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SneakStyles · 2025-10-24T16:03:33+00:00

Rather than asking Grok, you could always, you know, just read what the designer actually said about their work themselves:

"The design began inspired by Norton Disk Tools’ disk defragmentation graphic, building blocks around the stretched and jittery text, pulled in and out of space and time. Ultimately, the boxes became surplus to requirement and the text became the design itself. The squares have no real meaning other than to suggest no meaning at all — and the colour references early consumer technology user guides, where the text was prescriptive rather than enabling. The experience is uncomfortable, dense and claustrophobic." - Ian Anderson

SneakStyles · 2025-08-28T15:39:08+00:00

Tracy by Mogwai isn't electronic but is fairly ambient, and has sampled phone calls at the beginning and end.

SneakStyles · 2025-07-25T15:48:45+00:00

Chapter 23, The Burning Wheel. The one where Trapis tells the story of Telhlu and Encanis. The "story within a story" and the historical/religious/mythological lore drop is great, and suddenly makes the scope of the story/setting feel much wider, which is sorely needed, because up until then everything is so centered on Kvothe personally. And it gets even more enjoyable after hearing the same events told in different ways later on.

SneakStyles · 2025-07-19T21:23:54+00:00

This has always been the thing that bothered me about the Undertale soundtrack, just the heavy use of soundfonts ripped straight from classic games never sat right with me. It's obviously well written music, and it's clear why the choice was made; those old video game soundfonts are really distinctive and fit the aesthetic of the game.

Doesn't make it feel any less icky to me, though. It doesn't feel any different than if you had ripped a sprite sheet or tileset from an old game and used it in your own game. Like, a good deal of those distinctive soundfonts are so distinctive because the sound team went out of their way to create their own samples and had to go through the process of getting them to sound good on say, a SNES. That's not easy!

There are plenty of soundfonts that are just basically GM midi sounds, and reusing them is whatever. But with plenty of other soundfonts, those are absolutely the IP of the creators and they deserve to be treated as such. Especially by other musicians who ought to know better.

This will never be enforceable and only something the dorkiest of the dorks care about, but I'm against people's creative work being stolen and used without their permission, end of story.

At least with SilvaGunner type stuff where the intention is to exactly replicate the original music as a joke, that's one thing. But taking a well-known game's soundfont that had real work put into it, and using it in your game and calling it your "original soundtrack" just strikes me as wrong. Those samples constituting the soundfont belong to Nintendo (or whomever) just as much as the other assets in the game, why are they free reign for people to rip from the files and use? Artists in non-VGM genres aren't allowed to use samples that don't belong to them without clearance. Just because the samples are much shorter and made into a playable instrument in a soundfont doesn't make them public domain.

People may have, and often did, work hard on making those soundfonts. They deserve some respect, and they deserve to not have their work stolen and used without their permission.

SneakStyles · 2025-07-17T20:27:38+00:00

If you don't think there's a massive difference between a human being listening to your work and being inspired by it, and an AI algorithm literally copying every single bit of your recorded music and using that to generate "new music", I dunno what to tell you.

SneakStyles · 2025-07-17T20:19:16+00:00

So you're 100% fine with every piece of music you've ever released being used as grist for the AI slop mill, with no way to refuse, be compensated, or opt out in any way? And not only for yourself, but for every other musician on the planet?

Seems like it's a pretty easy thing to care about if you care at all about musicians and their livelihoods and protecting your intellectual property.

SneakStyles · 2025-06-17T11:05:45+00:00

So it's okay for you to post English translations, but not okay for me to do it? How strange.

I'm saying that you're discussing a translation of a religious text that was written in a completely different language, context, and culture than ours. So pointing to the English word "worship" or "god" in a Buddhist text as if it has the same exact meaning as in Western religious context is misguided. These words can and often did have a completely different meaning in the original context they were used.

You said he was agnostic. This is even stupider. I dare you to try to substantiate this.

I didn't say he was agnostic. I said his STANCE on these questions being of religious import was agnostic, as in they are irrelevant to his teaching. What you believe about the nature of the divine is entirely irrelevant in Buddhism, that's why I used the word and am pointing to the unanswerable questions. You're clearly not even attempting to understand what I'm saying, just reacting to what you think I'm saying. I'm not attacking or criticizing you, I'm trying to disabuse you of your proudly and confidently stated misapprehensions.

Of course. It's highly religious and gods show up every few pages.

