One More Time by Daft Punk

I randomly generated a song to review tonight and as luck would have it, I got one more time by Daft Punk which is number 13 on RA's list of the top hundred tracks of the 2000s. What a layup when it comes to writing a review! It's not minimalist, it's not tricky, it's not 20 minutes long, and it's a song which we have all likely heard a few times before and are already familiar with. The song is great, it's upbeat, it's energetic, celebratory, it moves. It may not be a pop song in every sense of the word, but its certainly pop song in most positive senses of the word. Check it out, and you've already heard, check it out again.

Cut / Copy Fabric 29

Sunday I decided to do something a little bit different; instead of looking at a track from the top hundred, I checked out a mix, Fabric live 29 by Cut Copy. 

I picked this mix from cut copy for 4 main reasons. 

First, Cut / Copy seems to have credibility with RA, they have one of the top hundred albums of all of the 2000s. 

Secondly, and the many indie rock fans will appreciate this, Cut / Copy also seems have credibility with pitchfork.  In Ghost Colors was their top 4th album in 2008. 

Institutional concerns aside, the two main reasons I picked this mix versus other mixes was that it featured a few songs I wanted to hear. There was a techno remix of a Faint song that I like, so I was interested to see how that sounded. There was also a song by Allison Goldfrapp, who provides guest vocals on one of my favorite songs, so I'm generally interested in hearing some of her solo work. 

I liked the mix, but ironically, not for either of the songs I expected to. The Faint remix went in a totally different direction than the original, and the Goldfrapp remix was unexciting. 

That said, overall, the mix was surprisingly good. On a music review website, there will be everything on the site, then a subset that the site actively plugs or promotes (eg best new music), and among those a few albums will be truly great. This is not one of the truly greats, but its better than the median plugged album and so its worth checking out if you would check out something that gets plugged. 

The songs towards the front half of the mix are a little slower and sometimes a bit less interesting than the back half, but several are still good and worth hearing.  The mix really gets going about a third in when it speeds up and starts using shorter cuts (1-3 minutes averaging 2) between songs. Once it gets rolling the mix has a great flow to it with high energy and really nice transitions so that it feels like a long constantly evolving song rather than a bunch of tracks. I'd say the high point of the mix is "the acid never lies" and the songs immediately surrounding it, but the effect there will be better in context. 

If you don't have time for the whole album, you could probably start at Face to Face (track 10) and listen through Omega man, although you would miss some good stuff that way. 

Either way, check out the mix, make sure it's playing in order not on shuffle, listen to it while doing something active and high energy, and play somewhat loud. 

Shackleton -- Blood On My Hands (Ricardo Villalobos mix)

Blood on my hands, Ricardo Villalobos Remix is number 27 on RA's list of the top hundred of tracks of the 00s.

In contrast to my fairly negative review of Watamu Beach, this track is minimalism I can support.

With an avowedly minimalist stance and a clock time just shy of 19 minutes one might worry that this sprawling doom laden track could easily get boring, but it really never does thanks to a few techniques.

In terms of overall impression the style of the song sits reminds me of something between Burning from the Inside and Brian Eno's ambient works, although obviously as a techno song it's faster and more beaty and totally different than either of them.

Eno always described his goal making ambient music as producing music that rewards but does not demand attention or in another phrasing, music that can be listened to it at any level of attention. Blood on my hands succeeds along that line and for the most part it's pretty easy to just kind of have this on in the background while you're working or doing something else (except for a few moments, some of the vocals are pretty arresting). That said, anytime you pay attention, interesting things are happening. Additional instruments / beats are moving in and out, elements are building up or slowly fading, atmospheric effects and sounds are used. Although I mentioned that the song reminded me of Burning from the Inside at a macro level, at a micro level it's totally different. Rather than aim for minimalism through repetition, this track is shockingly varied when you zoom in and its constantly changing and doing things that are subtly different than what it's done before.


