my favorite song off of Sung Tongs and one of the most memorable Animal Collective songs ever!
prepare to dance!
prepare to jump!
prepare to scream!
prepare to sing!
prepare to dance!
listen.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
We Tigers - Animal Collective (2004)
my favorite song off of Sung Tongs and one of the most memorable Animal Collective songs ever!
prepare to dance!
prepare to jump!
prepare to scream!
prepare to sing!
prepare to dance!
listen.
Friday, January 22, 2010
We Share Our Mother's Health - The Knife (2006)
please excuse the awful resolution of this awesome album art.
stereo makes anything possible!
have you ever felt like a song sucked you in? not grabbed your attention, but actually grabbed you and threw you into its purply blue world?
this is pop music, i feel it in my bones, it feels electric, but this is pop music. the vocals don't begin until the song is already a fourth over, but no matter.
it's this enchantress. wizard? daemon. amoeba. its voice, chameleon, morphs and blends from highs to lows, chickenscratch frequencies unleashed.
duets. we've heard robot duets before. robot trios. robot quartets. robot symphony!
am i supposed to dance? am i supposed to think? am i supposed to listen?
do i dance? do i think? do i listen?
fuzzy me lean spleen a bottle of air and a wisp just like that.
listen.
Alive 2007 - Daft Punk (2007)
i can honestly say that i love Homework, Discovery, Alive 1997, Human After All, and Alive 2007 equally (yes, expect at least five more posts in the coming eternity). so when Daft Punk releases an album that seamlessly, expertly, brilliantly, sublimely, mixes everything they've ever touched into a 1.3 hour epic medley of a concert, i find myself tempted to claim that it represents the epitome of the artist's music.
but it doesn't. it lacks one key feature of Daft Punk music: mind-numbing repetition.
where everything from "Around the World" to "One More Time" to "Human After All" recycles the same four bar argument for their entire existence, Alive 2007 evolves, morphs, trips, skips, falls, flies, destabilizes, stabilizes, hovers, sinks, and rises. and in under a minute? this is not normal Daft Punk.
on more than one occasion, i've played this album for friends who previously had no interest in Daft Punk... but they found something here.
i'm starting to think that to appreciate Daft Punk studio albums, you have to have a particular kind of insanity. you either have to a) love dancing, or b) love being, though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. you either get up and just move, because that's all that four-on-the-floor is commanding you to do, or you stare off into space and let the waves of existence wash over you in a stormy confusion of awe. the repetition lends itself to this experience. why do Christians repeat the Hail Mary?
but for the non-believers, Daft Punk have created something new altogether, something still danceable and full of life: Alive 2007. Bangalter and that other French dude deconstruct, reconstruct, sack and pillage their old pieces to create a masterful compilation of their own forays into house, techno, acid, funk, disco, and synth pop, jumping from 1997 to 2001 to 2005 to 1997 to 2005 to 2001 to 1997 like it's nothing at all. this is not just an epic artist retrospective, but a world-class dance party, the best there ever was, the only kind there has ever been, the party that is life.
the encore isn't even fair. besides mixing the title track of Human After All with "Together," our beloved robot djs decide it timely to combine "One More Time" with "Music Sounds Better With You," probably the two greatest dance songs from the 90s and two of the greatest dance songs of all time. i don't understand how the law of physics allow them to coexist in one space of time without our legs stretching into dancing black holes that worm their way across the universe.
Wikipedia fun time!
audio:
I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION THE VISUALS!
ok it's not going to matter to listeners of the album alone, unless you're a lucky bastard and attended one of the shows and have all the spinning flashes and pyramidal shine ingrained in your neural passageways, but the visuals from this tour we're otherworldly. check it out sometime.
i really can't believe this is my first Daft Punk post.
download. purchase.
but it doesn't. it lacks one key feature of Daft Punk music: mind-numbing repetition.
where everything from "Around the World" to "One More Time" to "Human After All" recycles the same four bar argument for their entire existence, Alive 2007 evolves, morphs, trips, skips, falls, flies, destabilizes, stabilizes, hovers, sinks, and rises. and in under a minute? this is not normal Daft Punk.
on more than one occasion, i've played this album for friends who previously had no interest in Daft Punk... but they found something here.
i'm starting to think that to appreciate Daft Punk studio albums, you have to have a particular kind of insanity. you either have to a) love dancing, or b) love being, though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. you either get up and just move, because that's all that four-on-the-floor is commanding you to do, or you stare off into space and let the waves of existence wash over you in a stormy confusion of awe. the repetition lends itself to this experience. why do Christians repeat the Hail Mary?
