Just listened to the new DP album, with the recent DP quote about how its "supposed to suck" in mind.
Nailed it.
Good lord what a bunch of bullshit rubbish that album is. Just absolutely terrible from start to finish. They've reached a new low.
I don't think it has anything to do with any of that - it's just poor music. It's bad disco parody, been done a million times, and a millions times it's been done better.Quoting Henry Gale (view post)
Every single Jamiroquai album blows RAM out of the water, and he doesn't hide behind robot gimmicks and tired vocoder vocals.
Daft Punk is the GWAR of dance music, only they aren't nearly as creative or fun.
What boggles my mind most is all the people claiming that DP has evolved, and are pushing the EDM genre forward...by going back two three decades and doing the same old stuff all those disco bands were doing in the '70s and '80s? Really? This album represents, to me, a huge devolution of dance music; it's pastiche, and that's all it is. But I don't even think it's very good pastiche. This sounds like a first album from a band.
Someone like Tim Exile, now he's pushing EDM (or whatever) into new territories. DP are just mining the past (just look who they're working with now).
Meh...now I'm over it.
Spent yesterday uploading more music to my cloud, and randomly turned on Fuck Buttons. Their debut is still marvelously textured and roaming. Awesome. Might have to look into their second album in the coming months.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
I still think too many critiques of it pay too much attention to how it sounds instead of what the songs actually are under those surfaces. The individual strengths of those are obviously always going to be subjective, as with any album, but I'm not sure if it should be contextually more important or irrelevant that a group with as established and iconic a sound as Daft Punk have their names on it.I don't think it has anything to do with any of that - it's just poor music. It's bad disco parody, been done a million times, and a millions times it's been done better.
Every single Jamiroquai album blows RAM out of the water, and he doesn't hide behind robot gimmicks and tired vocoder vocals.
Daft Punk is the GWAR of dance music, only they aren't nearly as creative or fun.
What boggles my mind most is all the people claiming that DP has evolved, and are pushing the EDM genre forward...by going back two three decades and doing the same old stuff all those disco bands were doing in the '70s and '80s? Really? This album represents, to me, a huge devolution of dance music; it's pastiche, and that's all it is. But I don't even think it's very good pastiche. This sounds like a first album from a band.
Someone like Tim Exile, now he's pushing EDM (or whatever) into new territories. DP are just mining the past (just look who they're working with now).
Meh...now I'm over it.
I'm not too fond of the opening track or the Todd Edwards-featuring "Fragments of Time", since they do easily falter under the sort of schmaltzy throwback-y gimmick-y kind of vibe a lot of people feel about the whole thing, and those are the glimmers of the album where I sync up with the more negative reactions to it. But with those two songs it's just as much more about the songwriting simply not being their to steer those sounds into compelling directions as the unremarkable way they're arranged.
At the end of the day, and only having it exist for two days in the world, the album has still become more engaging every time I've listened to it, and even though I started with it in a good place, I kinda wish everyone would dig into it a little bit more, regardless of their initial opinions, whether or not their experiences dramatically improve. I tend to feel like one listen is never enough justice for any album, so it's even more understandable that tons of people aren't going to give it enough credit simply because it's a 74-minute series of curveballs that they'll only care to delve into once.
It's not perfect by any means, but at a time when it's extremely weird for an album in 2013 to culturally matter this much, for it to sounds like this is a very surreal, exciting thing. But beyond how it's dressed up, them tunes make me feel good and some of these melodies, just as with their the very best of their past work, will be ingrained in my head forever.
It do give it props for the production/mastering, but after two or so listens, that's the only positive thing I can say.
For a similar throwback, electronic dance/soul album from 2013, I greatly prefer Rhye's Woman.
It satisfies without the gimmicks, parody and pastiche. Mike Milosh has been doing some incredible things.
Absolutely a really good song, and props for picking it out since I have heard stuff by Rhye, just not that one in particular. So as much as grabbing that album is now a priority, it seems like such a different vibe in terms of its artistic goals in terms of general mood, ambience and syncopation methods, along with the overall way it dresses it up and arranges it (to my mind and ears), that I can't really compare them, but easily like them both. And songs from both Rhye's and Daft Punk's recent albums could easily sit side by side in one of my (usually stylistically all-over-the-place) playlist, just evoking different things, different ways for me.
