[sdiy] Tomita - list problems

[Richard Wentk]

At 08:47 31/05/2005, Andre Majorel wrote:
>On 2005-05-31 00:32 -0400, Kenneth Elhardt wrote:
>
> > I wonder if this also means you haven't heard W. Carlos.  Anybody who
> > doesn't own Well-Tempered Synthesizer is missing the most colorful and
> > best sounding synth album ever as far as non-imitative synth only type
> > sounds go.  Without Carlos there would be no Tomita.
>
>Strange that you say that because, to me, Tomita is the
>anti-Carlos as far as sound is concerned. I haven't heard
>_Well-Tempered Synthesizer_, only _Switched-on Bach_ and
>_Secrets of Synthesis_, which I both find as sonically
>unpleasant and monotonous as I find Tomita's work enjoyable and
>varied. Any filiation between their respective works seems
>unlikely.

I find a lot of Carlos sounds on the early albums clinical and rather 
sterile - in the sense that if you have a modular, getting sounds like 
those is no big deal. So SOB is more of a curiosity than something you'd 
listen to for fun. Beauty in the Beast is where she loosened up a lot and 
the effort really paid off.

Tomita on the other hand starts well and gets better and better. Snowflakes 
is good but has some of that Moog monotony. Firebird is mid-way. By the 
time you get to Planets,Kosmos and Daphnis and Chole he's in a world of his 
own. No one has come close to what he did the technology, and his albums 
really are astonishing pieces of work from the point of view of sound 
design and programming.

I think he lost the plot when he started to go digital. I'm not sure why, 
exactly, but Grand Canyon and Dawn Chorus don't do much for me at all.

Richard