There really isn't anything I can say about this album that hasn't been said before, other than that it's defined modern techno, that it's served as the inspiration for hundreds of artists, and that it created the French house genre from a place where there was nothing before. If it wasn't for this album, I wouldn't be sitting here writing French House Fridays.
This track serves as the centerpiece to the album, featuring bubbly synths, a funky bassline, a crisp house beat, and a continual robotic chant of "Around the World". It rocks. And you gotta check out the vid that Michel Gondry created for this song. It's crazy in it's simplicity and brilliance.
"With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
When there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourself
Where is my mind?"
So good.
Tracklisting:
1. Smith - Baby It's You
2. Portishead - Sour Times
3. Janelle Monáe - Sincerely, Jane
4. Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man
A pleasant blend of old and new, uptempo and downtempo.
- mp3: Mini Mix, Volume 2
- mp3: Uffie - Robot Ouef.
Due to the scene's small size, the same names float around almost continuously, and one of the big names, yet often unknown, is of the producer Alan Braxe, who's best known for his work with Thomas Bangalter in "Music Sounds Better With You", the 90's worldwide club hit. Braxe and Bangalter both left the collaboration, with Bangalter going back to Daft Punk, and Braxe going off to pursue his solo career.
He's produced a very scattered bunch of work, most of which is combined onto the record 'The Upper Cuts'. Here's the first track of the record, entitled "Most Wanted". I freakin love the way the beat in this track dives down under an esthetic layer of compression, then 20 seconds later reemerges in it's full beat. If you love the sound of compression, you're gonna fall in love with this track.
Where did the Sixties go?
It's a good question, and one that I have trouble answering. We have a Presidential candidate of an almost Robert Kennedy like stature, one whom the many, many kinds of American liberal are all behind, but we don't seem to have a solid anti-war movement or a populace that cares that they are being bamboozled.
Maybe we won't get those things any time soon, but in the meantime we have the Dutchess and The Duke, perhaps the closest thing we'll ever have to a time machine. The harmonies and mournful guitar folk are just gorgeous and while I'm beginning to tire of walking from my computer over to my turntable to turn the damn record over (if you can, listen to this album on vinyl. It just sounds better on wax, like it belongs there) it's worth the trip every time.
The Dutchess and the Duke - Reservoir Park
Err..it's Sunday... sorry...
BUT... that doesn't mean you can't spend the day listening to AWESOME THERAMIN DAFT PUNK CONVERS! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
According to the daily swarm, Abelton Live recorded this strangely-heartwarming cover of Daft Punk's Something About Us live, using a Nintendo DS, a synth, vocoded vocals, and a theramin. It pretty much rocks. I mean, it has a theramin. A theramin!!
One of the really neat things about going to college is that you meet all these new people with all different sort of musical tastes. Going to Bard, these tastes generally exclude the Frat Boy musical diet of Dave Matthews (an artist I actually enjoy, but I digress), Jack Johnson, and whatever gangster rapper happens to be banging 'hos with his gold plated penis on the Billboard Top 40 this week. Now, that does mean that the concentration of people who know Beirut is higher than any other place on the planet, but that is a good thing rather than a bad one. Occasionally, however, you find someone who loves an artists that you just missed, and that happened to me this morning. My roommate has professed his love for Leonard Cohen on more than one occasion, and I finally remember to take a listen.
I'm pretty much hooked.
There's something incredibly captivating about the soft folk music and baritone voiced poetry that define the Cohen I've been listening to, and the fact that I'd missed it until now...
well, it really is a shame. The only album I've been able to dig into so far is The Songs of Leonard Cohen, but I'm hoping that over the next little bit I can captivated by as much of Leonard as possible.
As a side note, check out The Sand Band. THIS post about them from I Guess I'm Floating reminded me to check out Cohen.
Leonard Cohen - The Master Song
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