It's definitely a good thing. Very refreshing to see more of Esa's work on Mono (it's been a while, hasn't it?). And a six-track EP at that! Nice! Anyhoo, I'd say that the material is much more thorough than Container. This could be somewhat of a bad thing. Container has a certain innocence and simplicity that can't be denied. I feel with this new material, that the initial ideas and techniques Esa mastered have been somewhat abandoned. Critics seemed to like Container, and I believe that to be because of it's simple delicacy. With new machines, gadgets and programs to fiddle with, one can easily forget his/her inital legacy.
But that's super nit-picky. It's a great release and more or less a solid and natural evolution of the artist. Okay, so the song sincerity may be a bit disrupted by non-8-bit thought, but it's easy to forget about that when the music's playing.
just a quick note - i, like, you, am torn between loving the simplicity of esa's earlier stuff and the amazing complexity of his new stuff. so i decided to like both, that works :P
acidtest is such a track i completely lost control over it after the first loop. the fact that it loops another time is to add 'content'. liveplayed and recorded into acid sequences..
kcl2 is a track i would've loved to develop into whatever, but due to the fact that i play pads live on it it was very, very difficult to record the pad movements and do anything with it.
i'm not very good at post-processing sounds.
hint: none of these tracks (apart from rumk8 (and not that sure about the finishing touch on that)) are actually properly finished. they've been recorded as a spur of the moment, and left lyin around as wavefiles and mp3s, and listened to privately so long that they just started existing as those kind of tracks, that they started making sense.
i think that the one offs ep is quite good at times, some of the more harsh tracks donīt appeal that much too me, but that is just a problem for me i guess, i started to be bored by autechre (mainly because of the fuzz that is made about their stuff on the idm-list... (intolerantdancemusicyoucannotdancetomakerlist?)...
on the other hand i like the openess of the tracks a lot as it is quite cool... so, it is def. another direction than the container lp but you cannot stick to one style forever and i can understand being a bit bored by perfect harmony stuff (face that just right now, too)...
itīs a good release i think, didnīt hear the esa r. ambient release, is that one similar or without beats?
best
rené
the e.p. rules big time ... as esa's stuff always does. i love it trough and trough! i think my favorite always remains another one: shk2x - wich brings me to tears everytime.