Refresher Course Set 5: Autechre, Photek, Coldcut
This is the fifth set in the Refresher Course series. I’ve begun going back through the archives of this website from the very beginning, about 7,500 posts ago. The first four sets consisted of 10 posts each. Posting every day seemed a bit much for the site’s readers, so I decided for the fifth set I’d wait until I had read back through 30 posts. However, I now think 30 posts is a little much in its own right, so I may try 20 next time. Anyhow, this latest tranche includes:
Reviews of Oval and Christophe Charles album Dok, an Up, Bustle and Out record, the compilation Blip, Bleep (Soundtracks to Imaginary Video Games), Underworld’s Beaucoup Fish, Funki Porcini’s The Ultimately Empty Million Pounds, a Hollowman project, Chessie’s Signal Series, Michael Nyman’s The Piano score, Orbital’s The Middle of Nowhere, Borden Raczynski’s Boku Mo Wakaran, Bill Laswell’s Panthalassa — The Remixes, and Moby’s Play, which I gave a particularly negative take on, but over the years I came to really enjoy the album. Also, my favorite releases of 1997 and 1998.
A ton of interviews: Autechre’s Sean Booth (1997), Coldcut’s Matt Black (1887), DJ Food talking about a David Byrne remix (1997), Amon Tobin not once but twice (1997, 1998), Photek (1998), Rob Zombie of White Zombie (1999) talking about sampling and personal memory, Dub Assassin (1999), Moby (1999), Bogdan Raczynski (1999) in an email interview (unusual at the time), and an essay with four different interview subjects about jazz and electronica (Beth Custer, Jack Dangers, Nils Petter Molvaer, and Ben Neill). That last one was only just recently added to this site, and such are the time-warping complexities of datelines.
And a grab bag of other items: a riff on the use of “NP” (for “now playing”), and apparently I thought emoticons were over; the music-slowing software Slow Gold II; how to listen to pi (the number); an essay in the mock-style of the For Dummies series, so sort of a joke, except the recommendations are real; and what I think is the earliest “sounds of brands” piece on this site, a mention of music in VW ads.