Obviously a lot of Random Access Memories sounds like a lot of definable records of a yesteryear era, but I just don't think the songwriting sensibilities and formulas come from the same, established place, even if it is sometimes in cutesy, kitschy ways. And I guess that juxtaposition (along with how the melodies and rhythms genuinely affect me) are where the excitement in the album resides for me. I've hummed so many of the songs to myself for days, even in ways so unlike how they sound on the record, that I can't deny they've gotten to me in a signifcant way.
In all honesty, I think a lot of these bands are still trying to out do Air's Moon Safari, but alas that's proving to be an impossible task.
I haven't listened to DP's Homework in probably 15 years, but I still think about the songs all the time, and they frequently pop into my mind. I listened to RAM two days ago, and I can't recall a single thing from it.
I still think Homework is a masterpiece; not only is it one of the strongest debut albums of all-time, it's simply an all-time great album.
Not even how weirdly out of place the Paul Williams song felt?
That's another thing - all the collaborations.
It's like a dirty south rap album from the early '00s. Who's album is it? I often found myself wondering what DP actually did on it.
Maybe their own upcoming remix album will be better?
In that same vein, I really wish more albums were closer to 40 minutes than 80.
I'm with you now. Gimme two, solid twenty-minute sides.
New National Album out on Tuesday. Both songs I've heard off of it are awesome. Stoked.
Losing is like fertilizer: it stinks for a while, then you get used to it. (Tony, Hibbing)
Definitely pastiche and definitely overrated. I do, however, think that Lose Yourself to Dance is legitimately great, while the rest of the album's "good tracks" are so because of their slavishness to the concept of re-cycle.
Oh, wait. Fragments of Time is also pretty good. Gaucho meets Rumours, by way of Discovery. I dig it. Can't believe how much of the album is filler, though, and how ecstatic some of the reviews have been.
There are definitely some good moments, but for every good moment there are a couple dozen mediocre ones.
And I'll still give the production props.
Who's saying that Daft Punk is pushing Electronic Dance Music forward? Whoever it is, they're shit heads. Get Lucky is crap.
Losing is like fertilizer: it stinks for a while, then you get used to it. (Tony, Hibbing)
Weird album cover. Reminds me of hipgnosis's art for Pink Floyd. Aesthetically and artistically, I love it. The moral ambiguity? (face it, that's some questionable photoshopping there)...to be debated.
"We eventually managed to find them near Biskupin, where demonstrations of prehistoric farming are organized. These oxen couldn't be transported to anywhere else, so we had to built the entire studio around them. A scene that lasted twenty-something seconds took us a year and a half to prepare."
If that photo's completely unretouched, then I say DAMN! (and kudos to the model). But it looks 'shopped to make a very young adolescent look more mature than he should be.
But it is provocative, and generally speaking, I'm all down with that.
"We eventually managed to find them near Biskupin, where demonstrations of prehistoric farming are organized. These oxen couldn't be transported to anywhere else, so we had to built the entire studio around them. A scene that lasted twenty-something seconds took us a year and a half to prepare."
What are some good albums to buy on Bandcamp / other websites where the majority of the proceeds go to the artist?
I'm a big fan of Disasterpeace and I buy all his stuff from his Bandcamp page. He did the soundtrack for Fez and other games.
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Currently Playing: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (replay) (XB1) / Contradiction (PC)
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Just search for my posts in these music threads - most are about bandcamp recs.
The album directly above, the new one from Wixel, is incredible. If you like similar music.
Right now, a top 5 Bandcamp for the year would look something like this:
Magic Man - The Fox Den Demos
Sine Rider - Malan EP
Atlantis - House of Tomorrow
Wixel - Revox Tapes
Arctic Sleep - Arbors
Of course I have zero idea of what kind of music you're looking for.
Also, hey, I'm always looking for new listeners!
Only spun it a few times so far, but I'm finding Dirty Beaches's latest album a treat. Melancholic, understated, quietly pulsing. Initial listens have me preferring the first half more, but it's interesting throughout.
Waiting a bit to get into the National's newest. They feel like a band that might have crested a bit too soon in terms of their releases and I'm wary that this one will be too samey as High Violet.
Excited for new Marconi Union. Thanks for the update, D.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
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