 

Watamu Beach by Sebbo (Moritz von Oswald remix)

My first randomly selected song for review is Watamu Beach by Sebbo (Moritz von Oswald remix), number 94 on RA's top 100 tracks. Its also my first negative review. So I'm a fair guy, I really try to take songs in the most charitable interpretation possible. So I'll say that I probably just don't get the song. It may well be good and I'm at fault for not "getting it," but man this is one of the least engaging songs I've ever encountered. I couldn't even give you holistic impression of the entire thing. It's over 10 minutes and really despite multiple tries (all in good faith) I was not able to pay attention for the entire 10 minutes until I played it very loud. There's just not enough happening. I appreciate minimalism, and I appreciate restraint, I really do, I'm fan of being understated but its not working for me here.

My rating system (as applied to techno)

I don't presently give out numbered ratings because the goal of this series is to be exploratory rather than judgmental.  A large part of what I'm doing is exploring genres I don't know anything about, or at least don't know much about. So an attempt at fine grained ratings would be inappropriate. 

For people who are looking for some kind of evaluation, I'll point out that every post has tags / labels.  For content I endorse, which is pretty much everything so far, the label section contains a '+ ' tag.  For content that I'm actively not recommending (one coming up very soon) the labels will include a '-' tag.  It's possible that later on when I'm talking about stuff where I'm more knowledgeable or have a firm view on, I'll make it more precise ratings. For now, discussion will mostly be qualitative.  

Silver Screen Shower Scene (Thin White Duke Remix)

Silver Screen Shower Scene Thin White Duke remix this is song was 71st on RAs list of the top hundred tracks of the 00's. I must have heard this at work, but I must of been really zoned into my Excel sheet or whatever I was paying attention to because I totally didn't notice it at all. That said, when I heard this at home it grabbed me.

This song does a lot of things well. The big thing its succeeds at is being really kinetic and having a lot of energy; the song drives, moves forward, and is energizing to listen to.

The next thing I'll note is that the song builds up really well. You can't build up continuously over almost 9 minutes and start at any reasonable level or finish at any reasonable level, so you need to reset somewhere midway through or you just need to be unreasonable at one end or the other. (The champions of build ups, Sigur Ros, can build for 9 minutes because they start super quiet and end super intense and are unreasonable on both ends, but Its great so that's fine.)

The way Silver Screen manages to build up so well while staying at good intensity throughout is great transitions. Anyone who knows me knows I'm pretty critical of bad transitions but this song does it really well. The transitions throughout most of the middle of the song make very effective use of negative space. Typically, it will build up and there will be vocal samples. As the vocals are repeating, the song will focus your attention on them and then a lot of the music will drop out in a very organic natural seeming way while your attention is on the vocals. Then the music kicks back in at a lower intensity to continue building pretty much throughout the whole song.

Part of what makes the transitions feel so natural is that the expectation for how they'll work mechanically is set up at the very beginning. The song opens with some strings and then some male vocal samples and after short period of time while the male vocal sample is playing the strings go away never to return and the song proper starts right as the male samples fade out not to return until towards the very end. That introduction sets the listeners mind to expect the negative space in transition as the voices are speaking and so it feels natural throughout the rest of the song.

Another nice things about this track is that the vocal samples actually help the song. A lot of techno that I've listened to so far have vocal samples that are value destructive. In future posts you'll hear more about this. I gripe a little about the male vocalist in the first half of emerge, but as I cover more tracks this may be a recurring theme. But not so here, to the vocals at the front part of the song aren't great but go away quickly and the female vocals samples are pretty good. They actually remind me a lot of Ladytron on 604 which came out in 2001. I think the original track here also came out in 2001 (although this remixed is 2002) perhaps that's just what the vocal sound was at that point in time either way vocals sound good. Their basic message is something that's obviously been done before which is to remind people of the fundamental toxicity of the floating world while being completely of it. It's been done before because it's basically a good message and if it works, why change a winning formula.

Lastly one of the synths is vaguely reminiscent of the 1980s synths that the Ghostbusters theme song uses.

Hello Deutschland

Google analytics tells me that Germany is sending more traffic to here than any country except the United States. I'm a little surprised by that since I don't promote the website in Germany, or anywhere, but I'm happy to have the traffic. So, as a little bonus I'll take a detour from my review of techno from 2000 onwards to highlight a classic German techno track from way back in 1981, the early days of techno. I've personally got a soft spot for this song after all my days working at Interpol. Here is Computer World by Kraftwerk. 

