"Great sonics"... what does this mean?

[Aloysius]

@Alo...flippant, but on point.
I suppose when evaluating a movie you could say "great visuals", but that doesn't say anything about the storyline. Same diffs?

I think so. It could be a 'bad' film with no plot and terrible acting but still look good (perfect even).

[recursive one]

I suppose some background/context might help a bit. I've been listening to Astrix's he.art album quite a lot lately, and one of the things that really stands out to me is how much the sounds he uses sound like sounds BT uses...to the point where I might wonder if some synth stabs etc were sampled from BT. Probably not, but BT did release a couple of sample CDs many years ago, so...
But it's more than that, Astrix's musical sensibilities seem to take major cues from BT's sensibilities, musical and production-wise. There's a lot of detail and depth in Astrix's work, quite reminiscent of the level of detail in BT's work.

I'm not very familiar with BT but I love most Astrix works, He.art is not my favourite album but it definitely shows a lot of effort which has been put into production (actually to me it even sounds "over produced"). Astrix has been in the game since early 00's, his music always had lot of detail and depth as you say. Vide variety of sounds and grooves, clever sound-design, the sounds are chosen in a certain way to evoke a specific mood in the listener, to convey futuristic, sci-fi aesthetics. That's what consitutes "great sonics" for me.

Anyway, I'm not a native English speaker so I may be missing certain connotations in the word "sonics", I'm just talking about what sets Astrix and other great psytrance artists, such as U-Recken, Digicult, Hypnoxock etc, apart.

[chk071]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KASSGM7ENTg

https://twitter.com/deadmau5/status/367265601640603648

[Zexila]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KASSGM7ENTg

https://twitter.com/deadmau5/status/367265601640603648

I really have no clue what are you trying to point out or say?

[chk071]

That Deamau5 says a lot. I don't know whether or not he was serious about BT, but, in the end, it's just a claim, nothing i would take for granted.

[Zexila]

That Deamau5 says a lot. I don't know whether or not he was serious about BT, but, in the end, it's just a claim, nothing i would take for granted.

https://youtu.be/PQ_5CdEG7x4?t=13m35s

He seems pretty serious and it's like telling ridiculous thing most people in their circles already knows, I know this kind of stuff from my local scene too and got involved in some.

[chk071]

Regardless of the content, you know what always surprises me? That audiophiles' levels are ALWAYS totally off in Youtube videos. He's hardly audible in that video.

[Zexila]

[chk071]

I don't doubt that there's a couple of "producers", who let other people produce their tracks BTW, it always struck me that there's people who are just there to show some good looking hipster, who's good for the EDM image , but, if it's really the case with BT, i don't know. I remember reading an interview with him in Beat, or CM mag, and, he seemed quite competent. He said his most used synth was Z3TA 2, BTW, which surprised me a bit, as you usually read those guys use Sylenth1, Massive, and the likes.

[Zexila]

I don't doubt he sits there and knows as much as any of us, but theory vs. the practice, you can learn a lot, but you still need to put that in real world usage, especially to get to some level, anyone who's been doing this for more than a year knows about how things are done, tools and everything. Other obvious thing, that is written interview, dude got whole management behind his back.

I have no agenda against him or I got even surprised, I don't doubt he can write music (my dog can), even Armin van Buuren have guy making music for him (Benno) and he knows how to do it, but have no time for it, I would have too in their shoes, they are worth more gigging, not sitting in studio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejq1bJ2KLyY

Also let's not forget that not long ago music making was rich kids thing, opposed today where everyone with computer and internet connection have tools and education on disposal, so DIY mentality raised to the roof, before labels did production aspect and there's was not many artist to start with and ones that did had all the support they needed, more dedication, today it's just a hobby to many, so paying someone to even do a mastering is out of the question.

Like always, if you have enough money and connections, everything is possible.

[chillpill]

He said his most used synth was Z3TA 2, BTW, which surprised me a bit...

Hehe, yup, with BT, who is a shameless endorser, his "most used synth" is usually just whatever he was poking around with that morning! You can't take those replies too seriously from BT unfortunately. In the early 2000's he said he had more vsts than God, and I can only imagine that situation has increased tenfold by now

To put a little more context to my Astrix/BT comparison, my references were Astrix's most recent album He.Art from 2016 and BT's Emotional Technology album from 2003. Timeline-wise I think it's unlikely Astrix was doing any work for BT at that point, judging from their careers and locations.
And at that time BT was working on his This Binary Universe release which was highly praised as a very significant "top of the heap" digital multimedia work at the time. Not an ounce of EDM on it.

However, after spending some time on YouTube and listening to some of BT's more recent stuff I could definitely see how some ghost-producers could've been involved. The track "Skylarking" has all of the BT charm and finesse that I enjoy, while other tracks just sound phoned-in like EDM-paint-by-numbers with BT slapping some Stutter Edit over a couple of stems here and there to put his mark on it.
Sounds harsh, but I also can't see the appeal (from his perspective) of sitting in a studio producing such un-challenging material when his slant has always been to push the envelope.

Perhaps he's just cashing in on his brand. And why not, it's what he does for a living.

[chillpill]

oops, double post

[Zexila]

To put a little more context to my Astrix/BT comparison, my references were Astrix's most recent album He.Art from 2016 and BT's Emotional Technology album from 2003. Timeline-wise I think it's unlikely Astrix was doing any work for BT at that point, judging from their careers and locations.

Astrix is one of the reasons full on sub genre exists, he shaped it so much and was already known by 2003, produced and co-produced plenty of it, traveled a lot and as I recall from reading one of his interviews he lives in the US with his dog, so yeah.

[chillpill]

Yup, but early Astrix doesn't have that sonic signature I'm referring to. But, apart from that, you're obviously 100% right. You win!

[chillpill]

dupe