Posts by lj

Quote from Cozmo D;65093

Mockery? LOL!!! Those were INSULTS man!!!

Haha .. awesome!

So wouldn't that historically be the very first diss on a hip hop record?

Quote from 155;65087

Absolutely right - that track is proto-House

155

Absolutely not - it's proto-techno.

Quote from wex;65083

I'm supposed that you "not interested" becouse it's consequence from your answers: You don't know some difinition for EM, names and call not disco composition - disco

Can you add some more names and their style of EM on your choice from 70s to our time?

Wex, this is getting a bit tedious.
Maybe you could just tell us what you are getting at instead of asking more trick questions.

Oh man, "Must be the music" is such a great tune! never saw that connection.

I really like Chilly B's bass playing on "No more running" ... that groove is so TIGHT! Were you guys also responsible for the music behind Dynamic Breakers - Dynamic? I love how you have both synth bass and real bass in there (the synth sounds more like a pro one than a 303 on that one though?). One more question : When you say you were inspired by funk/R&B tunes, was the choice of the 303 due to low price and availabilty? I'm asking cause a lot of funk band at that time were probably using a Minimoog for bass and I was wondering if you deliberately chose not to.

P.S.: Was that Sugarhill part on "Jam on revenge" meant as an homage or as mockery?

Hey Cozmo,

Would you be willing to share some of your influences, like you mentioned in the Electro Funk thread? I'd be interested in learning which specific songs you used ore were inspired by for specific Newcleus tunes? Maybe we could do it track by track.

As an example, you once revealed that the bass of Jam on it was borrowed from Yazoo's Situation.

Any more you can think of? I hope there's plenty.

Quote from bhose;65002

...and the only track that can get away with the heavy breathing 'credibly' imo is Tour De France' as it kicked off the whole idea of doing it in the first place... but all the other West Coast jams with the heavy breathing would have sounded a lot better if they'd left out the silly breathing business.

Actually, I agree ... I was just trying to wind you up.

... but still, Techno City is in my top 10.

Bhose, so you don't like tour de france? or anything the egyptian lover put out?
you're stepping on thin ice, my friend.

Quote from bhose;64989

haha...AGREED! ITS AWFUL! You techno boys can lay claim to that and have it man...

Forget it bhose, I won't let the Techno boys have it! Hell of a tune ... and proper ELECTRO

Haha ... well Techno City doesn't have a funk beat but a 4/4 kick drum, so technically it wouldn't be electro. But I'd say you also have to consider things as:
- the time that tune was created
- the context in which it was created (i.e. Cybotron's other work)
- the broader musical vibe of it (for example the strong, groove-oriented and syncopated bass)
... which makes it an electro tune in my book.

My general point being this: While abstract definitions are necessary, they only get you so far. There is no point in applying a general formula to any specific track and judging it in an abstract way. I think you always have to listen to the specific track first and also take into account a broader (sometimes even non musical) context.

(This is also meant as an answer to WEX who is such an avid proponent of definitions )

Quote from Cozmo D;64957

Electro: Electronic dance music with a Funk beat rhythm with an emphasis on synthetic sounds.

That's a good definition!

...

But what about "Techno City"?

Quote from wex;64939

"its syncopated rhythm is fundamentally built on the base model "kick-snare-kick-kick-snare-kick" whose typical example is the piece of Kraftwerk's "Numbers'''.

This is the most insane part of that Wikipedia article ... I thought that electro article was misguided in a lot of ways; I think there is even a thread about it where it is discussed.

Edit: Found it: https://forum.electroempire.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7652

And Starchild: When I am speaking of "Electro" in this thread, I am of course using it as a short form of "electro funk" ... but I would agree with you that we should rather speak of electro funk to avoid confusion.

Quote from elektroakust.;64737

Anthony Rother - Grid Stripper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dRJ9FGh8OA

I like this, like the dark but still poppy vibe .. he can really pull off that kind of style. It's not the greatest material he ever released, but he's still churning out quality stuff. And whether you like him or not, you have to admit that he has a signature style … any of his tracks, you immediately know it's Rother.

aaaaah, I like the style of those Pittsburgh modules … looks classy with the big knobs!

