DeepChord - Vantage Isle

groovemaaan did you check for the recent echochord release?

is this really better than the 565854 chain reaction netlabel ripoffs out there

yep

i can't help but be suspicious of a 2x12" + 7" release for ONE song

Notes: Written & Produced in Detroit, MI by Mike Schommer & Rod Modell for their performance @ the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (D.E.M.F.). Re-mastered and transfered from reel to reel tape recordings by Rod Modell. Pre-mastering & engineering by Stephen Hitchell @ Studio 312, Chicago. Gerard Hanson appears courtesy of Down Low Music and Matrix Records, Detroit. Mastered and cut by Ron Murphy @ NSC - National Sound Corporation, now Sound Enterprises, Detroit, MI. USA. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide. The 7" is pressed on either clear, purple marble or grey marble coloured vinyl . Comes packaged in custom plastic sleeve.
Distributed worldwide by Rubadub, Scotland, UK.

LOL @ otaku-nerdz

groovemaaan did you check for the recent echochord release?

not yet, should I?

wow I feel so contemporary, actually having heard this already. I love the last two tracks, hate the trancey bits. the first few are just there.

it is good to see that this is getting some love on ilm.

Vantage Isle is good enough but I don't really hear what elevates it above the material collected on Rod Modell's Vibrasound CD from a couple of years back.

now this new 12" on the label, cv313, is really good stuff. (while you know, still being incredibly derivative). 2 looooong sides, A has more bounce (nice little bassline), B is focused on a series of percussive loops (i love it when deepchord go a bit tribal). perfectly produced, covered in hiss but very detailed. the vibe is more Maurizio than Basic Channel, but it unfolds much more slowly and is more actively structured (but less actively banging). not saying this is going to redefine anyone's view of music but it's niiiice.

DC Mix 3 is the one that really moves me. It's a shame it's not spread over a full 12" side.

I really want to here this cv313 but needless to say this stuff ain't that easy to come by.

yeah, I'm looking forward to the CD mix of Vantage Isle. impractical formatting... that + the cost mean I'm yet to take the plunge.

the stuff is easy enough to acquire if you're in Europe. I think in America your best bet is to email Soultek directly.

CD version.

The album coming out on Modern Love should have much better distribution.

Which is the best of the four ...Presents Echospace 12"s? Loved Vantage Isle and the two Rod Modell 12"s I have...

Part 2 or 3

I tried to order the CV313 from Dope Jams last week but they refunded my Paypal and said they tried to special-order it but couldn't get anymore. I really wanna hear that one.

is this really better than the 565854 chain reaction netlabel ripoffs out there

-- ☪, Friday, 22 June 2007 20:28 (1 month ago)

yep

-- creme1, Friday, June 22, 2007 8:31 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

from what i've listened to: nope

Listen to the first couple of Octal records, and listen to the RECORDS not mp3z ripped from $100 usb turntables.

y

Because the whole point of those records is that they are ear candy for fidelity nerds.

The SOUND is the whole point, and you don't get a clear picture with an mp3.

i'm glad that even though my turntable cost me $100, it does not have a usb hookup

i'd hate to be on the wrong side of deepchord fans

listening to vinyl rips of deepchord records is pretty pointless, yes, but all those echospace modern love ones are available as 320 kbps digital mp3s.

i don't really like this label though. claude von stroke remixes? what? the soultek one on that is wretched. and the model 500 release is mediocre. techno nerd record porn.

and yes i'm listening to shoddy vinyl rip mp3s of those releases, but i own enough octal vinyl to know these aren't even close to being worth the ridiculous prices, despite the fidelity issue.

http://www.discogs.com/release/45234

The sad thing is that this is one of the best things Rod has done, and the original pressing was only 350 copies. I have one and it is one of the best sounding records I own. He really nailed it on this one.

Octal 2 and Ridis on Chain Reaction are my two favorite non-BC, non-M series dubby techno records.

Octal 1 rather...

Octal 1 is the only one I don't have. I noticed someone was selling it for £20 on discogs last week which is a 'deal' as far as these things go but I'll survive.

love love love this. is there a general Rod Modell S/D thread anywhere? because i'm also completely obsessed with the "plays Michael Mantra" release, and i'm wondering if there's other stuff out there as good.

i fell for the "coldest season" hype and picked up the CD. will listen to it soon (i've only heard snips) and get back to y'all

i like track 7 and 8 of that cd somewhat but the rest seems pointless

hey am0n guess where this is from!!!

