The Worst IDM/Downtempo-ish Album I Ever Heard

[PresidentSquidward]

As a fan of electronica, I've never heard an awful album in the techno/IDM/Downtempo genres. Mixed or mediocre? Of course. I feel artists such as James Braddell of Funki Porcini and 9 Lazy 9 is mostly middle of the road downtempo for example, but not truly bad. For the first time ever though, I recently discovered an album from a very obscure artist on an obscure label I love called Pork Recordings (a label co-founded by Steve Cobby of Fila Brazillia). The album is called "For Your Safety", by the alias known as Referencered. The guy behind the alias, Douglas McCluskey, has only released an EP under another alias called The Sovereign Universalist (where he also made a track for DJ Shadow's remix album in the beginning of the decade.

It's an album that caught my eye as I was aware of a lot of Pork albums and never saw this one on the Rateyourmusic database until I saw it on the website Kudosrecords.co.uk and did extra digging on Discogs. Here's his discogs page: https://www.discogs.com/artist/1026694- ... -McCluskey.

And usually I've enjoyed a lot of Pork albums in the past besides Fila Brazillia, such as Bullitnuts, Akotcha, Moss, even Banabila had one release on Pork and it was a fun plunderphonics experimentation record, so I wasn't sure what to expect coming into this album where the cover looks like this:


...but I was entered by disappointment.

This whole album reeks of such boring simplicity. It sounds like music that was made for the first time ever by someone inexperienced trying out some music software studio they downloaded online. It's so basic, all of the songs in here are mediocre or just plain bad to listen to for me. The repetitively of the samplings and how lame all the beats and composing really makes the listening experience not fun at all... especially when there's 21 TRACKS FOR 72 MINUTES. One song in here was kind of nice was the humorously titled "The Other White Meat". Apparently the description on Kudo's website talks about Pork loving this guys work after he sent a bunch of music to them a few years before: https://porkrecordings.kudosrecords.co. ... our-safety

I just don't find anything positive to say for this album. It has a cheerful, goofy personality to it, but it doesn't work with how simplistic everything sounds. All it does is make me want to listen to Luke Vibert or hell, try to give another go to that freaking Global Goon guy that was hard to review for me for some reason. It's not REALLY awful, but it's not good either.

This album can easily be found as a YouTube topic playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=O ... q0DfqHFaOk. It's also on Spotify (spelled as Referenced on Spotify).

It's a rare record I want to see more people listen for themselves to see if I'm the only one to not like it. If you use Rateyourmusic I made a page for it to review it a while back: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album ... ur-safety/

I also saw he has a soundcloud, looks like his style is a bit more of the same, but probably a little more experience?? I dig tracks like Orange Leaf honestly. Not sure about anything else. https://soundcloud.com/douglasdelay

[drillkicker]

Sounds like he just hasn't been making music for very long. It has the kind of weird quirks that come with compositional immaturity. Aside from that, I really like it. It's cheerful and unpretentious and sounds like the kind of music that would be playing in a little kid's head. There is not much music out there that I can describe that way.

[In_The_Annexe]

wow you sure are passionate about this album despite you not liking it....

also just because you aren't into something, doesnt mean it's bad.
so tired of the "connoisseurs of fine art" on these forums.

[The_Duke]

Could it grow on you OP?
Also could it fill a niche listened in a specific setting amongst a unique aesthetic? Or could this album ever fulfill a purpose for sampling and remixing (some remixing produces better than original etc..)

[μasch]

OP you are really harsh on what is a first attempt at music. The repetitivity isn't completly well balanced indeed, but the ambiance completly comparable to RDJ first discography.

TBH i would really much prefeer to listen ton thats than to Boards of canada clone n°34546 (yes that used to include me) or artists that found out about 808s, 303s and amen just overuse them to carbon copy SAW. Not to say those are automatically bad either, but there is much more personnality here.

And the soundcloud you shared is down, so i really hope it had nothing to do with the criticsim and that he got discourged. That would be terrible