A problem best spotted in advance

I recently heard a song play on my speakers and it was good and so my instinct almost immediately was to a write a post plugging it (which goes up tomorrow).  But then a problem occurred to me.  If I write a post every time I hear a song that I think is notably good, I'll very quickly write posts on all the songs I think are strong.  But I'm trying to cover a list of a hundred songs. Posting whenever something stood out would lead to a long predictable slow spell for the second half of the list. 

Two solutions present themselves:

1) whenever a song stands out, write the post for that, then randomly pick a song and write a post for that one also. This gives me wider coverage and forces me to write more posts. It also ensures that I check out songs that might be good if examined but which don't jump out if heard while distracted.

2) just bail on the list when I stop hitting songs that inspire me to write posts. What's the harm of missing coverage for songs that didn't grab me. 

As is often the case when two choices are listed, I suspect the best choice is a mixed strategy. So when ever I pick a song to post, I'll review a random song as well. When I run out of songs that I want to post about, I'll do a few more than drop this list and move on to the next category (albums maybe).

Listening conditions and Emerge

When checking out songs and albums I listen to them under a variety of conditions.  Simply because it's where I spend a lot of my time, many tracks will be listened to on headphones at work while I'm working and paying primary attention to my job and listening only in the background.  Other tracks and albums will be listened to on the subway coming to or from work.  The obvious disadvantage of the subway is being really loud and often distracting,so I can be focused on music but I can't necessarily hear as well as I would like.  Lastly some tracks I get to listen to on my home system. 

As far as home audio systems go, mine's pretty good, quality speakers, quality DAC, quality amplifier, files are high bit rate. Obviously given the variety of these listening conditions, sound quality, and attention there's going to be some random bias or error based on whether I listen to a track initially at work, at home, or on the subway.  I try to ameliorate this to some extent by just having things on the background in general so that I hear them multiple times in multiple occasions, but nonetheless the bias is going to exist.  There's not really anything that can be done to prevent this so I'm just making a note of it here. 

One impact of this bias that's very noticeable to me is that songs that stand out are going to get noticed more when they do something striking that causes them to move from the background and grab my attention. Songs get through when they have a loud chorus for the subway, or just a catchy part that sticks in my head while I'm doing other things.  

One song that has all those properties, loud moments, catchy hooks, and a propensity for sticking in your head is, the song Emerge by Fischerspooner  (Wikipedia) . Its number 24 on RAs top 100 tracks. The song is pretty quick. It has a satisfying build, starts slower softer and with less going on and then eventually gets nuts. The male vocals at the middle "uh huh that's right" aren't great, but the layering of male and female vocals at the end is quite satisfying. I wish the song was maybe another one to two minutes longer.  After the build up is complete I wouldn't mind another minute or two of payoff. 

Is this song good, or is it just a catchy one that stood out due to conditions? Time will tell. Although since its top 25 in a list of the best songs of the 00s maybe time has already told. 

Sources

When checking out new music, because I'm not familiar with the genre I need to find lists and recommendations of what to check out.  Based on Google search results (essentially the word of god) the site Resident Adviser seems to be a fairly comprehensive, fairly large, and decently  long-running list of techno music reviews, DJ pages, lists.  So RA will be my primary source for finding content. 

The next split beyond what site to use is to look at more recent content or to look for curated lists of older content.  The advantage of more recent content is the that you're more like to be able to see the bands you find ( does that even matter / happen with techno?). 

The advantage of curated content is higher-quality.  The best hundred songs of the last month will be better than 100 random songs that I pick, and the best hundred songs of the last year will be better than the best hundred songs of the last month.  The best hundreds of the last 10 years will be better than the best hundred songs of the last year. To those who don't already know, I'm an extreme quality kind of guy so this is a no contest. It's curated lists. 

The lists that I will use then I will be the resident advisory list of the top hundred tracks of the 00's and the top hundred albums of the 00's. 

A disadvantage is that if resident adviser has any biases, those biases will be very prominent in my search and will likely influence my final findings and the outcome of my search.  If there are other sites that are similarly well-regarded or useful I'd like to know about them.  However since I do not advertise this blog or plug it or otherwise promote it in anyway, it would be shocking to find any readership. So it's unlikely that I that I'll be able get any recommendations of better sites by asking my readers.  Nonetheless, nonexistent readership, if you know any better source than resident adviser for listings of top techno over the past decade or so please let me know. Thanks