Welcome to The Harmonic Series, a daily(ish) music review series - exclusive to Steemit - where I’ll be discussing music across many different styles and genres from metal, to electronic music, to jazz and beyond! I’ll be talking up exciting new releases, some of my personal classics, and anything else that I think is worth checking out. Some of the reviews I share will be brand new, and some will be from my personal archives. I’m not the most typical music writer, so here’s what you can expect from me and how I’ll be different:
No Scores
While I think scoring can sometimes have a valid role in music critique, I think more often than not it can take away from or even completely obscure the authors hard work. I can’t even count the number of pieces I’ve read where the tone of the article and the score seem to not match at all (I’m looking at you, Pitchfork), and often people have very different interpretations of the same scores. If you’re not sure how I feel about a piece of music from the content of my review, you’re more than welcome to ask me to elaborate further in the comments.
Varied Writing Style
I’ve been on and off writing about music since 2011, and one thing I’ve learned is that trying to write one way all the time can make the quality of the writing suffer. Sometimes you’ll see me focus on the composition and songwriting elements of music. Sometimes I’ll explore my personal experience with a first listen and the emotional impressions I make. Sometimes I’ll explore lyrical themes or social context.
I’ve experimented with writing as I listen for a stream of consciousness style review, the more typical taking notes while listening and crafting a review after, and even video based reviews, so you can expect all these and more from The Harmonic Series.
Discovery of Fresh New Things in Music
I can’t promise you you’ll already be familiar with anything I review, but what I can promise is that I will turn you on to new things that you may not hear of anywhere else. I have my own - admittedly quite broad - tastes in music, and these reviews come from that place. While you may not relate to all the music I review, it is my hope that if you follow my reviews, you’ll find at least one thing that you’ll love - something that will blow your mind and change your perspective on music.
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Now enough on my mission statement, here’s the first review. This is an older one from my archives:
Autechre - Tri Repetae (Warp Records, 1995)
Genre: Electronic
Style: IDM
In 7th grade I got Aphex Twin's Richard D. James Album as one of my first few albums ever, based on hearing an acid house song of his in Wipeout Pure for PSP. In short, I wasn't prepared for what I heard. "IDM" kind of set the stage for what would eventually tie together most electronic music I like, which is some combination of rhythmic intricacy, interesting sampling, progression, and experimental sound design.
Listening to Autechre's Exai (as the first thing I'd heard by them) brought a lot of excitement back into electronic music for me a couple years ago when heard it, and gave me more of what I liked about Aphex Twin which I hadn't been able to find too much of since. Everything was so otherworldly and inhuman and fascinating. Autechre are obviously kind of legends/fixtures in electronic music, so I figured I would go back and check out arguably their most popular release.
Right off the bat I was very into this album, uncontrollably fingertapping on my phone in my pocket as I walked to lunch. There was a short break in my listening as I ran into some people I knew and ate lunch with them. Then I went to lay on this pristine lawn by the library, my favorite listening spot.
Earlier in class I was thinking about how source direction of sound can be perceived and theoretically translated in full 3D even in headphones. So as I'm laying in the grass looking at the sky, the third track, "Leterel," comes on. This kind of staticky pattern in the track perfectly encapsulates what I was thinking about, feeling very strongly as if two points were shooting out from my ears and in front of me, and then on their way back, curving outwardly, almost as waves breaking across my face, but a few inches in front.
"Stud" has a very open sound, with lots of high frequency clicks, and a very pleasant upper mid range wash near the end. Eutow and C/Pach make me feel so cool, like a lot of this music tends to. Listening to "Gnit," I think music like this is really great because it makes me think about alternate ways of perceiving musical sounds and how they function. Listening to a band, it's very easy to imagine myself playing the instruments, but listening to electronic music lends itself to imagining all these non existent and abstract objects, or images, or sources of these sounds, and possibly above all, ambiguous surreal shapes whirling around me.
Overand was very relaxing. Rsdio could get me so in the zone and totally did. I loved the metallic filtered percussive rolls. They made me imagine a nylon and carbon fiber snare drum head, braced with wooden rods possibly? The last track, "Medrey," was filled with really cool sounds and I thought of a good lyric while listening to it.
I actually have Tri Repetae ++ on my iPod (which contains I think two or 3 EP's of extra music), and while I'll probably listen to the rest today, it won't be as focused so no writing about it. Overall I really enjoyed this album and my time sitting on the lawn listening to it. Autechre have the reputation they do for a good reason.
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Thanks for reading!
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