A few years back, we were enraptured by a strange alien sound, one that opened our ears to a whole genre we had ignored for the most part up until then, an offshoot of techno that eventually became affectionately (and surprisingly accurately) referred to as 'heroin house'. A strangely propulsive sound mired in dense fields of hiss and murk, of fuzz and blur, the beats relegated to a distant pulse. The label was Chain Reaction, and its tiny stable of bands, Fluxion, Matrix, Hallucinator, Substance, Vainqueur, Porter Ricks, Monolake and a few others, completely changed the landscape of techno, and had us all in a frenzy. Albeit a nocturnal druggy soporific one...

It's one of THOSE SOUNDS we always go on about. Like old school ragga jungle or black metal buzz, a sound that is so pleasing to our ears, we could almost listen to a simple loop of those sounds forever. The Chain Reaction sound is another, gorgeous and creepy, moonlit and languorous, the perfect music to drift off to, or to troll the dark rainswept streets of some mysterious European city...
All the tracks here are super creepy, slow motion, underwater muted blurs of abstract techno, where the beats seem like more a byproduct of the soundmaking than the reason for it. Some tracks do thump and bump but others merely drift in a thick haze of hiss and crackle. Basslines are deep and rubbery, drenched in reverb and pulled apart into super spare space dubs, bits of percussion are sent careening into a black void, but it's the textures and the ambience that make this record so special. The opener spends the first half of its 6+ minutes offering up huge slow motion crashing waves of surf like static, of buried melodies and off fuzzy shimmer, before any beats even surface, and when they finally do they pulse and throb for a couple minutes before they're swallowed up by the wash of soft white noise. In fact, in addition to sounding underwater, it sounds like the whole disc is being broadcast over a radio between stations, all the sounds wreathed in sonic gristle and buzzy static, but all smeared into huge billowing clouds of sound.
Most of the tracks definitely have a groove, a super slithery abstract alien funk, but more often than not, it's buried beneath gorgeous layers of constantly shifting sound, offering up some barely audible thump, a four on the floor framework for the glacially shifting tectonic sonic plates above. But there are some that don't, like the 11+ minute "Ocean Of Emptiness", a muted smeared ambient drift, that sounds like standing on some vast windswept snow covered plain, under a black sky, watching the snow fall, each snowflake a tiny bit of hiss or crackle, coming in epic waves, glistening and glimmering but strangely warm and inviting. Our favorite track might have to be "Winter In Seney", which sounds like a more dubbed-out Gas. A warm swirling hissy gristly minimal smear, sprinkled with bits of record crackle, and haunting echo drenched bits of glitch and melody, the whole thing wrapped in a gorgeously hypnotic, super spare rubbery bassline, the notes blurring into each other, spreading out like a thick black cloud of dub, totally and utterly mesmerizing.

There's been so much amazing techno lately, lots of Kompakt
action, The Field, Gui Boratto

Some of it is really good and some of it isn't. I have only listened to a few tracks in depth, usually this just plays in the background while I do something else. It is hard to give it the attention it deserves because of all the pop ambient comps, Gas, Ulf Lohmann, Loscil, William Basinski, and Thomas Koner stuff I have been playing lately. There is no shortage of good music these days.

looooooool @ aq

so i listened to this last night and i really enjoyed it.

but i did have to wonder: are there 565854 chain reaction ripoffs out there because the originals don't actually have completely unlimited replay value?

I think it has more to do with the fact that basic channel has huge fanboy cachet. IOW nerdy guys who would be more likely to make records are really into this kind of stuff.

It is like that BC thread that mentions how cool the tshirt is and nobody realizes that the people who actually wore the shirts in the 90's when you could get them at Recordtime were serious nerdz.

all the people i knew in the late 90s who were really into BC were also really into schematic, cristian vogel, drexciya, tortoise, kranky, rawkus and certificate 18.

yeah, nerds.

what music out there has completely unlimited replay value though? (maybe a separate thread.) i guess i could listen to stuff like basinski or gas or the eno ambient box on endless repeat. i could also probably make a rhythm and sound comp that would bear unlimited replay (a bunch of the dubs).

i think the coldest season works best listened to as a whole and i bet it will sound great on a bleak midwestern winter day. it would be cool to hear a really stripped down version.

