tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32723577.post5095581740677546834..comments2023-10-03T17:37:08.845+02:00Comments on documents: Skinny Puppy - Last Rightsvalterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00239129101855356246noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32723577.post-57498789869086117062008-12-22T22:03:00.000+01:002008-12-22T22:03:00.000+01:00Thank you, phosphorescent bug, for your comments! ...Thank you, phosphorescent bug, for your comments! <BR/><BR/>I'd be very interested to hear what music you are making - do you have a MySpace page or suchlike?valterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00239129101855356246noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32723577.post-1165567540440504942008-12-15T21:28:00.000+01:002008-12-15T21:28:00.000+01:00Last Rights was definitely a seminal album for me,...Last Rights was definitely a seminal album for me, but like you I grew away from it for IDM (although my timescale is quite different, I was 6 in 1992), so of course I got into the shoddy tail end of IDM. I didn't have much musical insight nor diversity then; in a weird way Last Rights and the Download side project were what showed me that music could be cinematic. But I realized that right after I moved out of listening pretty much exclusively to SP and its related projects a certain incoherence in their vision had revealed itself by Last Rights (an incoherence which later nearly destroyed the mediocre Process album and spoils their post-reunion schlock). However, in a sort of listener-artist connection way I appreciate the incoherence as an artistic statement in itself; I still sort of ascribe to the mythology of Skinny Puppy that this was about as strung out as an album can get (i.e. the rumours of a drug overdose being recorded in the middle of Knowhere?), they really were lost and confused. But I'm not so pretentious to think the album doesn't have any flaws. Time for me has changed what elements stand out in this album, mostly from experience making and listening to music that explores disarrayed electronic sounds, the superior sound engineering element stands out the most. The major flaw is the sort of 80s synth naïveté they always showed and never changed, that developed sometimes into exquisite sound images, usually due to all the other incidental elements around it, but all too frequently developed into cartoonish images.<BR/><BR/>I don't really know a good comparison (working in the same palette of sound) that would make this album seem restrained. Jonathan Dean of Brainwashed once compared Venetian Snares' two "horror" masterpieces Doll Doll Doll and Find Candace to Last Rights and Too Dark Park, and while I see those Snares albums as having more of the individual control, tension, and fury of noise music, I think it is a fair comparison. Given Download's development into a respectable (at least to me) sorta-IDM sound, I think Venetian Snares (when in his coherent, dark element) is a good blueprint for how SP's sound should have developed. Of course V. Snares stems from an additional decade of glitch-techno music, and is more often than not significantly shallower than SP.<BR/><BR/>A couple other things, I agree with what you said about this album in your Pyha post, it would have more been interesting if the album had moved their politics to the body, rather than forsake politics for drug-bound insularity and confused angst. One thing I thought that could have blossomed out of Too Dark Park's concern for the environment would have been into the spiritual connection to nature seen in Black Metal (which in a weird way was sort of touched upon with later Download work). But that's a pretty ambitious thought.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com