Bilateral Motion: Abstract Minimal Ambient Dub Techno
 

Last night around 9pm I saw a post from a fellow member of a music community I follow. It was a curious photo of an LP he was spinning at the moment with a minimal, text-only label which read, "Fluxion - Vibrant Forms. A."

http://i.imgur.com/FGgy3SC.jpg


From the color of the label and the sans serif typeface I hypothesized that it was likely some sort of minimal electronic music, so I hopped over to Youtube and keyed it in.

I was delighted to find it was reminiscent of Wolfgang Voigt's ambient, minimal techno under his legendary Gas moniker. Whatever this was, I wanted to hear more!




A quick survey of the artist page on RYM revealed that it was filed under Dub Techno. Where I'd previously exhausted all artists under the Ambient Dub heading (dominated primarily by The Orb), the highest-charting Dub Techno LPs were almost entirely new to me. A few names were familiar, namely Woob and Yagya, but the rest were off my radar. Jotting down the artists from the RYM top 10 LPs I went to work straight away.

The list included:

• Andy Stott
• Deadbeat
• Paul St. Hilaire
• Deepchord Presents Echospace
• Fluxion
• Monolake
• Porter Ricks
• Purl
• Woob
• and Yagya

I spent the remaining few hours of the evening compiling 45 albums from these artists - a solid introductory set to familiarize myself with the genre.

Today was spent taking it in - a playlist I've dubbed,

Bilateral Motion: Abstract Minimal Ambient Dub Techno.

Fluxion's Vibrant Forms I and II are excellent highlights from the set. Big thanks to VMD for the inspiration!

[UPDATE] I've been commanded to add Pole, Vladislav Delay and Rhythm & Sound to the list, which I'll work on this evening. Other recommendations are welcome!

http://i.imgur.com/m8KMoJm.png

Playlist of the Day - Flea Market Funk: Funky Soul & Rare Grooves
 

All the expected discographies are here - catalogs from James Brown, PFunk, the Meters, the JBs, Skull Snaps, etc.

But the deeper cuts are the best - DJ Prestige's killer Flea Market Funk mixes, the Saturday Night Fish Fry New Orleans Soul compilation, the Stone Cold Funk collection, a comp called Voodoo Soul: Deep & Dirty New Orleans Funk, and an awesome 25x7" singles box set called WHAT IT IS!

NP: Episode 1 of FMF - the set that got me into the groove. The attached DJ pic is Prestige diggin' through his personal collection for funky sounds to share.

http://i.imgur.com/3SjubWj.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dSAme1O.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/u6EondH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/b2TUVvI.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wrY5bq1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FJgZqoj.png

Playlist of the day - Kelly Watch the Stars: Downtempo Classics
 

Playlist of the day - Kelly Watch the Stars: Downtempo Classics.

Over 700 of the best downtempo albums ever recorded. The list includes several large discographies like the 108 albums and EPs by Lemon Jelly and 56 funky jazz break LPs and mixes by DJ Food. Several NinjaTune artists are featured, as well as a number of downtempo compilations like Hi-Fidelity Lounge, Cafe Del Mar, and an archive of WRUR Rochester's Plasmonic Lounge broadcasts.

Music to beat the heat.

NP album: Public Service Broadcasting's The War Room EP.

http://i.imgur.com/meLseze.png

Mentalism - Psybient Dreams
 

Today's playlist is Mentalism: Psybient Dreams, a 400-hour archive of psybient space music.

The list features ~450 psychedelic ambient / psychill artists including Spacemind's monumental mixes and veteran artists like Carbon Based Lifeforms, Shpongle, Hallucinogen, and Solar Fields.

NP the track that initiated me into the genre: Cell's "Audio Deepest Night."

http://i.imgur.com/EIUK6M2.png

Midnight on Mars: Ambient Worlds
 

Checking in for the Playlist of the Day!

Tonight - Midnight on Mars: Ambient Worlds.

The list comprises the work of 1300 artists and clocks in at 2,794 hrs 29 mins. It's a collection of the finest LPs from nearly a century of ambient music.

NP: Fripp & Eno's "The Heavenly Music Corporation (Reversed) Pt 1"

http://i.imgur.com/eST27NA.png

Do you listen to any Emeralds, or Mark McGuire's solo stuff? They seem up your alley.

Emeralds is a bit too heavily compressed for my tastes. I know that's specifically what they're going for, but I love dynamic range and if I do listen to lo-fi music, it's usually field holler or similarly acoustic works.

But I'm digging Mark's stuff and will definitely look into it further. The guitar loop work from "Let Us Be The Way We Were" instantly brings back a memory of a major ambient techno club track from the 90s... it had a pitch shifted throat singer (but not the sample from Chill Out) and an islander melody quite similar to what Mark is doing in this track. Could have been a major artist like the Chemicals, Moby, The Orb or Orbital, but I can't put my finger on it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

The Last.fm Project
 

My server is down for maintenance for the next 16 hours. It was a perfect opportunity to begin my next long term music project.

When Innerspace Labs first switched to the cloud, I used the web-based RacksandTags service through my OrangeCD DB to create an index of all track information from my library. Collections on the service can be searched by artist, album, or track, but lacks support for 2nd level organization like genre clustering, playlists, and other more valuable data points.

http://i.imgur.com/nGv0qhy.png

I later switched to Discogs.com. Discogs offers real time market value assessment of your collection, but only supports physical media. I was also disappointed to find that user-generated category folders are not presently shareable with other users.

http://i.imgur.com/Cybv2Ea.png

As I prepared for the downtime last night, I realized that I hadn't given Last.fm a shot since I wiped my account clean in 2014. That year I scrobbled 30,000 tracks, but was frustrated that there was no way to submit all my library's data without playing every track in real time.

My goal was to explore the service's recommendation engine, and my library data would likely produce some valuable results.

So last night, I went to work. I quickly realized that the best approach would be to queue all 100,000+ tracks and to scrobble them in order of ascending track duration. I organized the songs into four pools of nearly equal size. Below is a map of my library based upon these four classes - less than five minutes, less than ten minutes, less than thirty minutes, and up to 24 hours.

http://i.imgur.com/UPUVvvF.jpg

As the largest batch was that of the shortest tracks, there would be the greatest (and fastest) return from scrobbling these first.

I charted the play duration of each of these groupings to see what sort of timetable I'd be looking at for project completion.

http://i.imgur.com/sS6Dv3d.png

Graphing the duration of each grouping clearly demonstrates that this was in fact the best course of action.

http://i.imgur.com/yBMluVX.jpg

I began scrobbling immediately for the first time in a year. Once the project is complete I'll share some of the resulting recommendation data Last.fm provides. I'm looking forward to it!

Happy Labor Day weekend everyone!

At what point does music stop being fun and turn into work? Jesus.

I'm an odd duck. Data management and analysis are among my favorite pastimes. Remember: I study analytical texts of Finnengans Wake for pleasure. The act requires a certain degree of insanity.

Thanks for reading the entry!