i just wanted to point out how "listening to this stuff on unlimited repeat forever" is now the default critical trope for talking about heroin house. this isn't surprising because a lot of drone capitalizes on some sort of sense of being outside of time but then it's funny that people sort of take it seriously when really would anybody assume that you could listen to, i dunno, carl craig on endless repeat for the rest of your life?

heroin weed house

Weed Beat

weed house

(embarrassingly RONG in the 1st of that thread)

i suppose the thing that seperates rod modell from the "565854 chain reaction ripoffs" is his dedicated use of purely analog instruments and recording devices etc? it's a point that seems to be mentioned in every review i've read of the echospace series - must lend it hella cred with "nerds" eg. the boomkat crew

We've always been way into Monolake, with their murky hazy "heroin house" sound, all muted four on the floor beats, but as if you were hearing them through the wall from next door. For the last few years though, the haze seems to have been clearing gradually revealing a whole new Monolake, each release a little more polished, a little more uptempo, a little more, well Kompakt. This definitely sounds like it belongs on Kompakt, which is in no way a bad thing. Well, it is maybe if you were still looking specifically for that murky Chain Reaction drugged out techno sound, but hell, we love Kompakt, and that slick thumping skittering Kompakt minimalism. So now we have Polygon_Cities, which is just that, a minimal pulsing slab of modern electronica, clipped beats, and shuffling IDM-ish rhythms, stark and spare, but with warm synth swells and brief flurries of crumbly distortion and bits of that dubbed out Pole sound we used to love so much. Super laid back and smooth, kinda like what we imagine you'd hear in some Eurotrash opium den resting up for your next undercover spy misssion, or maybe the music that plays in a sci-fi movie while you're having your retinas scanned by some beautiful cyborg.

"i just wanted to point out how "listening to this stuff on unlimited repeat forever" is now the default critical trope for talking about heroin house. this isn't surprising because a lot of drone capitalizes on some sort of sense of being outside of time but then it's funny that people sort of take it seriously when really would anybody assume that you could listen to, i dunno, carl craig on endless repeat for the rest of your life?

-- moonship journey to baja"

carl craig is awesome, but his tracks arent nearly as endlessly listenable as BC or R&S records. i literally have been listening to some BC related music nearly every day for almost 10 years at this point. it just doesnt get old! the tracks are hypnotic and not nearly long enough, even when they approach 20 minutes in length.

not sure about BC being strictly nerd music either, it was really being banged out by basically every decent techno deejay. unless any techno deejay automatically is "a nerd", to sum it up like that doesnt make much sense. granted, the BC copycat clique seems to be mostly nerds but that wasnt the extent of their fanbase.

god i wish the AQ people would expand their listening base. and maybe visit europe while they're at it. then maybe they could show me these famous "eurotrash opium dens" they're going on about, because i've never seen any over here.

as music becomes more like data, you need more quality control.

Yeah but Deepchord is still some ripoff bullshit you tard. Fuck sake.

Vahid = pointlessly negative?!

Vahid = pointlessly awesome, he's the iranian asshole I wish I had hovering over all my overly hagiographic artists.

Well rearrange that in english as all the artists I'm making hagiographies of and you're nearly there. Mr. V PHD.

display, would you like to show us how you came to know all this so certainly?

do you have a library of every potential record that could ever be made that you compare new releases with to verify non-innovation, maybe maybe like an audio analogue to the color wheel where you can actually show us that yes, everything has already been done? i'm interested in your methods, this is groundbreaking shit!

I am absolutely sure that every single thing that could possibly ever be done with audio has been done. I think that every possible combination was achieved on June 7th, 2004 and there is no point in doing anything ever again because we finished this project called music.

Unfortunately, I cannot show you the data. It is stored two miles below ground in a government installation somewhere in Virginia. By utilizing advanced AI composition algorithms, the Library Of Congress for a sample library and vast cluster computing, the CIA actually has the next 50 years of recorded music at its disposal.

I am not at liberty to say very much, but I can say that the analysts believe that 2011 will be a hoot.

There is a passage in Eno's diary where he talks about seeing a chair from ancient Egypt in museum. He said it reminded him of something you would see in an Ikea catalog.

....

My trance state isn't too different from my ancestors trance state.

yeah yeah future primitive groovy maaaaan.

you have to ignore context/culture for these over-arching statements to be true.

techno hippie shit rules!

i think there's an element of ignoring context involved in calling something derivative cuz there's derivative of what and then derivative to whom.

i also think it's possible for similar musical ideas to evolve independently of each other.

