Electronic / IDM / Ambient / Drone listening club

Think this is great timing tbf. Part of the fun of this thread is thinking about the albums in that sort of context, per my rambling post above :slight_smile:

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Updated.

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Well. If someone said to me on Monday, “by the end of this week you’ll be listening to Harpsichord led IDM and you’ll be ruddy loving it” I’d have bought as much of whatever kind of drugs they were selling as I could afford.

And yet here we are.

I’m gonna need a moment to process this information.

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Not heard that yet - I will put it on my list!

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Live listening to Arovane…

Opening track has a sort of Wu / Forest Swords vibe to it but a great rhythm - good hook into the album. I can’t help but feel the more complex rhythmic stuff has been missing from some recent electronica - the 90s brigade really nailed it in my view.

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Tides - lovely shuffling percussion on this one - too fast for an actual tide but chilled out all the same. Reminds me of more interesting numbers from some of those Real Ibiza comps of the time (some of which were actually pretty good).

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I’m with you on this. Bola’s album last year was a welcome to that sort of vibe. Big fan of http://igloomag.com/ for discovering things with that more ‘classic’ IDM sound.

First heard Sabres of Paradise and Four Tet on one of those

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Oooohh…the close of Tides has gone all “Underworld before they bang it with the rhythm section…” shiver…

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Deauville is so lovely. @Pale-eyedBadger did you ever listen to Atol Scrap? It was released the same year by Arovane but is much more of an Autechre-y techno vibe. Think it’s terrific.

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Eleventh! is nice enough but passing me buy a bit, but into Tomorrow Morning I can definitely see the woozy BoC influence. Like the crickets (or whatever in the background), it makes a nice subdued intro into Seaside - very much liking the simple guitar loop and echo (could listen to stuff like this forever) - it now has the sound of the waves washing - mmmm, as a North Norfolker, this is right up my alley.

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Ah I really like Eleventh!. Particularly the way the harpsichord kinda plays a counterpoint to the main harmonic progression. Obvs the samples are pure BoC but that totally works for me.

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Ah, now you see harpsichords put me off a bit.

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Fair - it’s a very specific timbre, innit. I don’t want to hear them very often, but it’s part of what makes this record special for me.

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The Storm is back to the darker vibes of the opener, but rather anachronistically with some of the swashy background of Seasides - there’s a deep bass that I want to come out more (like Massive Attack’s remix of Rabbit In Your Headlights from UNKLE - I don’t know whether this is just a function of the youtube upload I’m listening to it on).

which is the resonant frequency of my radiator

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You must find that distracting.

Did you ever find the secret track on Leftfield’s debut. The bass on that managed to vibrate my mate’s speaker off his shelf. Brutal.

Here’s the Massive Attack track (“reverse light” - my mistake) for context:

I absolutely adore Tides, and it is brilliant to have it as a counterpoint to MHTRTC.

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Last two tracks are back to some intricate 90s style EDM and a harpischord outro. I can see how Forest Swords could have been influenced by this. I enjoyed this little excursion into the early 00s (thanks @Pale-eyedBadger!) - it’ll certainly make me look at Forest Swords differently!

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I’m not sure I’ve ever made it to the end of Leftism to hear any secret tracks - one of those blind spots for me

Wasn’t a massive fan of the album tbh - thought it was a bit patchy. Seems to be one of those records that’s retrospectively held in high regard even when it was seen as flawed at the time of release.

Anyway, I enjoyed live commenting on this week’s pick, even if I didn’t write anything particularly insightful. I don’t think I have the musical chops to comment in a particularly enlightening way!

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