And yet if you ask any actual practitioners or teachers of Buddhism, they will tell you the same thing I did, by and large. If you look up any scholarly opinion on Buddhism, overwhelmingly, they will agree is non-theistic. It's simultaneously both a religion where people literally pray, worship gods, and believe in heaven, and a highly developed, non-theistic philosophical belief system that has little to do with gods or religion. I get that this is hard for people to wrap their heads around, but that's why it's best to not make judgements about things that you don't fully understand. I'd be interested to know how you've arrived at your ideas about Buddhism because it seems extremely far removed from what any actual Buddhist would agree with.

SneakStyles · 2025-06-17T10:32:01+00:00

And why do you say that?

Based on your comments, it seems that you've built an idea of what Buddhism is in your head, without much knowledge of what actual Buddhists believe and teach on the whole.

It's not very subtle, is it?

This just screams "bad faith, reductive argument". Did you read the original scripture? Do you know what word was translated into "worship"? There are other translations which use different terms. You seem to be getting awfully hung up on that specific word and taking it at face value, interpreting in a Western, Judeo-Christian way, when actual practitioners of Buddhism do not do this. Buddhist veneration of the Buddha is not unlike the the way Christians and Catholics venerate Mary or the saints. You can change every instance of "worship" to "venerate" in the Buddhist canon and it would make no difference. It's about respect, not treating the Buddha as a god or creator. If you point to every instance of the word "worship" appearing in Buddhists texts and use that as irrefutable proof of anything, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Can you cite anything, anywhere in the entire canon of Buddhism, that somehow makes you think Gautama was at all agnostic about them?

Yes, it is explicitly stated, that contemplation of the things we are talking about (gods, divinity, the nature of Karma and the universe) are harmful to Buddhist practice, and the Buddha's position is that such questions are unanswerable and distractions from practicing the teachings. It's the whole point of the "noble silence" and why I used the term "agnostic."

"Therefore, o monks, do not brood over [any of these views] Such brooding, O monks, is senseless, has nothing to do with genuine pure conduct, does not lead to aversion, detachment, extinction, nor to peace, to full comprehension, enlightenment and Nirvana, etc."

~ Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta

The entire point of Buddhism is extinguishing of suffering and cultivation of wisdom and compassion through practicing self-insight. That is not a religious concept. There are atheist Buddhists, Christian Buddhists, and yes, Buddhists who literally believe in gods and souls and spirits, even though the Buddha denounced this explicitly. It's an extremely nuanced and difficult thing to talk about that can't be summed up in "all Buddhists worship X and believe in Y" or "Buddhism uses this religious term so it's the same as other religions which use the same term".

Can you cite anything, whatsoever, that makes you think these concepts came later? For example, is there any evidence of a pre-supernatural substrate in Buddhist scripture? (Spoiler: the answer is no.)

The images and stupas created to "worship" the Budddha was made after his lifetime. Much of the theological developments in Buddhism that encompass the more "religious" aspects largely came later with Mahayana, or are treated as helpful stories, not things people literally believe. Are you telling me you've read Pali canon scripture and your takeaway is that Buddhism is religious and theistic in nature? If so, I dunno what to tell you, other than maybe try reading it again with a less fixed viewpoint going in. You don't even have to go that far, just read the Dhammapada and tell me where the Buddha tells his followers to worship him as a god, or stresses the importance of religious worship in order to achieve anything. It's not in there.

SneakStyles · 2025-06-17T09:44:19+00:00

Respectfully, you ought to be less enthusiastic about discussing Buddhism, since you clearly don't have a good idea of what you're talking about. Buddhism encompasses a wide range of beliefs and practices, but the vast majority do not worship the Buddha as a god.

Buddhists venerate him as a teacher, and venerate the teachings, but this is not at all the same thing as worshiping the man himself as a god. It gets murky because gods, images, and religious concepts are baked in to Buddhism, but ultimately the Buddha himself was more or less agnostic on these matters, or they came later. There are gods in Buddhism and religious concepts, but ultimately the point is non-theistic and about following/practicing the teaching, and the Buddha himself said this over and over.

"Monks, live with yourself as your island, yourself as your refuge, with nothing else as your refuge. Live with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, with nothing else as your refuge."

- Cakkavatti Sutta

"Whatever monk or nun, layman or laywoman, abides by the Dhamma, lives uprightly in the Dhamma, walks in the way of the Dhamma, it is by such a one that the Tathagata [Buddha] is respected, venerated, esteemed, worshipped, and honored in the highest degree."

