grammar school, mostly because tracker terminology also included "patterns", samples, bpm and such (Future Crew Demos such as Panic and 2nd Reality were my baseline back then). Boy was it a revelation when I got my hands at a "real" 909, 303+MPC+MIDI setup..
- gagagaga7 2y ago
  I mean, was it? I always felt like trackers were crappy and “real” producers used real synths and drum machines, but in hindsight we now know that some of the most creative/interesting producers were trackers
  - pentaphobe 2y ago
    It did always feel like the "real" folk had some mysterious room full of hardware I guess it was true, but so neat that they were sometimes triggering that stuff with trackers or sampling it for use within trackers (or similarly niche software) Aphex on trackers, Autechre in Max/MSP Still curious what squarepusher used
    - an_aparallel 2y ago
      Yamaha hardware sequencer (QU-700 from memory) + later on reaktor ensembles, and a room full of hardware, obviously live bass, live drums etc.
      - pentaphobe 2y ago
        Absolute champ, thanks!
trollied 2y ago
Anyone else here have Octamed as a kid? (And fasttracker!)
pipes 2y ago
That is a new explanation of white label I've never heard before. My experience is white label vinyl records could be bought in very niche record shops, they were music not released on an official label yet and the samples often weren't cleared for release. I owned a few back in the day. This is how DJs had tracks months before official release.
- Anthony-G 2y ago
  This explanation is the one I’d heard before and it makes a lot more sense to me. My memories of the 90s is that underground DJs were happy to share their music¹ with others and wouldn’t have sullied their vinyl collection by ripping off the labels. Maybe some DJs were territorial but most would be proud to show off the fruits of their record hunting. ¹ So much so, that they were far less willing to share the decks.

191 points by indigodaddy 2y ago

The video with the tracker is only part of the final track, it's missing percussion at least. Here's the version of Vordhosbn from the Drukqs album: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ro1aHvhGec&pp=ygUJdm9yZGhvc2Ju https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ro1aHvhGec&pp=ygUJdm9yZGhvc2J... Drukqs is a great album btw, if you're at all interested in music you should give it a listen. It's got everything from tender prepared piano pieces to his signature drill and bass. Syro from 2014 is also an amazing album.

bellgrove 2y ago
I love most of his work. Drukqs is his weakest (but still good!) album IMO - Avril 14th is a great track. His Analord series is also amazing and Rushup Edge under another alias - The Tuss.
- enneff 2y ago
  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but this take seems absolutely out of pocket to me. Drukqs is Rich’s most well-rounded, polished, and arguably revolutionary project. From a sound design and arrangement perspective it still sounds contemporary, more than 20 years on. It’s also the only one of his albums besides SAW 85-92 of which I like every track (and love most of them). You do you, but maybe give it another dedicated listen and you might change your mind! :)
  - trollied 2y ago
    > Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but this take seems absolutely out of pocket to me Made me laugh. We all have our tastes and loves/hates. Accept it.
    - enneff 2y ago
      Clearly I do accept it since that’s what I said in the quoted text??
  - bellgrove 2y ago
    Interesting... Drukqs was my introduction to RDJ when it was released and to be honest I have never really gone back to give it a dedicated listen. Perhaps his other works stand out more to me because it was released (or I discovered them) later. Thanks for the comment; I'm going to revisit the album and maybe reconsider!
pentaphobe 2y ago
Seconded - Drukqs is spectacular! Random tidbit: around when the album came out I chucked it on my friend's CDJs (IIRC I skipped straight to Mt St Michael) - by chance the CDJs were set at some lower speed, maybe 50-75% Highly recommend trying it out - being able to hear how much groove and complexity sits behind those super fast tracks is quite enlightening. We ended up listening to both discs of the album like that, just boggling the whole time The track in question: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kN4zRfnHm8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kN4zRfnHm8 PS. Whilst YouTube has playback speed it's unlikely to give the same benefits - but if you've no other options it could be worth a shot
glitcher 2y ago
He's got a catalogue of bangers I've always loved, but Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 was so unique when it was released it really took me by surprise. It was hypnotic, sometimes eerie, other times introspective and beautiful. If you're to believe the account Richard James gave, he claims to have used sleep deprivation and lucid dreaming to compose the album. I used to listen to the entire thing beginning to end on headphones, and I believe it! https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii/ https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-amb...
- hansjorg 2y ago
  I've spent so much time listening to it, it really is beautiful. Just noticed on Bleep that they're releasing a 30th anniversary expanded edition on the 4th of October: https://bleep.com/release/460396-aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-expanded-edition https://bleep.com/release/460396-aphex-twin-selected-ambient...
  - dr_kiszonka 2y ago
    Nice! #19 (and #21) sound great and/but really nostalgic; remind me of Funki Porcini a bit.
- bane 2y ago
  SAW2 is maybe one of the most important collections of ambient electronic music ever made. It's an astonishing exploration of the genre. I've thought it to be compared in some ways to Bach's "The Art of Fugue" which pushed its own genre so hard that its often considered to be pinnacle work on Fugues and sort of forced later musicians to move along to newer forms. While I personally prefer SAW85-92, I have to recognize the ways in which SAW2 pushes ambient and electronic music, even today, to areas that force it to be defined and to redefine itself. SAW85-92 sounds very much like a product of the time, but SAW2 sounds absolutely contemporary even today. It somewhat closed the book on Ambient electronica and then shoved that book firmly into the avantgarde. The individual pieces range from unsettling to mind-alteringly beautiful. "...I Care Because You Do" just sort of continues the leap forward. "Start As You Mean to Go On" feels to me like plugging yourself into a power outlet in a hurricane. IMHO, RDJ is at his best when he combines a kind of odd, almost apathetic, idle but tuneful, framework to a song, then ignites it into a frenetic mind blending fire with absolutely bonkers rhythmic lines, or sometimes just leaves it to chill like with "Aberto Balsalm". It's wild to think we're talking about music older than people who have graduated college and are considered almost mid-career in some fields. And yet he's still making mindblowing stuff https://youtu.be/e_Ue_P7vcRE https://youtu.be/e_Ue_P7vcRE

