Tag: Kraftwerk The Man Machine

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: LCD Soundsystem Returns with Their Most Dance Floor Friendly Track in Several Years

Founded by frontman, multi-instrumentalist, producer, DJ and DFA Records co-founder James Murphy in 2002, Brooklyn-based indie rock/electro rock/dance punk act LCD Soundsystem along with acts like  The Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party, Radio 4,  Liars and a few others, are considered pioneers of a dance punk renaissance that saw its height at the early part of this century; but among that group LCD Soundsystem set themselves apart as one of the more commercially and critically successful acts of their era — 2005’s eponymous full-length debut, which featured their most successful single “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” was nominated by a Grammy for Best Dance Recording with the album also being nominated for a Grammy Best Electronic/Best Dance Album. With a growing national and international profile, Nike commissioned Murphy and company to write and record a workout-inspired, workout-friendly album — 45:33 — as part of the Nike+ Original Run series. The members of LCD Soundsystem followed that up with 2007’s critically acclaimed Sound of Silver, which was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album.  2010’s This Is Happening managed to be the act’s most commercially successful, as it was their first Top 10 album in the States; however, by the following year, the band announced it was breaking up and was celebrating a wildly successful run together with a series of farewell shows at Madison Square Garden and Terminal 5, with the events surrounding their final show together, chronicled in the documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, and a live album, 2014’s The Long Goodbye, which Murphy painstakingly mastered. 

After LCD Soundsystem broke up, the members of the band went on to pursue a number of creative and business pursuits — Nancy Whang released solo material and DJ’ed; Tyler Pope spent a stint in the touring band of !!!,; Gavin Russom has released solo material under the moniker Black Meteoric Star, collaborated with Viva Ruiz in The Crystal Ark and recently came out as transgender and transitioning; David Scott Stone has collaborated with Melvins, Unwound, Jello Biafra, Mike Patton, No Age, and others; Jerry Fuchs went on with stints in The Juan MacLean, !!!, Maserati and MSTRKRFT; and Murphy arguably being the busiest of the band as he not only continued his production and sound engineering work, working with Arcade Fire during the Reflector sessions, he was in 2014 commissioned by the US Open to create a special set of remixes based on the actual sounds and events of the tournament’s matches. Along with that he remixed David Bowie‘s “Love Is Lost,” for an expanded edition of the legendary artist’s The Next Day and was known to occasionally DJ, including famously DJing to close out DFA Records’ 12th Anniversary Party at Grand Prospect Hall. He also participated in Canon’s Project Imaginat10n, a film project in which the folks at Canon invited 5 different celebrities to direct short films based on pictures uploaded by photographers and other creatives around the world to a special website, with the result being his directorial debut “Little Duck,” set in Japan. And in other non-musical pursuits, with the assistance of Blue Bottle Coffee founder James Freeman, Murphy released his own blend of espresso, and then he opened a critically applauded restaurant in Williamsburg, which he personally designed and chose the menu. And although Murphy had publicly stated that LCD Soundsystem’s breakup allowed him the time and ability to pursue an array of projects, he wasn’t able to do before, he also missed being in a band and creating music. 

Interestingly, in light of those comments, towards the end of 2015, there were rumblings across the blogosphere that Murphy and several members of the band were considering a series of reunion shows for the major festival circuit — and naturally, those rumors exploded upon the release of Christmas Will Break Your Heart,” which the band released on Christmas of that year, marking a big Christmas surprise for fans, who had been clamoring for new material and/or the possibility of a reunion for the better part of 5 years. Naturally, with the release of the single, Murphy and company confirmed that a reunion tour with appearances at several major festivals, a residency to  The Bowery Presents‘ newest venue, Brooklyn Steel and a new album, American Dream, which is slated for a September 1, 2017 release through Columbia Records/DFA Records. 

As my colleagues mentioned, their early Brooklyn Steel sets featured material, which would appear on their new album, including the atmospheric, “Call The Police,” which features Murphy’s archly ironic lyrics and manages to sound like a mesh of the sound of This Is Happening and their incredible cover of Harry Nilsson‘s “Jump Into The Fire” and “American Dream,” a slow-burning track featuring shimmering synths but subtly nods at “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” thanks in part to Murphy’s dramatic crooning, 

“tonite,” the third single off the soon-to-be-released album is arguably one of the more dance floor friendly singles they’ve released to date as it features an unrelenting and propulsive beat paired with wobbling, house music-like bass synth and twinkling keys, and Murphy’s ironic observations on the state of contemporary music, human relationships in the age of constant connectivity and his own random musings. And interestingly enough, despite the 5 years apart, the band manages to sound as though they haven’t missed a beat; in fact, it sounds as though it were the song and the album that they would have made regardless of breaking up — all while subtly nodding at Man Machine-era Kraftwerk. 

