[ Hypnos Forum ]

The samples for the new one sound great. I'll be getting it for sure.

In case anyone is interested, I've put the title track up on my myspace (though the myspace player has ruined its sound quality more than it usually does, for some reason.) Also, I've noticed Boomkat put samples up of all the tracks for listening, complete with a cute beep every 30 seconds: http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=173043&highlight=173056

A rather lovely review of the album has also been written: http://www.buzzinelectronicmusic.co.uk/robert-logans-electronic-soundscapes-inscape-album-review/432

Ok, I won't bump this thread any more after this. Any feedback would be welcome - things have been quite quiet around this one in general. Never mind! Onwards and upwards and all that.

Hello women and men,

Inspired by Parallel World's threads, I thought it'd be good to let the forum humans know about my own non-Hypnos projects. I didn't do it when Cognessence or Grinder came out, but now that the second Slowfoot album, Inscape, is out, and because its supporting E.P, Accurate Spit Boy spurted out into the world a few days ago, I figured it'd be good time to do a thread on them.

They are all the result of months of obsessive playing, recording, programming, mangling, etc. etc. drawn from anywhere in the environment, from any piece of software or hardware... Musical inspiration includes lots of 20th/21st century classical music, the sort of ambient music we discuss here, Hungarian folk (though that element is often buried) and the more experimental ends of electronic music, as well as dub, grime, dubstep, detroit techno, dancehall, "idm", etc.

I reckon the two albums (rather than the E.Ps) would be of more interest to Hypnos folk - the E.Ps are on vinyl and attempt to aim for the dancefloor (I'm not quite sure how successful they actually are at that, but some creatures will dance to anything. ) 

My myspace is here: www.myspace.com/robertlogan

My ambient myspace is here: www.myspace.com/senseproject 

Here is the page Slowfoot did for Cognessence:
http://www.slowfoot.co.uk/Cognessence

Here is the page they've done for Inscape:
http://www.slowfoot.co.uk/Inscape

And here's some reviews:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/9b54/

http://www.barcodezine.com/revrobertlogancognessence260307.htm

http://www.buzzinelectronicmusic.co.uk/robert-logan-accurate-spit-boy-ep/407

http://www.flyglobalmusic.com/fly/archives/europe_reviews/robert_logan_accurate_spit_boy.html

(and I got some scans of magazine reviews and put them on my myspace blog, here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=39605485)


Thanks to any of you who have already heard any of my music and shared feedback. I tend to get very self-critical about it, especially once it's out, so that's a real encouragement.




                     

Thanks for this! I look forward to reading the rest of the review. :-)

The Wire just did a rather scathing review of my second Slowfoot album, "Inscape", so this has come as a nice surprise. Their review didn't specify any musical problems with the record or mention any tracks, though - in fact, the first half contains a fairly flattering account of the music. Once their attention turns to the "clunky" concept behind the record, however (though it isn't based on any single specific concept - the press release, which I didn't write, amplified a single piece of inspiration into a central theme), they accuse it of having an absense of "taste" and an "unsettlingly careerist sheen".

Still, any critical perspective is interesting and valid, and I'm thankful to The Wire for reviewing the record at all. I just found the final accusation unfair; I don't think any of us here who are involved in crafting the kind of music we're crafting have careerism in mind - we do it because we love to spend hours, weeks, months moulding sounds, creating potent atmospheres, exploring musical possibilities - and we do it because something impossible to pinpoint drives us to do it. It's an obsession we have that we'll act on whether other people enjoy our music or not (and if other people happen to enjoy the results - that's great.) It can include many frustrating moments, but the process is rewarding enough in and of itself. 

I've done some more listening (I've never really paid attention to him before) and what I don't understand is why he chooses such awful sounds for his compositions. I'll admit he can play the keyboard competently for the style of music he's creating, and I've never seen a live, so maybe I'm missing a better aspect to his career, but really, if he's got lots of nice keyboards, even if he can't be bothered to create new sounds, it would be nicer on the ears of the presets he did choose didn't sound so cheap and sappy. 

Thank you all very much for listening and for the comments!

greglw3, that sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

As I said in the other thread, I'm thoroughly enjoying 'Landmass' at the moment, especially the second track. Very powerful, challenging music.

Just listened to this.

At the moment, it could be one of my favorite Steve Roach discs ever. Absolutely magnificent and "wide-screen" sounding (in a good way) and full of life and movement. Beautiful.

Wow, it's been a while! I certainly am.

Samples sound nice, especially the last one.

As much as I love Steve Roach' music, I have to say that I would like to see more variation in his sound.
I don't mind when he uses similar sounds and patterns across various albums, as long as it's not too much and too obvious....but the overall sound character is very much the same on most albums after 2001 or so.
It's that highly polished, reverb-laden, glimmering sound of his. You could say that's simply his style, but it would be very interesting if he could make something a bit more dry, gritty, noisy, low-fi sounding some time... to create different moods and atmospheres....something you wouldn't instantly recognize as that Steve Roach sound.

I sometimes think that...

It's not only because I think his take on a different kind of sound, like the type you mentioned, would be very interesting, but because his use of those wonderful glimmering eventide-reverby sounds across all these newer albums sometimes renders earlier releases (like Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces) a little less special. Do you know what I mean? When I first heard those four discs, they sounded like a wonderful culmination of Steve Roach's work - totally transporting and magical - but now I've heard the same sounds off that release on others since, those discs can sometimes loose a little of their magic for me. 

I'm all for an artist sticking to a core sound (and Steve Roach's is a sound a can't get enough of!), but I think I recognized sequencer patterns off the new samples from Arc of Passion and Proof Positive, and the more droney/chordal elements from many post 2000 albums too. I've still bought the new one and will probably grow to love it, but it'd be nice to see a whole new perspective on things. Robert Rich, for example, always reverts to his flutes and lap steel guitar, but each album seems to be a unique thing unto itself beyond that core sound. Apart from React, which is a live disc anyway, I don't think I've ever heard or will ever hear Robert Rich repeating musical sequences quite so clearly from album to album. But I believe Steve is refining, rather than repeating....