Indeed I have.
I’m just building on the point that @holonology made that I think he is the opposite of someone who has loads of fancy synths. I think he does a lot of stock and bounces down to audio early so it’s probably operator or similar.
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That’s true @monquixote - so there is this video where he shows how he made the bass in Jungle, and it’s basically sampling a rubbish audio cable.
One stylistic difference with this record, is I assume we’re out of the Actual Life thing now. I imagine that frees him up to use other plugins, but yeah, he’s a big user of stock stuff from what I know. I can’t remember the interview but I have a big rundown of his main points earlier in the this thread. I distinctly remember him saying “I just delete all my plugins.” Which is probably not entirely true since he used to talk about Effectrix, Portal and others. I’m sure he mentioned Arturia at one point. But I do know that a lot of Actual Life that he showed on Tape Notes was either a sample like the above or a stock Logic synth. I even checked in Logic myself and it was all there.
I would be interested to see if they pick up on those differences if/when they get him back onto Tape Notes.
Since we’re on the new album btw I really like this one. Classic Fred!
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I would respectfully disagree, I stumbled upon the featured Duskus a few months ago and his sound is all over this track, from the hyper melodic synth to the ethereal and echoed voices, I feel like he does all the heavy lifting on this track. As a reference, here’s one of his own:
By the way, he is super open about his process:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=duskus+interview
unexpected interviewer
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Finally came around to watching this set mentioned here plus the Tiny Desk. To state the obvious, he’s just an incredible musician who pours everything he’s got into these performances. Very unique, very touching.
My favorite moment was the „We Lost Dancing“ part of the rooftop session. Also loved everything he did with the Marimba and Vibraphone (?) on Tiny Desk. Oh, and how he turned around that speech about depression with the „I am the party inside of my head“ part made me cry.
He‘s clearly the person who could make great music with literally anything (I mean he makes the drums beating on a table).
Any other live performances you can suggest? What about albums? I haven’t really liked them before since they’re way more EDM/big stage/radio style, but maybe I‘ve missed something?
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He has an ambient album with Brian Eno
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These are superb (mostly from lockdown when performances weren’t possible.)
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Great, thanks! The first one of these was the rooftop session I was referring to. Looking forward to watching the other ones!
His output quality has steadily declined since the first big release in 2020 (red album cover). The Eno collaboration and new album are about equally listless and mush. A lot of the collab stuff he has done seems like distractions from the fact he is out of ideas.
Starting to become the name check electronic artist for people who don’t really like electronic music….
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Why do we need to exclude things at all.
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To keep bullshit away from pure things.
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Sounds a bit like gatekeeping.
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In that case I’m proud to be a wack mf 
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I actually like how he started out and he seemed like a breath of fresh air. I just haven’t heard anything interesting from him in the past 3+ years.
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Frankly I think this is the best thing he’s done and it came out 8 months ago. Fred again has been around producing for others long enough that I don’t have any concerns about his output. Actual Live 3 hooked me. 1 and 2 were great, but 3 really hit right for me. His Eno collaboration didn’t really do it for me, but that’s ok. There’s individual tracks on his latest album that I really like but I don’t think it’s as cohesive as the actual life albums.
If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. There’s no denying the talent though. I mean you can deny it if you like but people in glass houses…
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How many big shot producers are out there performing their shit live, many times with a completely different setup and interpretation of their material? And always playing this live like they will have to die if they don’t give it their everything. He could just lean back, give some half assed playback shows and make more easy cash. Instead, he’s choosing to challenge himself all the time because he apprently just loves music. Why people feel the need to shit on this as if he’s some greedy popstar making lazy ass music is beyond me.
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I get the sense you’re only pro gatekeeping if you get to be the gatekeeper.
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To be fair you have a point here. I’ve been watching Duskus interviews and process stuff. There is a lot of crossover between his last EP and the track on Fred’s album.
Interestingly I watched one of him making a track and a lot of the techniques were similar. He mentions putting a drone into each song like Fred, but he also does this with drums too.
The other thing I found fascinating was his use of synths. In one clip he drops Analog onto a track and uses an Auto Filter to change the sound, barely touching the sound itself. He does sound design at the end of the process. What’s cool about this is it echoes Fred’s approach of saying it doesn’t matter about the sound if the tune isn’t any good.
He also mentions how too many producers over complicate things assuming a more produced song or a more intricate one is better. But he thinks this is usually wrong.
Cheers for flagging this. Really interesting!
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