Like a drifter, I was born to lay a beat

[animate]

µ-Ziq - "Hasty Boom Alert"

With the Drexciya tune being thoroughly shat on a few rounds back, I thought about what may be more respected and easily appreciated and came up with this track. It's got a damn catchy synth hook to begin with, and that hip hop-style drum break at the end is nuts, too. It's probably not thee best track off of Lunatic

Comments

oh hell yes

[murdermystery]

10

i was considering choosing a µ-ziq track for next time I'm up; when I visited my parents house for thanksgiving I found a box of my old cdrs and lots of "IDM" was in it, and I've been hell of relistening to µ-ziq. Lunatic Harness is probably my favorite album of his, or maybe Royal Astronomy.

i think this mp3 might skip.
or my computer is massively fucking up

It's the mp3

[animate]

Yeah, most of the album is pretty damn good. I would've posted "Secret Stair" but I felt that to choose one one part is kind of cheating the experience as a whole.

That Drexciya tune was really dull, is why

[twitchywrote]

I'm not grading this until I'm sure as to whether or not it's supposed to be skipping like that.

[animate]

It's not supposed to. This is the only track that has that little skip. Whoever ripped it probably did so with bad software.

Then I cannot adequately judge it

[twitchywrote]

I've thrown CDs that didn't belong to me out the car window for less than this.

[animate]

Those six seconds of scratched material really make that much of a difference in your score?

9

[ho_zonelayer]

Awesome, it grew on me the more I listened to it.

[unskilledlabor]

I think what eventually turned me off to this type of IDM was that the whole genre was made of subway bucket-drummers. Fast and frenetic percussion, propulsive and catchy as hell as you're walking by or waiting for the train, and easily audible over all the competing noise. Except it's a novelty act; the invariably fast and acrobatic rhythms have no interplay with anything, no flexibility to be self-reflective or anything but a series of crescendos, no major internal changes past the countless frills, while the melody is pure afterthought, 6 minutes of some simple repeated keyboard figure with little change in texture and, again, no bearing on those drums. The songs make no statement, have no mobility and rely entirely on an ability to overwhelm through speed alone.

After listening to this a few times, I decided to pull up u-ziq's more recent Duntisborne Abbots... to see where he'd gone, and I was a shocked to see how little had changed in the last decade. Same focus on drum patterns (now with less frills) laid up over backing

I think you're my new favorite pessimist

[animate]

I haven't checked out that new album yet, but I intend to. And I kind of see things in exactly the opposite way that you do here, but no biggie.

You going to rate it, or no?

Re: I think you're my new favorite pessimist

[unskilledlabor]

Maybe later. I don't want to be the douchebag that knocks out the song everybody loves, and also my complaints aren't about the track itself so much as they are about the genre as a whole. I mean, within the genre I know this is an exemplary piece, it just does nothing for me.

Wait I take that back.

[unskilledlabor]

The exemplary bit, that is. Now I'm thinking this song says all it needs to (and all it has to say) within the first two minutes. Y'know how chart-pop songs modulate up a half step for the last chorus, or how Emeril kicks every damn thing up a notch, all in an empty gesture of "We really mean this!"? After a very well restrained 2 minutes (including a bit of that ending drum break everybody's digging), that's the last 3/5s of this song here.

Here's a non-skipping version for Twitchy.

I had it rated at 6.5 before firefox died while I was writing this the first time. I'd meant to leave it at an 8.5 average and let other people decide its ultimate fate. Snarlyyow hadn't posted by that point, and I still don't want to shit on the parade, but I can't go higher on the score with any honesty.

[autumn__sweater]

I really love parts of this, especially the opening and the way it unfolds from the beginning out to about the middle, but I also take issue with some of the drum patterns. The middle section somehow feels just a bit tacked on, though I love the end drum break. I think in part I feel overwhelmed by the middle section, because I don't see reason to leap so fully into such drummed out madness. I've given it a few listens already and I might be totally wrong, but for now I'm going to go with an 8.5, because the synth really does grab me.