Friday, April 17, 2020

toddermost







try playing them all simultaneously !

christ, there's even more of them









oh and there's official ones too



And there's still more out there

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Had a major Todd jag at the start of the year, made a mix of all my faves -  that was all I wanted to play for a couple of weeks. This, after a long, long period of never feeling the urge and almost forgetting his existence.

Two of my faves





One of the miracles of modern-era music, that sound he invented - but like all miracles it had its prime season (mid-to-late 90s) and then started to wear itself out with repetition and over-use.   The same tricks that worked so well, reapplied, but the glow not there somehow - perhaps a side effect of him being able to afford better gear? (I saw a video from deep into the 2000s of him showing how he did the Sound - his studio looked like Jodrell Bank. So much equipment, so many blinking lights. I suspect the earlier stuff was done on much more basic and limited equipment, which gave a certain raw edge to the tesselated samples, saving it from the sickly wispiness of Enya's multi-tracked choir-of-self (One of Todd's inspirations of course, Enya).

In my music folder, TE is filed under Nuum. Honorary citizenship, bestowed on no other American, I don't think.

More of my fave Todd blisscapes













7 comments:

Charlie w said...

The other Todd.... Terry not worthy of entry into your Hall of Nuum?

Tall Guy said...

Yeah was gonna say, what about Todd Terry? Musto & Bones?

SIMON REYNOLDS said...

Oh yes he definitely would be worthy of it - what with the hip hop / house merger, the samples-based approach, the ruffness, T Terry is indeed a foundational cornerstone figure in lots of way. But I have his stuff in the folder for House / Techno for some reason.

Perhaps it's because Todd Terry is big everywhere, universally rated (across the board in UK club culture, globally) whereas Todd Edwards's legend / repute within UK garage is so much bigger than it is in America, so he feels like he's been assimilated or taken over by Nuum - or perhaps, best understood by the Nuumists.

I remember going in a New York house music record store and asking for Todd E stuff and the clerk being very condescending, you could tell he was thinking "you Brits and your Todd E fetish"

Armand Van Helden is another American who has a special place in the heartcore

also Beltram - he's a cornerstone of the Hardcore Continuum, but also a cornerstone of the EuroHardcore Continuum, the Belgium>Gabba>Gloomcore line

Charlie w said...

Kevin Saunderson? ... Inventor of The Bassline, His Tronikhouse productions and he released some uk hardcore on kms

SIMON REYNOLDS said...

i think these guys (Kevin, Armand, Joey B, Todd T) deserve consular status - diplomatic immunity etc - within the sovereign state of Nuum.

but they are too widespread in their importance to be Honorary Citizens like Todd Edwards

too many other territories worldwide have a claim on them, whereas ToddE is uniquely embraced and catalytic within Nuumland.

Charlie W said...

I get your reasoning Guv!

Are there any other Nuuminaries from outside the UK?
Frank De Wulf?

SIMON REYNOLDS said...

well I suppose at a certain point the Nuum and Belgium form a single territory, don't they?

so maybe all of the Belgians are honorary

perhaps the Italians are at a certain point

early in the 90s it's a pan-Euro (and beyond) rave sound - "techno" - with regional flavours emerging

and then in a way it's a kind of musical Brexit that takes place (disconcerting thought!)

we go our own way and what we do doesn't play well in other territories, except for little contingents of turned-on people who follow that path, are down with the logic of evolution and start up their little Brit-ophiles scenes