Is squarepusher the greatest electronic musician ever?

i agree with evergreen.

i think it's useful in this scenario to deconstruct music as a carrier of meaning in the same way people tackle semiotics or linguistics. there's the school of thought that thinks that language has its own metaphysical internally-generated meaning and structures, and those that believe that these meanings and structures are culturally contingent.

i'm with camp #2. our ears are trained to hear things and interpret them in a certain way, in much the same way we learn to understand a spoken language.

LMAO... Okay, academic time... Classically speaking (so I've heard), the quality of a piece is rated by it's complexity which is offset against sound clarity. Complexity meaning number of events. If that is true, some of that breakbeat psytrance is the ultimate music.

where on EARTH did you hear that?

that's the biggest load of bullshit, ever! there's so much more to determining the "quality" of a piece of music than complexity and sound clarity...because those are already loaded terms with their own innate biases.

who the fuck would say something like that? that's like, so outdated it makes my brain hurt to even contemplate that people still think like that.

a good book to check out would be simon frith's "performing rites: on the value of popular music". he basically argues that it is possible to make judgements on an aesthetic form like music (and specifically, a much denigrated genre like pop music) by isolating variables and considering the myriad transverse, mutli-valanced ways in which cultural products are understood and valued.

it'd also be worthwhile to check people like adorno (well, i don't think so, but if you're going to be having these discussions, it's kinda good to know your history) and more importantly walter benjamin and pierre bourdieu.

my penny's worth

square's done some good tunes but he isn't in the same league as aphex. aphex's sense of melody and compositional nous is just unbelievable, the piano/organ pieces of Drukqs are astounding. To write piano only compositions that are close to Erik Satie and professional classical composers is a fucking achievement. and ambient works 1 and 2 are just out there.

however square has done some beautiful tracks, its just his output is so variable.... i'd still rate boards of canada over him. Something about their sound just seems more attractive to my ears, the sense of extremely diverse musical influences being effortelessly combined...... its all an opinion though.

[Statto]

i'd still rate boards of canada over him. something about their sound just seems more attractive to my ears

[Macc]

THREAD LOCKED DUE TO BEING POINTLESS AND IMMENSELY BORING.

'I like x'

'I don't'

'Yeah but I do'

'No, my taste is better than yours'

'define taste'

'etc'

:yawn

[Statto]

THREAD LOCKED

no it isn't :P

[Macc]

It should be.

It has become an oversized pus-filled festering boil on the otherwise blemish-free face of Subvert Central.

i think it's weird when people are like (as in the above case) so and so was capable of writing stuff like some other dude.

like, so what? if he's a classically trained musician, what's so flabbergastery about it?

i like them both.

boards of canada gives me the willies. it sounds like the soundtrack to some 70s elementary school janitor's rape fantasy.

i think it's weird when people are like (as in the above case) so and so was capable of writing stuff like some other dude.

like, so what? if he's a classically trained musician, what's so flabbergastery about it?

i like them both.

boards of canada gives me the willies. it sounds like the soundtrack to some 70s elementary school janitor's rape fantasy.

i like them both too.

I just read what Fracture said about Squarepusher and gave my opinion in response to that.

i must say i havent read much of the ten pages inbetween fractures original post and my one though.

No.

No.

Wow, bump from the caves....

short story for me: Luke Vibert >>>>> Squarepusher.

Sure, the guy is experimental and all, but for me, his stuff is/was always lacking groove. Many IDM affiliated stuff has that feature IMO. And don't ask me what "groove" is lol , I am unable to define it, but I know when it's there and when it isn't.

Squarepusher was great live when I saw him at Glade many moons ago.

Saw this weekend, was a great set. However, does he always wear that gimpy mask thing now? Looked f-ing hot.

Electronic 'musician' or producer?

Thing with the musician/artist/producer subset is they are interchangeable to the point of saying it means one and the same - except producer has always been associated with making recordw for 'other' people.

I conceive of them as being different. 'Producers' sit in a room and produce, 'musicians' go out in public and entertain. There are obviously some who do both, but my experience is that they tend to specialize. Squarepusher might be an exemplar of both. I love all his early stuff and heard that he is pretty amazing live, perhaps I should read this thread lol.