Shhh, Sunbeam and Moon Flower(my wife and daughter) sometimes read these threads over my shoulder and they get upset when people make fun of flower children.

You should join my tribe at Burning Man next year. I will build you a room in our hut and we could bond over ethnogens during the Terrence McKenna conference.

Love is all and love is everyone. You've got a lot of hang-ups, man.

eno >>>> burning man!

baby ford >>>> burning man

i was busy being amazed by "eight miles high" this morning so what do i know?

Every good teepee should have some Baby Ford, Brian Eno, and some Red Planet records for good measure.

After I finished this bowl of organic granola, I think my squaw and I are going to go bead shopping this afternoon.

I hear the bead shops have some killer sales, post-Xmas.

I think the importance of authorship and personality was a weird little bump in the road that is still left over from the 20th century.

I dunno. I like tracks w/ "personality" (but I don't think that the "personality" of the maker needs to be illustrated in his/her art).

i also think it's possible for similar musical ideas to evolve independently of each other.

totally! see black devil. but deepchord did not do this.

hmmmm

"vantage isle" is pretty good, but having fully absorbed it now, i think the "starlight" set was a lot better

i'm kind of warming up to DC lately. i started listening to the coldest season again searching for production ideas, and the song Elysian just hit me really right. i love the beat on that song. vantage isle sessions are nice, too. maybe the stuff isn't the most original, but it can definitely hit the spot when i'm in the mood for this stuff.

elysian is the killer track on that album

Don't forget about Juan Atkins epic jams from about the same time.

-- Display Name

just listened to the 18-minute mix of "i wanna be there" on my drive home tonight ... CRAZY.

very cosmic vibes on that track, much more lindstrom (!) than basic channel, i think.

You can't go wrong with the stuff. That era of his production is so under-rated. His early eletro stuff gets all the attention but he really hit his stride in the early 90's. This has been getting a lot of play as well:

http://www.discogs.com/release/1074790

"But I just got a promo of Rob Modell's Incense & Black Light (Plop) and it seems like he's venturing into more interesting, individual territory -- it's darker, more abstract, almost (perhaps) like sanded-down industrial at times. Interesting enough to keep me coming back for a while, anyway.

-- pshrbrn"

this one is my current favorite DC related release. he definitely hits on ideas and textures here that are much more individual sounding than most of the more straightforward BC rip offs. i did like the Pacou and aaron carl rmxs too though, nice housey jams for the dancefloor. for me these are all much more interesting than their recent mega-pack releases (starlight, vantage isle, coldest season, etc).

i like the conversation earlier about music doing essentially the same thing. i feel like it is really much more limited in what it can do than people are willing to admit. dance music especially has conventions that work really well and have done so for a long time, no matter what you do to it. i dont think this is a bad thing though, it means that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel (like so much DSP wankery aspires to without coming anywhere near doing it effectively) artists should attempt to make a personal sound. rod modell seems more than capable of this when he does ambient, but when he drifts into BC copycat stuff it is just not good for me no matter how good the audio quality is or whatever.

"You can't go wrong with the stuff. That era of his production is so under-rated. His early eletro stuff gets all the attention but he really hit his stride in the early 90's. This has been getting a lot of play as well:

http://www.discogs.com/release/1074790

-- Display Name"

juan is basically the man, no matter which era of his music you consider.

elysian is the killer track on that album

"Celestialis" jumps out at me too, tho. But really whenever I put on any track off that album, I usually end up saying fuck it and starting it from the beginning and listening to the whole thing. I heart that record.

And I very much dig the Vantage Isle CD, and I am going to find the "Starlight" set right now because I lack it in a severe way and I kind love this shit.

Dumb question - is there a difference between the Vantage Isle Sessions CD and the 2xLP + 7" version?

hmmm... you tell me.