stonethrowaway 2y ago

90s and early 2000s were cemented by works like these. By these I really mean electronica and it’s influence. It had hit mainstream. Warp was full on, having all sorts of artists and releasing their Artificial Intelligence compilation. Darude had just come out with Sandstorm and Digitally Imported radio was taking off with Shoutcast. Elsewhere, Nu-Metal for example was starting to come into its own, lots of new music that we haven’t heard before with all sorts of genre overlaps. Textures that did not exist before. We knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that we were in a musical zeitgeist. Has anything like this ever happened since? I keep chasing the dragon but I haven’t seen anything of this sort occur. It seems like we’ve mostly stabilized and are back to an equilibrium.

Barneyhill 2y ago
Yeah... I definitely share the feeling that we've hit a wall in terms of new sounds. Currently I think some of the work happening in the audio/ML space is the most promising in terms of emerging possibilities but things are still moving much slower than I thought they would. Here's a couple projects we've done developing novel audio interfaces that leverage ML: https://github.com/vroomai https://github.com/vroomai - I'm still confident we'll see a breakout use-case in this area soon.
pentaphobe 2y ago
If you find the dragon I hope you'll let us know! I've a suspicion that what's missing is those early producers drew inspiration from a diverse set of non-genre (or non-electronic) art, and also were driven at least partially by the lack of good experimental electronica in their early years (scarcity breeding experimentation or something?) Whereas nowadays most people are (justifiably) inspired by a preponderance of music _within the style they're creating_. Pair that with a strong focus on "how to sound like X" style tutorial content and I imagine it's tougher to extricate yourself from Building A Product long enough to invent. I often feel kinda retroactively jealous of how much amazing tutorial content is at our fingertips these days, "you can learn anything!" but do wonder if the relative isolation and drought in those early days was perhaps more of a benefit to prolific output than this abundance of input is. Much easier to consume than produce - unless there's nothing to consume :)
2y ago

chungus 2y ago

I can still remember the first time I listened to aphex twin when I was 12. On my Sony discman. I've been listening for decades...

pentaphobe 2y ago

Very cool to get a peek behind the curtain! I've never been as productive and free as when I was mind-melded with FastTracker2 in the 90's For a peak couple years I was generally writing 100s of (unrefined) 5-14 min tracks every month. Total unbound freedom to experiment at (close to) the speed of thought. For anyone who's not had the pleasure, It's like when you first get good at touch typing and find you can suddenly put down thoughts dozens of times faster than ever before - it frees up your self-expression and gets The Censor out of the way. Renoise is pretty cool, but I never fully glommed with it to the same level - might be time to try again! Recently started playing with a Polyend Tracker - pretty neat to feel those old synapses waking up. There's no way it can ever approach the speed of full keyboard-operated Tracker programs but the chance to revisit that beloved workflow in a solid and portable unit is so far really compelling.

dsclough 2y ago
Hope you managed to preserve these, I’d be keep to take a listen if they’re hosted online somewhere. I’ve been using renoise for 15 years on and off and while nowhere near 100s of tracks a month I fondly look back on the first year I used it similarly - that combination of youthful energy and tracker software is really something special. Renoise has come a long way and is a joy to use.
- pentaphobe 2y ago
  Alas most died on boxes of floppy discs which succumbed to a flood I recently discovered some 50 odd floppies which survived, and a couple old 5" hard drives - so I'm hopeful! I assume most of the data will be pretty patchy by now (if not totally gone) but I'm gonna try some forensic recovery If I manage I'll put the survivors somewhere for sure :) Anywhere I can check out your renoise stuff? Always keen to find new stuff to boggle at
  - avtar 2y ago
    Not the person you were replying to but here’s someone who still uses Renoise for releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud

throwaway992673 2y ago

When life throws me lemons I play aisatsana on piano.

