I’m having a tough time finding the energy to persevere with the Dusk & Blackdown album, I’m close to mentally filing it as a “curate’s egg” unless I can get into it soon. I bought it partly on the basis of Blackdown’s blogging and DJing, and partly on the basis of all the hype and enthusiasm elsewhere on the internet.
On the first play I was feeling ear fatigue within a few minutes (although it’s much better on speakers than on headphones). Perhaps because this somewhat ramshackle, predominantly sample-based style is just really far removed from most of my other listening at the moment: I’m currently hooked (reggae excursions aside) on techno’s precision drum patterns and the fractallish “controlled chaos” sound of synth + filter sweep + reverb + feedback delay. E.g., Andy Stott’s album does it for me right now (which btw would make a great technoXdubstep counterpart to the dubstepXtechno of 2562’s Aerial if the two were sold as a doublepack, although Stott’s is the superior album).
I really want Margins Music to work for me, because I want to listen to something right now that’s evocative of London and of the nights drawing in, and the reviews I’m reading all point to this being the album….perhaps I’ll try banning it from my iPod and only listening to it at home on speakers where the layers of samples have more room to breathe…