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article on the dance music album
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| nefardec |
insightful? or retarded?
from: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2...olution_is.html
The dance album format of the future
At long last producers have stopped trying to shoehorn dance tracks into a rock album format. They're onto something good
Of course he's a clever swine: LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy
The solution is at an experimental stage and some of the results have yet to be peer reviewed in the relevant academic journals (Mixmag, Fact, that Earplug ezine). But after years of beating its head against a solid studio door, it seems that dance music might finally have the artist album cracked.
In the end the answer was devastatingly simple. LCD Soundsystem, Ricardo Villalobos and Luke Solomon have all recently delivered albums that disprove one of music's fundamental laws (that all dance music albums are crap) with the gallingly prosaic tactic of mixing their own album tracks together as if they were a continuous DJ-mix.
Genius isn't it?
For years dance music producers have been trying and failing to shoehorn their work into the album format dictated by rock. Rock albums work to a traditional 12 song pattern: declarative opener; mildly experimental third track; showpiece ballad every six songs; jaunty parting shot. Dance music, unless you're the Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack or Daft Punk (all of whom the purists would argue don't count), is implacably, irretrievably unsuited to that format.
The 12" single or the stand-alone MP3 is dance music's modus operandi. These are individual tracks with a specific basic function. They're meant to make people dance and are aimed primarily at club DJs. Which means they're built in such a way - beats first, hi-hat brought in after 16 bars, bass introduced, wonky digital motif begins etc - that makes them sound completely dull when they're compiled - naked, ugly and embarrassed to be there - as separate tracks on an album.
That is why we have Djs. They mix out the boring bits at the beginning and end and weave together a knowing, self-referential montage of the riffs, patterns, hooks, peaks, troughs, textures and atmospheres, as opposed to traditional verse-chorus songs.
What's that? You reckon if this takes off all dance music albums will be streamlined, one-paced snooze-a-thons? Rubbish! The whole problem, whether we're talking about UNKLE or Phats and Small, Sasha or Black Strobe, has been dance music's lack of self-confidence, with producers seeking to invest their albums with rock-like variations in tempo and texture. It leads to all sorts of problems with guest vocalists, rock mannerisms and guitars, ill-advised detours into alien genres and highfalutin concept albums. Concerned that they need to vary the speed and mood in the abrupt way a rock album would, every dance music album since 1988 has contained a limp ballad or its dance music substitute, the ambient soundscape. All of them total nonsense.
Contrast this with Robots on Luke Solomon's forthcoming The Difference Engine. Whilst keeping the beats steady, he loops an angelic croon round and around into eight minutes of the most pointedly emotional music you will hear all year, before seamlessly blending it into the next, much more upbeat track. Similarly, where would Ricardo Villalobos's Andruic and Japan (12 minutes of demented drums and gibberish about chicken giblets) fit on a normal album? On Fabric 36, however, it seems like a very natural mid-set breather amid the sinuous minimal techno that surrounds it. Some of those tracks, incidentally, are mere two-minute snippets which Villalobos quite rightly felt under no pressure to develop into "proper" songs as he might have done were they not interwoven in a continuous mix. LCD Soundystem's 45.33, meanwhile, with its unorthodox forward momentum and final implosion, unfolds with a naturalness that most dance music albums fundamentally lack.
James Murphy is a clever swine, of course, and has produced great albums in both forms - traditional and mixed. But he's a one-off. For the rest of dance music, the message is clear: the original continuous mix, not the track-by-track album, is the long-play format of the future. |
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| noikeee |
I almost never listen to albums, so can't give any examples, but I find it really really really hard to believe that "LCD Soundsystem, Ricardo Villalobos and Luke Solomon" suddenly out of the blue found the revolutionary, perfect structure for an EDM album.
What this article seems to claim is that they were the first to make tracks specifically for the context of the album rather than for being played on their own. That seems like bull of the highest order to me. |
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| sljiva |
| Seems like the author started to listen to EDM in 2007 |
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| distant |
| I've expressed my thoughts on this before. I just find most albums, any genre, to be mediocre. I'm extremely picky, and if half the tracks are dull... then that's that. Most artists just don't have it in them, they lose it halfway through. |
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| wotyzoid |
| I love artist albums, I've heard plenty of good ones. How this is revolutionary I have no idea..:conf: |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by nefardec
with the gallingly prosaic tactic of mixing their own album tracks together as if they were a continuous DJ-mix.
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Ye Gods! No electronic producer has ever done that before 2007!
Despite the obvious bullting and lack of expertise in the article, it is probably onto something. While there have been great dance LPs that use the rock album template (Leftfield's "Leftism" and The Prodigy's "Music For The Jilted Generation" spring to mind), the best dance albums are much more cohesive and structured, which does owe a lot to the DJ. As dance music fans we're all used to listening to DJ sets with a larger structure, where context and development are important, and producers carrying it over into their albums is a good thing. That's one of the reasons why I prefer dance music albums.
However, the notion that this is new to 2007 is utterly ludicrous. I'd argue that the concept was done brilliantly by Orbital on the Brown Album back in 1993, which encapsulated a live set in a home listening experience. By finishing on Halcyon & On & On, the definitive "sun rising at the end of a rave" tune, they even made the album a microcosm of an entire rave. This is one of the reasons why the Brown Album is one of my very favourite albums: it did something new with the format and did it very well indeed. |
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| Beat Blog |
Chab's artist album in 2005 was mixed.
edit: my 2 cents...I don't like artist albums that are mixed, because I still like to have stand-alone tracks that I can play out myself, or on their own should I not like some of the others.
Thus, I like albums "partly mixed", which have a definite flow and similarities between adjacent tracks, which make them seem mixed.
A perfect example is Alex Smoke - Incommunicado. Brilliant, brilliant album. A lot of the tracks are bland on their own, but as a whole, it's a complete journey; absolute genius the way it's strung together and conceived. |
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| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by Beat Blog
Chab's artist album in 2005 was mixed. |
Shocking! |
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| Beat Blog |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
Shocking! |
I was disproving the article, and that was the first example that came to mind, schnapper. |
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| Darkarbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by sljiva
Seems like the author started to listen to EDM in 2007 |
"hello I've bought 2 edm albums and this is one of them... this is liek way better then the other one"
Seriously... "all EDM is for clubs"
what have you been smoking?
especially concidering half the reason this person probably likes this album is its rock influences.
Also wtf is wrong with the intro, main dancey part, outro structure?
Its way better than anything with choruses |
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| The_G0dfather |
| quote: | Originally posted by noikeee
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sniper alert :p |
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| Sykonee |
| Eh? I take it this guy isn't concerning himself with all those dancey ambient albums from the 90s, many of which were easily modeled in the same vein as prog rock albums from the 70s. |
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