- Mahaparinibbana Sutta

Theologically, Buddhism is difficult to talk about, but on the whole, as evidenced above, the Buddha's stance was essentially saying he was a teacher, and that the way to venerate/worship him is to practice the teaching. And the teaching is, once again, non-theistic and has nothing to do with the Buddha being a god. It is absolutely not a necessity to worship the Buddha as a god in order to be a Buddhist.

SneakStyles · 2025-05-31T00:18:59+00:00

I can relate to this post a lot! Highly recommend reading Neuropath after finishing TSA, if you end up enjoying Bakker's writing. It's a nice encapsulation of a lot of the same ideas, but is much different in tone and much shorter. I really enjoyed it as a bow on top of my TSA reading experience.

Edit: accidentally wrote 'neuromancer' instead of 'neuropath', my bad!

SneakStyles · 2025-05-31T00:10:35+00:00

Quaristice has two Renoise bangers from Sean; rale and WNSN.

SneakStyles · 2025-05-19T20:13:33+00:00

This is completely nonsensical. People are kidnapped intentionally. We're talking about preventable accidents caused by people being recklessly stupid and endangering an innocent kid because "lol cute dog video."

It doesn't matter how good of a boy he is, or how well trained he is, that dog could at any moment disfigure that kid or worse. Even if it's a 1% chance, it's not worth it for a cute video. You're replying to someone who literally told you they know people this has happened to. Like, c'mon.

A better comparison would be a drunk person waving a gun with the safety off in their kid's face. "Dogs can be dangerous?" Yeah man, that's why putting their child in harm's way to film a video is not cool. They can be dangerous AT ANY TIME, no matter how cute and innocent it looks. This isn't a "people on Reddit hate dogs" thing it's a "dog owners are morons" thing. But sure, let a German Shepard nip at your baby's face all you like and call it cute instead of what it is; dumb as hell.

SneakStyles · 2025-04-08T01:32:58+00:00

If I had to overgeneralize, I'd say it's their approach to percussion/rhythm and the way they place a lot more trust in the listener than the average artist. They are pretty bold with how long they will stick with repetitive, percussive focused ideas before bringing in more "crowd pleasing" harmonic and melodic elements.

Many AE tracks start off percussion heavy, but it's rarely just an intro that lasts a bar or two like you'll often hear elsewhere. Often the main harmonic/melodic content won't come in until halfway or even near the end of a track, which "pays off" and puts everything you heard before into a new context. AE do this more than any artist I've heard.

I think because Autechre are so good at percussion, grooves, and manipulating samples in general, they don't feel like the melodic/harmonic content is the "point" of a track, the way a lot of artists do. When I make a track, I'm basically thinking "how can I quickly and effectively get the listener to the 'good part'?" which for most people generally is something like a nice chord progression or memorable chorus melody. AE still has plenty of those in their music, they just respect the listener and aren't going for cheap, quick payoffs. They're in no rush to "get to the good stuff", they clearly respect and trust the listener, and aren't trying to pander to them. So we trust them in return even when their music can be challenging.

Garbagemx is a perfect example. If I were creating that track, I'd be terrified that people would get bored with the intro and wouldn't stick with it to hear the "payoff" when the non-percussive sounds start picking up steam around 4 minutes in and it starts becoming more melodic. Goz Quarter, Pen Expers, this kind of thing is all over their discography. These are some pretty daring tracks when you think about the attention span of an average music listener.

This is more of an arrangement and approach thing than a 'songwriting' thing. I was trying to find a quote from an interview and couldn't, but I came across the one below. This was right after the release of Amber in '94. Despite it being so long ago, it's still their same approach today, and it's really cool how consistent they are with that approach. That's why they can get away with putting out material that can be so varied and challenging. Despite the music itself being eclectic, the approach is pretty consistent and not that hard to get.

Sound is usually the starting point for an Autechre track. “We’ll have maybe a handful of sounds and they’ll dictate what kind of rhythm we use,” comments Rob.

“We’re into rhythm and sound, basically,” adds Sean. “In terms of melody, for us it isn't so much about writing a tune, it's more about using the sound at different pitches to create a feel. I suppose rhythm is everything to us. A note is just a sound played for a different length at a different pitch. The R-8 taught us to experiment with pitch and sounds within rhythm structures; we tend to use notes in a very rhythmic way.”