01 Vantage Isle (DC Mix I) 08:42

02 Vantage Isle (Echospace Glacial) 03:12

03 Vantage Isle (Echospace Reshape) 08:50

04 Vantage Isle (Spacecho Dub) 02:57

05 Vantage Isle (DC Mix II) 07:26

06 Vantage Isle (Spacecho Dub II - Extended Mix) 10:41

07 Vantage Isle (Convextion Remix) 07:52

08 Vantage Isle (Echospace Reform) 03:38

09 Vantage Isle (Echospace Spatial Dub) 06:03

10 Vantage Isle (DC Mix III) 05:48

11 Vantage Isle (CV313 Reduction) 05:18

12 Vantage Isle (Echospace Excursion) 06:12

13 Vantage Isle (CV313 Reduction II) 03:01

Gotcha. Bummer. Never did locate this on vinyl...

also lol at a fight breaking out in the middle of a thread about some deeply chilled and weeded music. You people, i swear.

any connection between vantage isle "spatial dub" and "convection reduction" and the spatialdimension "convection reduction"?

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/3346/97083922zo9.jpg

two trax have paul st. hilaire. how fresh 'n' original!

could they seriously not find their own guy with an island accent? they just had to use rhythm & sound's guy. i don't know why this bothers me lol.

seriously i can do a pretty badass impression of paul st hilaire

they should've got junior reid

review from guesswhichrecordstore:

Intrusion is the solo project of Steve Hitchell, who alongside Rod Modell forms the impressive heroin-house meets dub-factory duo Echospace. Just as Modell's solo recordings don't veer too far from the Echospace mantra, the Intrusion sound doesn't see any reason to break the mold either. If it ain't broke, why fix it? This is the beloved muted blur of the Detroit / Berlin axis of techno that spurned the whole Basic Channel / Chain Reaction sound and which then slowed itself down into the murky dub of Burial Mix. Hitchell and Modell have both been so captivated by this particular sound, that they've collected many of the modular synths, signal processors, and classic drum machines that Moritz Von Oswald and Juan Atkins used back in the day to perfect the mimesis of that abstracted techno that steadily cruises through the dronefields. The bulk of the album finds a hypnotizing rhythm sublimated behind atmospheric synth chords rippling in sync with the cascading wash of echo and heaping snow drifts of tape hiss; but Hitchell does make a few noteworthy detours. "Intrusion Dub" is a decidedly uptempo digidub number, with Augustus Pablo-esque trills across the melodica and an insistent hi-hat uncannily similar to the metronomic rhythms provided by Public Image Limited on Metal Box, but of course pixel-pointed into a Chain Reactive / Burial Mix cloud of digital hiss. Elsewhere, he recruits the Burial Mix toaster par excellence Paul St. Hillaire to offer his ghostly croon to the mix. Mighty fine, mighty fine.

decidedly

uh ... boomkat?

aq

despite all that, this is a good listen. probably the best thing i've heard so far from this camp

i flipped a coin

i ordered that CD BTW but haven't seen it yet ... best post-BC thing i've heard lately was the new mikkel metal, seemed fresher than normal for some reason. he seemed to pick up on that rolling r&b beat thing that vladislav delay was pushing on his see mi yah remix.

also enjoyed the starlight set, but the original was sooooooooooooo much better than all of the remixes that it was hard to get too excited about it.

ok so I have the Intrusion record, and the Mikkel Metal record, and I haven't heard either. Which first?

Nah fuck it, I'll flip my own coin.

mikkel metal

yeah, that's where I went... tracks w/o paul st hilaire are already better than ones with, tho. I think I'm just tired of the man. Remove the first track from this record, and it sounds great from the start.

no that's not fair... the first track is just dull anyway.

Yeah, lose the first track, track two is a good starter, track three is really good, track four is really REALLY good, track five has Paul St Hilaire again but it's not the same shit and it's a great track, track six... is where I'm at.

Yeah, great record.

wait mikkel metal has paul st. hilaire too?

wow, this intrusion album lives up to the hype

why complaints about "Montego Bay"?!?!?! that's just stupid, that's a badass cut.

you know, i'm all about calling out people who just rip off Basic Channel. just about all the dub techno guys out there have done it at some point or another, but i feel like we're finally starting to see people getting more variety into that template on a regular basis. Rod Modell's "Incense and Black Lights" had a lot of cool sounds and feels going on, and this Intrusion album is really much more "tropical" sounding than BC or any of the usual knockoffs. this one sounds almost like island music or something, in a really good way. i really like it.

after diving back into a bunch of minimal techno following the pfork IDM list, just discovered Deepchord Presents Echospace - Liumin. Great stuff here, dub/ambient techno, but there's a couple of tracks with deeply obscured disco samples that almost come out as vaporwaved house tracks. always finding more...