BGRGPOOMC, a rainbow of singles
April 22, 2015 9:05 PM   Subscribe

"Lots of people were like “oh, I recorded a car backfiring & pitched it down & combined it with some bees buzzing & 100 plugins to make a kick drum” & I just decided that this was really stupid when you could use a 909 & it would sound way better."
In 2004, Donnacha Costello released the Colorseries, a collection of ten 12-inch singles that became a building block in the rise of minimal techno. In 2007, Costello released a single CD, best-of compilation version to mixed but generally positive reviews; it's crime was being an abridged collection. (2007 interview)
Now, you can stream the entire collection at Costello's bandcamp. Or, for a curated digest, you can listen to Ryan Elliot's 2005 Mix that blends all twenty tracks over the course of an hour.
posted by Going To Maine (19 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite
 
Going To Maine: ""Lots of people were like “oh, I recorded a car backfiring & pitched it down & combined it with some bees buzzing & 100 plugins to make a kick drum” & I just decided that this was really stupid when you could use a 909 & it would sound way better." "

I don't even like his music that much, but I agree 1000% with this sentiment.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:39 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is my cup of tea
posted by aubilenon at 10:13 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


thank you for posting this!
posted by ghostbikes at 11:08 PM on April 22, 2015


I don't know what music he's referencing with the "car backfiring and bees kick drum" comment, but it actually sounds like a pretty cool kick drum sound.
posted by Bugbread at 11:10 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


No, I get what he means. It's the equivalent to guys who collect vintage guitars, exotic amps and distortion pedals, and all they can play is mechanically competent 12-bar blues.
posted by ardgedee at 2:15 AM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


Hello, New Streaming Background Music At Work.
posted by sidereal at 4:46 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


That quote reminds me of the album Pink Floyd tried to make using only household objects, but abandoned.

Is it true that Pink Floyd recorded a complete album using only household objects?
posted by kersplunk at 5:29 AM on April 23, 2015


Nice stuff! The kind of music that requires respectful and subtle mixing to make it more than the some of its parts. I haven't listened to the Ryan Elliot mix to check how he fares with the task.

I think there is room for the car backfiring bass kickers as well as the 909 purists. The trick is getting them to play together nicely. Personally I always like to use minimalist tracks to offset the beautiful tracks with a bit more drama that can be lost in busier mixes.

Obviously it goes without saying that minimalist techno has been around for at least thirty years. I did appreciate the recent incarnation though, the high fidelity that digital production and reproduction brings is well suited to this genre.

Here is an example of taking the technology to it's limits in 1978, 24 Track Loop by This Heat. All analogue physical manipulation. Here are a couple of tracks from 1990 when Sweet Exorcist had a similar sound to the recent minimalist revival.
posted by asok at 5:36 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Obviously it goes without saying that minimalist techno has been around for at least thirty years.

If someone wants to put together a "The Compleat History of Minimal" that'd be fine & dandy by me; I don't think I could even begin to do it justice, so am preemptively bowing out.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:37 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


You could do a lot worse than Henrik Schwarz, Âme and Dixon's The Grandfather Paradox.
posted by mikeh at 7:06 AM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Nice! I'm going to be listening to this for a while.
posted by carter at 8:31 AM on April 23, 2015


You could do a lot worse than Henrik Schwarz, Âme and Dixon's The Grandfather Paradox.

The Grandfather Paradox seems to never have been released in digital form (though there is an EP in the iTunes store that collects some of the tracks). Fortunately, some kind soul has put disc 1 -the continuous mix- on soundcloud.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:58 AM on April 23, 2015


(Ok, I was wrong there; it's just woefully hard to search for. Beatport, Bleep, BBEMusic.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:08 AM on April 23, 2015


I think its way cooler to record and combine all those sounds.
posted by agregoli at 10:43 AM on April 23, 2015


God forbid that musicians, you know, attempt to make new sounds.
posted by eschatfische at 11:27 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Heh: Real synths, reals drum machines
posted by awfurby at 8:56 PM on April 23, 2015


> God forbid that musicians, you know, attempt to make new sounds.

"Colorseries" seems more like a challenge to himself to make something good out of everyday studio equipment. Like a pop singer recording solo acoustic to force the songwriting to carry the listener, or a chef eschewing exotic or signature ingredients to make a meal.

Given as Costello ends the interview by discussing the exotic synthesizer he's had on order for over a decade, I don't think he believes this is the only way to record.
posted by ardgedee at 2:43 AM on April 24, 2015


Thanks for the post. I am loving this stuff!
posted by freakazoid at 7:50 AM on April 27, 2015


This is fantastic, thanks!
posted by coleboptera at 8:46 PM on May 2, 2015


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