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Update: The Last Four Months

It’s been a while since my last post. Here’s an update on what I’ve been up to the last four months.

Not Doing Csound

I basically stopped working on my Csound projects when I started auditing a computer science course in March (see below). There were two reasons for taking this break from Csound.

1. The computer science course took up most of my free time and brain space.
2. I had been going down the rabbit hole of frequency modulation (FM) synthesis and was getting overwhelmed. In particular, I was trying to emulate the Yamaha TX81Z synthesizer, which is what Mark Fell used on his Multistability album. However, emulating the TX81Z in Csound is not a simple project. I had gotten in over my head, so I took a little break. I've recently picked this project back up, and I hope to post about it soon.

Learning C

From March to June I audited the course “CS 208: Computer Organization and Architecture” at Carleton College. This course focused on central processing units (CPUs), memory management, operating systems, and the C programming language. The textbook we used was Bryant and O'Hallaron's Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (3rd ed., 2015), which is dense and challenging but very informative. This was my first time learning C, and it was a brutal learning curve. However, it has put me in a better position to understand how Csound works under the hood.

Working Remotely

The pandemic hit Minnesota in the middle of March, which is when I began working remotely full-time. I've been back in my office at the library only about fives times since then. At first I set up my home office in our craft room which is slightly bigger than a closet. After about a week I felt cramped and moved my office to a spare room. That's where I've been for a few months now. I like it.

Listening to Music

I set up my home office with a stereo system (seen in the photo above) so I could listen to music while working. I spent the first several weeks of remote work systematically listening through the Warp Records catalog from 1992 to 2003, which is an era and style of electronic music I had spent almost no time listening to. I listened to the releases in chronological order, so I was able to hear how quickly the styles and sound design evolved across Warp releases. Here are the highlights I've found from Warp Records circa 1992 to 2003.

• Autechre - When they released Tri Repetae in 1995 it was clear that their sound and vision were miles ahead of all the other artists on Warp, including mainstays Aphex Twin, B12, Black Dog, and LFO. With 1998's LP5 they produced a staggering album that constantly surprised me and filled me with wide-eyed wonder when I listened to it for the first time this year. The rhythms are entrancing, the sounds are immaculately designed and recorded, and the melodies and harmonies are strangely moving.

• RAC - This duo's music stands out for being a little more abstract and timeless than other Warp artists who were producing similar hard driving dance tracks in the mid-1990s. A lot of the familiar elements of the time were there (i.e. synth strings and pads, acid squiggles, roaming filters, repetitive drum sequences), but they arranged these elements in a refined and hypnotic way.

• Disjecta - I almost wrote off Mark Clifford's Disjecta project based on its 1995 EP Looking for Snags, which sounded like murky demos and undeveloped ideas. However, its follow up album Clean Pit & Lid from 1996 impressed me. The production is more three dimensional and the ideas are developed. I especially love the mysterious and ominous atmosphere he creates throughout the album. I prefer this album over any of the work Clifford's band Seefeel put out on Warp.

• Squarepusher - I didn't realize Tom Jenkinson (aka Squarepusher) is a complete musical savant. For years I've vaguely known of him as that eccentric drum and bass guy, which is an unjust simplification. Jenkinson's music up through 2003 (which is all I've listened to) is astonishing. I now have the highest esteem of his abilities. While I might not love his early drum and bass style (e.g. 1997's Hard Normal Daddy), it is undeniably brilliant. In the late 1990s he became a one man Miles Davis fusion band with spectacular results. Music Is Rotted One Note from 1998 stands with Autechre's LP5 as a timeless masterpiece. By 2001 he switched gears again and put out the maniacally programmed and occasionally poppy Go Plastic, which melts my mind. Of all the early Warp artists, I would say Squarepusher had the greatest compositional prowess and vision. He transcended the technology and trends of the day and explored radical sound worlds more reminiscent of the avant garde music of the 1960s and 1970s.

• Broadcast - What's not to love? Utterly imaginative experimental pop with a warm retro vibe. The songwriting and melodies are strong, and ther band crafts wonderful arrangements. It's like they were incapable of recording a dull piece of music even with the simplest of ideas. When I listen to any given recording of theirs I marvel at their productions. They had the magic touch and vision. Impeccable ears, thoroughly musical souls.

• Plone - Basically I really like their 1998 single called "Plock". It's immersive and endearing. They only put out a single and an album in this era. Both are great. Plone were nerdy and knowingly campy. A lot of fun.

• Two Lone Swordsmen - Their 1998 EP A Bag of Blue Sparks sounded like behind-the-times techno compared to the forward thinking work being done by artists like Autechre and Aphex Twin. That's why their album Stay Down, released just one month after the EP, took me by surprise. It sounds like the work of an entirely different group. This is an album of surreal sound collages, patient, hazy, and mysterious. At least, the good half of the album is like that. The other half is made up of dud tracks in that bland techno style. Still, the surreal tracks are revelations unto themselves.

• Richard Devine - I was wondering if any other Warp artists would give Autechre a run for their money in terms of sonic abstraction and programming brilliance, and Devine does this on his album Lipswitch from 2000. His sound design is excellent, and his tracks are dense with rhythmic variation and invention. (Brothomstates' Claro from 2001 also approaches Autechre's style and succeeds. Aphex Twin was a brilliant programmer of drum beats in league with Autechre, but I'm rarely excited by his melodies, harmonies, or sound palette.)

Other Warp artists that I enjoyed but didn't include in this write up were Kenny Larkin, B12, F.U.S.E., Freeform, Plaid, and Jimi Tenor. What about Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada? What can I say? Their music didn't really speak to me. After this review of Warp Records I moved on to an in-depth review of krautrock, which I’m still in the middle of. Sure, I had spent a lot of time over the years listening to the big names in krautrock (e.g. Can, Faust, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Guru Guru), but there were so many bands both celebrated and obscure that I hadn’t listened to yet. In a future post I'll talk about the highlights from this review of krautrock.