deng 2y ago

See also this video from Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) on the software used by Aphex Twin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIOBBodoic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIOBBodoic

krmblg 2y ago
Not sure if that dove evolution parody video got me introduced to the flashbulb’s works initially but I sure enjoyed Kirlian Selections/Tape and Our Simulacra and for some reason came across Benn on numerous occasions (mostly HN related) in the past decade (didn’t know about the YT channel until now though)
spacechild1 2y ago
That was an interesting video! I knew that he used SuperCollider because he was trolling the SC mailing list under the pseudonym "eric hard jams" with some really nasty messages - until he got kicked out eventually. He and James McCartney, the creator of SC, also know each other personally.

skrebbel 2y ago

Wow this really blows my mind. I used trackers nearly every day when Drukqs was released and somehow I felt that Aphex Twin just had to have access to stuff I didn’t. Obviously that was kinda true, cause he had synths and teenage me couldn't afford those, but still, turns out it all boiled down to plain old tracking, just samples. No special effects, no fancy overpriced sequencer orchestrating a million pieces of gear, just… samples. It really blows me away.

kristiandupont 2y ago
I feel similar! I made tons of tracks, mostly with Impulse Tracker, and I liked listening to it myself but I had this belief that a record company would never accept something that was made in a tracker because it wasn't "professional", so I never even considered trying to release anything.

nonrandomstring 2y ago

Does anyone on this list know Rich? A few years ago I ran into a zip file of Pure Data patches allegedly from the twisted mind of Rich James. They were absolutely mental (lookng at a pd patch lets you see directly into the composers mind) I've always been curious if they were really his.

ofalkaed 2y ago
Possibly the patches released by Autechre, I have seen them mislabeled as Apex Twin. Can you link or share them somewhere?
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  That might make sense. tbh they sounded more like Plaid/Black Dog so maybe Autechre. I'll have a dig but unlikely I'll find them in the abysmal heap. iirc they were posted via the old puredata forum so maybe check wayback.
  - ofalkaed 2y ago
    Doing some digging and all I found was some patches doing Autechre like things and the Autechre patches where Max/MSP patches from the EP7 era that came out around 2008 and were supposedly leaked but I remember Autechre releasing some patches within the last decade, not finding anything though, search engines are not what they were and neither is my memory. I forgot all about Plaid and Black Dog, thanks for the reminder. Can't find a working link to 2008 EP7 era patch. Later I will dig out the old hard drives and see if I have them saved somewhere.
- enneff 2y ago
  Autechre never really used PD so it’s unlikely to be them.
  - ofalkaed 2y ago
    >never really used Are you saying they don't use it or do use it just not a great deal? I am fairly certain I first learned about pd back around the turn of the century from an interview with Autechre where they mentioned using it but I have no idea to what extent they used it. It might have been Max/MSP for the patches which often can be easily run in pd with some minor changes and sometimes works just fine without changes.

krmblg 2y ago

Back in the mid to late 90s tracker stuff was what I considered "how techno was made" (I got an A grade for a presentation in "music" subject at grammar school, mostly because tracker terminology also included "patterns", samples, bpm and such (Future Crew Demos such as Panic and 2nd Reality were my baseline back then). Boy was it a revelation when I got my hands at a "real" 909, 303+MPC+MIDI setup..

gagagaga7 2y ago
I mean, was it? I always felt like trackers were crappy and “real” producers used real synths and drum machines, but in hindsight we now know that some of the most creative/interesting producers were trackers
- pentaphobe 2y ago
  It did always feel like the "real" folk had some mysterious room full of hardware I guess it was true, but so neat that they were sometimes triggering that stuff with trackers or sampling it for use within trackers (or similarly niche software) Aphex on trackers, Autechre in Max/MSP Still curious what squarepusher used
  - an_aparallel 2y ago
    Yamaha hardware sequencer (QU-700 from memory) + later on reaktor ensembles, and a room full of hardware, obviously live bass, live drums etc.
    - pentaphobe 2y ago
      Absolute champ, thanks!

trollied 2y ago

Anyone else here have Octamed as a kid? (And fasttracker!)

pipes 2y ago

That is a new explanation of white label I've never heard before. My experience is white label vinyl records could be bought in very niche record shops, they were music not released on an official label yet and the samples often weren't cleared for release. I owned a few back in the day. This is how DJs had tracks months before official release.

Anthony-G 2y ago
This explanation is the one I’d heard before and it makes a lot more sense to me. My memories of the 90s is that underground DJs were happy to share their music¹ with others and wouldn’t have sullied their vinyl collection by ripping off the labels. Maybe some DJs were territorial but most would be proud to show off the fruits of their record hunting. ¹ So much so, that they were far less willing to share the decks.