A mile away

new answer this damn question

Ronan, get the Atlantic Jaxx compilation. A bit of dodgy latin stuff on there that doesn't quite work (at least not as compared to "Bingo Bango" etc.) but you get "Set Yo Body Free", "Samba Magic", "Lonely", "Flylife", all of which alone are worth the price of entry.

As to the question, I guess it's an issue of whether what makes the artist distinctive doesn't end up making them samey as well. Was thinking about this the other night in relation to Wookie (see last blog entry) - how his bass sound is automatically identifiable, but he keeps placing it in different contexts. This keeps everything interesting, but it's perhaps not quite as cool as the Jaxx, whose great trick is that what makes them distinctive (the blips and noises etc.) is the same thing that allows each track to be different - their signature sound is not a stable reference because their signature sound is in fact their tendency towards chaos and instablitiy.

Distinctive faves:
Ruins, XTC, J.Zorn

Up to a point I think The Prodigy were distinctive, cetainly until (and incl) Music for the Jilted Generation. You knew it was them, by the beats and the even the samples, and they managed to keep it from being samey.

I think it is more impressive if the act is very distinctive without the voice doing the distinguishing, in that everyooon'e voice is different, whereas guitars and other instruments can very easily sound the same. I would think there are over a hundred voices I'd expect to identify very quickly, but very few acts just by the music. Leaving aside impersonations, those might include guitarists Elmore James, Robert Ward and Marc Bolan, Esquerita's or Art Tatum's piano, Charles Hodges's organ, the Ramones, Underworld, Chic, Krust. Then there are acts with odd instrumentation - there aren't so many punk acts with sax that you can fail to spot X-Ray Spex, for instance. I expect there are lots of others, but that's a quick list

Soul Coughing, Mouse On Mars

Aphex Twin, aka Richard D. James. There is no doubt in my mind when I hear a track he's lent himself to - As APX, Aphex, Richard Devine ect. - even when he remixes someone elses track - it becomes Aphex.

Um, I'm pretty sure Richard Devine and Richard D. James are not one and the same.

Kraftwerk. Only Anthony Rother can do a successful cop on their style (e.g., Biomechanik [sp?] ). BTW, Richard Devine is *not* Richard James (which takes the force from the contention that his style is distinctive). Kenny Dixon Jr. is pretty disctinctive. Lloyd Cole. The Residents. Hank Williams. Pet Shop Boys. The Velvets. Massive Attack. Dead Can Dance. The Byrds. I'd say Autechre, but there are far too many Ae clones afoot to make that statement. The Move. Roxy Music. The Lightning Seeds. Johnny Cash. YMO. Luna. James Brown. Atom Heart. Nina Hagen. Edwyn Collins. Sometimes it *is* the vocal delivery, sometimes it's the sound or style of the band...the style of the individual players, some kind of "total is greater than the sum of the parts" je ne sais qua thing. -jeff