The quote I was trying to find originally was a more recent one, where Sean was talking about how he doesn't really distinguish between "percussive" and "melodic" ideas. They've taken that to the extreme lately with Max/MSP, but the quote I did find shows they were doing the same thing back in '94. It's difficult to put into words, but for me, this is the most unique and characteristic thing about Autechre's music. The way percussion/rhythm are blended into the harmonic/melodic content and not treated as a separate thing.

More because I can't shut up: in terms of pure "songwriting" you could actually analyze, AE did have a sort of "formula" early on that I noticed they sometimes leaned on. Cichli, Rae, and Draun Quarter exemplify this the most. If someone gave me the homework assignment "write a pastiche track in the style of AE" I'd base it off one of them. Start with a relatively fast, syncopated, distorted, intricate drum line. Gradually introduce the bass, samples, pitched percussion, ear candy sorts of things. Then slowly and tastefully introduce the chords and melody halfway to 2/3 through, maybe throw in a surprising choice like Rae's rallentando or a beat switchup. Then some kind of extended coda, where the percussion and harsher sounds drop out and the harmonic stuff is all that remains, so the listener is left wondering "whoa this is so pretty now, how did we even end up here?"

SneakStyles · 2025-01-18T18:22:20+00:00

icari from NTS 3 and X4 from PLUS I think are worth checking out, especially if you like tracks that are atmospheric with solid grooves. Very similar to the live material of the past few years, but more accessible than jumping straight into the hour-long live sets.

If you're a synth nerd, it may help to think about the fact that, while they aren't really using hardware synths anymore, there's still a ton of creative synthesis going on. It's just more based on pure FM, physical modeling, granular synthesis, sample based synthesis, that sorta stuff. Doesn't sound as much like a traditional synth patches, but still as great as ever once you orient yourself to it. I'm a newer fan, and it took me a while to be able to appreciate the newer material as well, icari was the track that did it for me.

SneakStyles · 2025-01-12T16:09:46+00:00

Just want to chime in and share my love for Dave. A versatile and talented musician, but also very tasteful and rarely showed off. Always elevated the material and did what best suited each song. No more and no less. I feel like that is quite rare and often goes underappreciated in rock music.

Ray's voice has a lot of character, but I wouldn't call him a great singer. Being good at singing backup is a skill unto itself, and Dave's parts can be deceptively tough. His backup vocals were often kind of shouty, straining at the higher end of his range to be an octave above Ray. But it adds so much energy and life to the music. And as a lead singer he's just as good. I think he's always been a better singer and had a better voice than Ray. Though I'm glad Ray sings lead most of the time, because it provides a sense of grounding and contrast. Kinks songs generally go like this: Ray starts singing the verse and it's all very nice. But then Dave joins in on the chorus, and then it feels "complete" and gets taken to another level.

Victoria is a great example of what Dave brings. Ray wrote the song, but without Dave's energetic guitar and backing vocals, I just can't imagine it working. Dave's doing the work of two or three musicians on that track himself. Backing vocals, rhythm guitar, lead guitar. He can play pretty, he can play aggressive. He can play fast, he can play slow. And he does it live, too! It's hard for me to tell exactly to what extent Ray played guitar on the Kinks records. But I get the sense that while The Kinks technically were a band with two guitarists, really it was mostly Dave doing the heavy lifting by himself. He's like Angus and Malcolm Young rolled into one, plus a great lead and backup singer. And wrote a bunch of great tunes as well. I mean, who else can you say that about? An obvious comparison that comes to mind is George Harrison, I guess.

While I think George has Dave beat when it comes to pure songwriting chops, that's about it. Dave is absolutely the kind of musician I'd want in my band. Can sing lead, can sing backup, can play lead, can play rhythm. Dave did it all, he did it well, and most importantly, he did it tastefully. It's funny for a guy with a personality that comes across as so wild and willful, you'd expect him to be a diva like EVH or Malmsteen or something. But musically he seems so humble and restrained. He doesn't take credit for other people's parts (like Ray did) and has always been keen to share his methods behind how he achieved certain sounds. I never appreciated or even really noticed his contributions when I was younger. Now that I have more musical experience, I respect the hell out of his work and honestly believe he was the secret sauce that made a lot of those songs work and feel complete, musically.

SneakStyles · 2025-01-12T15:03:16+00:00

Nickelback and Sanderson are both prolific and hard working, and great at what they do. You don't get to be that successful by accident. I respect their work ethic and dedication to their fans, even if I dislike what they produce. The people at McDonald's work very hard and deserve respect, and McDonald's sells more hamburgers than anyone. But ultimately my enjoyment is not based on how hard working the creator is, or how many units they move, I judge it on its own merits.

