Cosmos

So here's something I don't understand. If you sell a record on second hand, that's legal. So EMI's problem with me is not that I trade music they produced without their making any money, it's that I don't buy any plastic. Because otherwise how is d/ling stuff peer-2-peer any different from getting it second hand but just not being charged anything?

***

Anyway, Cosmos. If you're a fan of IDM, you know Murcof, and if you're not, you probably don't. (I wouldn't recommend starting with Cosmos, downloadaholics, go for Martes instead.) And if you are a fan of IDM, you are going to love Cosmos. If you're not, maybe not.

It's way out there. If you thought Martes and Remembranza were experimental, you're going to need a new concept for Cosmos. It's huge. You couldn't call it ambient because it is mostly SO LOUD. The bass will make your guts liquid. Yet it's not pumping in any way. In places, it's like the scary music before the alien rips your guts out (on that subject, I watched Sunshine the other night: I was loving it mostly, because it was so well shot more than from any great appreciation of the plot, which was pure hokum, until the last twenty minutes, which sucked a lot. Whoever told Danny Boyle that pace equals excitement did him a disservice. Also, suspense really lacks when your plot is this formulaic).

So Murcof has gone for BIG, and I have to tell you, he mostly nails it. I can't really describe it any better than that. You could say that it's classical-tinged minimal techno, or that it's dark ambient with microbeats, but you just wouldn't capture what it is. I don't think you can listen to this every day; it's just too intense. But when you do listen to it, prepare to be transported.

***

While I write this, I'm listening to Contact note by Jon Hopkins. I'd never heard him before today, but I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes experimental or chillout music. (It's not experimental in an OMG what teh fuck, where's the tune in that clattering mess sense, but in a you haven't heard this a million times before sense.) The word I'd use for it is "neat". It's just extremely well put together, not a beat out of place. Hopkins is, I'm told, a classically trained pianist, and he really does excel at composition. He's clearly not coming at it from any of the usual IDM angles (no dnb, no acid, no jazz, not ultratechnical techno), rather from ambient. But it's not the lacklustre, uninspired shit that "ambient" so often describes. In places it could be a bit harder-edged (and in particular, the drums could have been a bit sharper), but you can't listen to Venetian Snares all day unless you want earbleed.

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:23 pm