Quote from Cozmo D;64862

OK, further then on the original topic. What distinguishes "Electro" from "Electro Funk"? If "Numbers" is Electro, why is "Computer Age" Electro Funk?

Numbers: More emphasis on the "weird electronic sounds" side of things. Beatwise, more emphasis on the mechanical, robotic quality.
Computer Age: More emphasis on the groove. Huge emphasis on the bass (there is no bass on Numbers).

I don't know man, Jonzun Crew always had a drummer too (at least that's what Maurice Starr claims). And Kraftwerk, too. So definitely electro in my book.

Man, this definition sh** is complicated.

^but that's miami bass, not electro / hip hop.

(just kidding )

really interesting too ... that tune passed as italo disco at the time, and i must admit i never questioned that. but this is as much funk as it is disco.

Quote from Cozmo D;64826

Here are some excerpts from an interview with Karl Bartos

You mention how even though you loved black music it wasn't your sound. What's interesting is how, very early on, you were embraced by black America – or certain parts of the black American concert going public at least.

KB: "That happened not too long after my first encounter with Ralf and Florian. In 1975 we went over the Atlantic and spent 10 weeks on the road. We went from coast to coast and then to Canada. And all the black cities like Detroit or Chicago, they embraced us. It was good fun. In a way apparently they saw some sort of very strange comic figures in us I guess but also they didn't miss the beats. I was growing up with the funky beats of James Brown and I brought them in more and more. Not during Autobahn or Radioactivity but more and more during the late 70s. We took some black beats into our music and this was very attractive to the black musicians and the black audiences in the States. In a way probably it reminds me of what The Beatles did. They took some Chuck Berry tunes and they transferred it to our European culture before taking it back to America and everyone understood that. In a way that was probably what we did with black rhythm and blues. But we mixed it of course with our own identity of the electronic music approach and European melodies. And this was good enough to succeed in America.

With Trans Europe Express was there a conscious effort to repeat the transport motif that you'd initially explored on Autobahn? And what experiments did you use to capture that propulsive rail travel rhythm?

KB: [laughing] "This is very, very funny! Nobody pointed this out! You are one of the first journalists to point out the repetition of the concept of transport but it is true. In a way it was a repetition of Autobahn. But on the other hand by using the train motif we were following the path of someone like Pierre Schaeffer who made the first piece of musique concrète by only using the sounds of trains. That was in our mind also. At that time being around with Autobahn and Radioactivity we'd had enough of creating from our German heritage and rather we were considering ourselves as European musicians. If you came to England or America everyone was putting us in the field of Nazi Germany of course. We had this centerfold in the New Musical Express which was really no fun. And at that time the idea of the European community by using the synonym of Trans Europe Express we had the feeling that we could do it; that we could succeed by using this symbol. Eventually we went to train bridges and were listening to the sound the train would actually produce and by using the final rhythm it was just a little faint because a train doesn't actually sound like this! Because on a train you have two wheels and then the next wagon is starting with another two wheels and if you cross the gap on the rails it makes the sound "da-dum-da-dum Da-dum-da-dum" but of course you wouldn't be able to dance to that! So we changed it slightly."

http://thequietus.com/articles…d-the-birth-of-the-modern

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wow thanks a lot!
that was enlightening ... and it confirms a lot we have talked about in the last 5 pages.

great thread btw ... i like reading all the different perspectives and opinions on the matter.

Quote from Cozmo D;64818

What about The Man Machine album? Lots of Disco beats on there. Kind of thinking that they were a bit influenced by Giorgio Moroder on that one, but that would be blasphemy!

oh, you are right of course!

when i was writing danceable i only had funk music in mind, but Man Machine is a dance album too of course (in a 4-to-the-floor / disco / electro-pop kind of way).

Quote from Cozmo D;64815

Except that they found that the train syncopation "was not danceable" and they altered it to make it so.

wow, did they say so?
would be most interesting to find out.

(now it's getting ultra nerdy ... but once i was bored and wrote a piece where i traced in detail how that beat was constructed:
http://cosmicrockdontstop.blog…ss-deconstruction-of.html
just checked, and the audio files are still working ... yay!)

don't know anything about iceman ja, but i know that mega jons bass is an old tune. you sure that this is a new release or just a compilation of older tracks?