Slothrop
Tight but Polite
One interesting thing to discuss might be whether the tape echo 'dub' sound which we all know so well and which I use a lot on my mixer, is this by nature a melancholic sound? Personally I know sometimes I hear the echoing trails of dub coda in a deep reggae joint and instantly feel like I am staring at the stars. Is this sound of space too close to emptiness for comfortable feelgood listening??
I think it's inherently introspective / dissociative - because it's an echo, it freezes a moment in time, and because it's not tempo locked, it pulls the listener out of the bodily immediacy of rhythm and into headspace - rather than being inherently melancholic, but I guess that makes it melancholic in most circumstances...
Interestingly I don't think this has much to do with the 'magic' sound of the space echo that everyone spends so much time trying to capture as a shortcut to dubby authenticity, more the way that it's used - as a non tempo locked echo that's on a send and dropped in and out of the mix, and is loud enough to stand out in the foreground of the tune...