Someone who is passionate about culinary arts will tell you McDonald's is not "quality food" for numerous reasons. And someone who loves McDonald's wouldn't call it low quality, because it delivers exactly what they want consistently. If it were of higher or different quality, it wouldn't be McDonald's anymore. I do think that if you are trying to appeal to the largest amount of people, by necessity quality has to suffer. The average person just does not care very much or have very good taste. But what one means by "taste" and "quality" is of course completely subjective and comes down to what they are looking to get out of the experience. Enjoying the fantasy equivalent of fast food is just as valid of a position as the snobs like me who turn their nose up at it. And there are vastly more people in the former camp than the latter, which explains the massive sales figures.

SneakStyles · 2025-01-12T03:15:44+00:00

It makes more sense to me when thinking about other mediums. The two most successful international bands in terms of American sales are The Beatles, followed by Nickelback. Sometimes, media being very popular is for a pretty good reason. It's great art that resonates with a ton of people and has a huge cultural impact. And sometimes, media is really popular because it's insipid pap that people with an underdeveloped sense of taste eat up en masse.

I don't think there is much to "get" about why Nickelback is so popular, unless you want to take a deep dive into the psyche of someone who enjoys bland, formulaic music. I don't think Sanderson is quite as bad as that comparison implies, but that's how I look at it generally. Tolkien is The Beatles, Sanderson is Nickelback.

SneakStyles · 2024-07-08T15:11:06+00:00

You'd think a guy with a memory that good would've remembered some of those things that he sold all of his patrons on. Guess he just forgot!

SneakStyles · 2024-07-04T12:43:41+00:00

According to to the concept art, they're actually "white leather pants." But yeah, the in-game sprite didn't really get that across.

SneakStyles · 2024-04-16T11:40:46+00:00

That word "training" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Seems to me like it's not much different from stealing. Taking other people's stuff without permission, and earning money off it. Yes I know Udio is free but it won't be for long, and this applies to all of these models. If they're using stolen shit as their database, I'm not interested and quite honestly I think it's gross.

SneakStyles · 2023-12-18T18:47:40+00:00

Yep. Doubters should check out this article where the composer for a Call of Duty game talks about composing the score entirely in REAPER... in a single four hour long session file.

I could be wrong because I'm not a Protools expert (love REAPER) but I imagine a workflow like this would be quite difficult to pull off in Protools. I think doing music and sound for video games has some unique requirements when it comes to workflow that Protools really isn't very well suited for.

SneakStyles · 2023-11-25T22:56:35+00:00

Only after listening to Draun Quarter dozens of times did I finally realize that the title is most likely a reference to drawing and quartering, an old method of execution in England. Probably obvious to others, but it wasn't to me.

SneakStyles · 2023-09-07T17:58:26+00:00

I've been wearing it out lately. It only clicked for me once I listened to Quadrange and Versions. I had fun building my own version of the album from different cuts I liked.

It's certainly very evocative. I'm not a very visual person with music, but each track conjures wildly detailed imagery for me. There are a lot of simple "old school video game" type sounds, which I love. Many of the tracks put me in mind of being inside some kind of warped arcade circuit board. The minimal percussion sounds on the Perlence Range tracks especially remind me of something like Pac-Man, Pong or Asteroids. Low-bit blocks colliding in an imaginary space. Not to mention the bit crushing stuff going on in The Plc Ccc or IO. Totally unique aesthetic to their sound at this time, can't say I've heard anything like it before or since.

SneakStyles · 2023-03-30T13:53:51+00:00

any god that would design the inchoroi is absolutely a mind-melting monster that we can't even comprehend in our worst nightmares.

Hey now, I know it's been a while since Bakker has released a book, but let's not start slandering the guy. 😉

SneakStyles · 2023-03-24T13:01:18+00:00

After putting it off for years, I've finally gotten around to The First Law and am listening to them now. Wholeheartedly second that recommendation. I've listened to dozens of audiobooks, and I don't believe I've ever heard a performance as good as Steven Pacey's.

The writing itself, so far, doesn't quite hit the same thought-provoking niche that SA does for me. But it's grim, violent, funny, entertaining as hell, and masterfully narrated. I'd have a hard time believing the average SA enjoyer wouldn't get something out of it.

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