cantosis wrote:24db wrote:gotta say each to their own, I don't think anyone is really saying that Johannes's latest album is poor, are we?
I seem to remember Johannes saying that he had stopped doing so much sound research, until a few years back when he started to use some software synths. I'm not saying that to explain any strengths or weaknesses in his music (that's down to the indiividual), but just to add a bit of info on Johannes's sound creation.
The only way Johannes would ever please us all and not be compared with his past work and that would have been to call it quits after the very first album...and then we would have all lost out.
I very much doubt that even the harshest critic of his music is even near as critical as Johannes is with his own music.
No Andy certainly not poor just not to my taste really and I dont find it challenging enough to say that it could be a grower.
But full credit to Johannes as all in all the album seems to be a hit with the masses aand of course you cant please everyone all of the time.
I'll certainly keep buying whatever Johannes puts out, whether I like it or not is my problem
.
Part of the 'problem' for all EM artists these days is there's no WOW-factor anymore, analog, digital, sampling or software we've basically heard it all before, the art now is not the sound, but the composition, the message and the emotion, in some ways EM has gone the way of Classical Music, I don't hear millions of people complaining if a pianist does 10 records with the same sound on it (hey man can't you pitch bend it or something?). There's a very slight double standard with Synthesiser based music, some people want the wheel re-invented every few minutes, just because the synth was meant to be the chameleon of the musical world. Decades later it's more than obvious that the real revolution in sound is over and we (musicals and audience alike) need to reaccess what Electronic Music means these days and to be frank if electronic music as some people describe is basically over as a new form or genre of music. The last time I was really surprised by a sound on a TD album was Le Parc, but I still continued to buy and enjoy the music because I realised that EM is more than just about the sound and or equipment. You need something to say before you worry about what timbre you use, for a while EM musicians did it the other way round and sadly some didn't have much to say beyond the equipment and their latest sound effect. All IMHO of course...sorry went off topic
Johannes Schmoelling, totally top musician...I'd recommend all of his music to anyone, I don't have their ears and they don't have mine, to be honest it would be a bit confusing if we did