but for the non-believers, Daft Punk have created something new altogether, something still danceable and full of life: Alive 2007. Bangalter and that other French dude deconstruct, reconstruct, sack and pillage their old pieces to create a masterful compilation of their own forays into house, techno, acid, funk, disco, and synth pop, jumping from 1997 to 2001 to 2005 to 1997 to 2005 to 2001 to 1997 like it's nothing at all. this is not just an epic artist retrospective, but a world-class dance party, the best there ever was, the only kind there has ever been, the party that is life.
the encore isn't even fair. besides mixing the title track of Human After All with "Together," our beloved robot djs decide it timely to combine "One More Time" with "Music Sounds Better With You," probably the two greatest dance songs from the 90s and two of the greatest dance songs of all time. i don't understand how the law of physics allow them to coexist in one space of time without our legs stretching into dancing black holes that worm their way across the universe.
Wikipedia fun time!
audio:
The Alive 2007 set used Ableton Live software on "custom made super-computers" for the show. Daft Punk accessed the hardware remotely with Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controllers and JazzMutant Lemur touchscreen pads within the central pyramid. Minimoog Voyager RME units were also implemented for the live performances. The four Voyager units and two Behringer mixers allowed Daft Punk to "mix, shuffle, trigger loops, filter, distort samples, EQ in and out, transpose or destroy and deconstruct synth lines."video:
The visuals of the 2006 and Alive 2007 tour were set up by XL Video. The company provided eight-core Mac Pro units running Catalyst v4 and Final Cut Pro. Daft Punk approached the company with their visual concept for the shows. "They came to us with a pretty fixed idea of what they wanted," said head of XL Video, Richard Burford. "They wanted to mix live video with effects. Using the eight-core Mac Pros, we were able to take in eight digital sources and treat them as video streams. Then they could use Catalyst to coordinate the video with lighting effects and add their own effects in on the fly. The final digital video streams ran to LED screens."wow. i always find technical stuff enjoyable to read, even if i don't understand half of it.
I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION THE VISUALS!
ok it's not going to matter to listeners of the album alone, unless you're a lucky bastard and attended one of the shows and have all the spinning flashes and pyramidal shine ingrained in your neural passageways, but the visuals from this tour we're otherworldly. check it out sometime.
i really can't believe this is my first Daft Punk post.
download. purchase.
Friday, January 15, 2010
The Message - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (1982)
the person that first played this track for me introduced it by saying something along the lines of "hey guys, hip hop and rap isn't all about 40s and blunts."
now, i'm not one to talk down 40s and blunts, but let me just say that the era of rapping solely about 40s and blunts wouldn't even come until the early 90s, a decade after Grandmaster Flash got his message out.
while most rap tracks rarely exceed 5min in length (notably, 2Pac's "California Love" goes for 6.5 min), "The Message" hits seven minutes and twelve seconds, an epic for the genre.
but the length is necessary.
the beat is so tight that everyone wants to rap over it: Ice Cube, Puff Daddy...
the lyrics are so fucking brutal that everyone wants to repeat them: Andre Nickatina, Snoop Dogg, Immortal Technique...
and the message?
the message is the Message: it's about how fucked up life is in the ghetto, it's about frustration, and you feel it:
don't
push
me
cause
i'm
close
to
the
edge
i'm
try
ing
not
to
lose
my
head
it's like a jungle sometimes. it makes me wonder how i keep from going under.
such a fucking badass.
now, i'm not one to talk down 40s and blunts, but let me just say that the era of rapping solely about 40s and blunts wouldn't even come until the early 90s, a decade after Grandmaster Flash got his message out.
while most rap tracks rarely exceed 5min in length (notably, 2Pac's "California Love" goes for 6.5 min), "The Message" hits seven minutes and twelve seconds, an epic for the genre.
but the length is necessary.
the beat is so tight that everyone wants to rap over it: Ice Cube, Puff Daddy...
the lyrics are so fucking brutal that everyone wants to repeat them: Andre Nickatina, Snoop Dogg, Immortal Technique...
and the message?
the message is the Message: it's about how fucked up life is in the ghetto, it's about frustration, and you feel it:
don't
push
me
cause
i'm
close
to
the
edge
i'm
try
ing
not
to
lose
my
head
it's like a jungle sometimes. it makes me wonder how i keep from going under.
such a fucking badass.
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