Directed by Joel Kefall, the recently released video for “tonite” features a handful of members performing the song, while others look cooly detached, reading or staring into space on a spinning stage, lit by explosively bursts of concert lighting. And the entire time, the band’s frontman sings with a tape recorder strapped to him. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Psychedelic-Tinged Visuals for DBFC’s Anthemic and Urgent Track “The Ride”

Over the past 15-18 months or so, I’ve written quite a bit about the Paris-based electronic music and production duo DBFC. Now as you may recall, the duo, comprised of Manchester, UK-born, Paris-based David Shaw and Paris-born and-based Dombrance, the duo emerged onto the French electronic music scene with the release of a handful of singles during 2015-2017 through renowned indie label Her Majesty’s Ship Records — including “Autonomic,”a track that channelled  Kraftwerk’s “The Man Machine,” and  Primal Scream‘s “Autobahn 66” — but with a trippy, hallucinogenic vibe.

Along with that, you’d also likely remember that the duo, building upon a growing national and international profile through that same batch of early singles,  released their full-length debut Jenks earlier this year through Different Recordings/[PIAS] Recordings. Unsurprisingly, the album’s last two singles, “Sinner” and album title track “Jenks” further cemented the duo’s reputation for pairing slick, dance floor-friendly electronic production with live, organic instrumentation in a way that nods at the classic Manchester sound of Primal Scream, New Order and others but while possessing a larger, universal theme — that sweaty clubs, strobe light and a propulsive grove can indeed change your life for the better. 

Jenks’ latest single “The Ride” finds the band meshing the classic Manchester sound of singles like “Jenks” and “Sinner” with the tight motorik grooves of Kraftwerk and others; in fact, when I first heard “The Ride,” I immediately thought of Primal Scream’s “Autobahn 66” and The Chemical Brothers’ “Star Sitar” — but underneath the slick, dance floor friendly sound is a song, much like its predecessors, that comes from a series of extensive jam sessions, and as a result, it possesses a loose yet immediate “you were there in the studio” vibe. Of course, along with that the single echoes many of the themes on the album — in this case, a swooning romantic and unbridled sense of possibility, making it one of the more upbeat songs the duo has ever released.

The recently released visuals for “The Ride” employs a relatively simple concept — the members of DBFC performing the song in a small rehearsal room with their instruments and their electronic gear in front of a wild and dizzying array of colored strobe light, extreme close ups of the musicians performing their hearts out, and rapid fire cuts. And while capturing the immediacy of the song, the video’s directors MDS-HMS employ the colored lights to create a strong visual identity — “visualised here as a rainbow tornado.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pattern Language Returns with Retro-futuristic Visuals for Kraftwerk and John Carpenter-Inspired New Single “Le Choc des Etoiles”

Last month, I wrote about the Boulder, CO-based multi-instrumenalist Chris Frain. And although he’s arguably best known as a keyboardist in indie pop act The Giranimals and the bassist in power prog rcock trio Tanuki, Frain can […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Kraftwerk Inspired Sounds and Trippy Visuals of Heart Years’ “The Field Trip”

Heart Years is a London, UK-based producer and electronic music artist, who has begun to receive attention for a sound that based around his love of vintage synths, tape machines and 70s electronica, and his latest single “The Field Trip” off “The Great Fades” single sounds to my ear as though it draws from Trans Europe Express and The Man Machine-era Kraftwerk as layers of shimmering and undulating arpeggio synths are paired with a motorik groove. And in similar fashion to “Trans Europe Express” “Metal on Metal” and “Abzug,” the track manages to evoke the sensation of forward movement.

The recently released video for “The Field Trip” is a fitting audio-visual collaboration between the British electronic artists and indie filmmaker Bailey. And as Bailey explains of the idea shot using Lomography’s lo-fi analog, hand cranked, LomoKino movie camera, which only produces 15 seconds of footage per 35mm roll, “The film is an abstract sci-fi where extra-terrestrial life forms represented by 3 primary colour shapes take a field trip to planet earth and observe nature, human infrastructure, behaviour and sound … before leaving unnoticed by the planet’s inhabitants.” Of course, what makes the video so fitting is that it captures the trippy nature of the song while equally evoking the sensation of movement towards something.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Best known as a member of renowned Swedish, electro pop acts Djustin, Club 8 and Acid House Kings and as the head of Stockholm, Sweden-based electro pop label Labrador Records, Johan Angergård has released two full-length solo albums under the moniker The Legends — 2009’s noise pop-leaning self-titled debut and 2015’s It’s Love, which featured lead single “Keep Him.” Interestingly, last year was a prolific and very busy year for Angergård as Djustin and Club 8 released albums — and he released two singles, “Cocaine” feat. Maria Usbeck, “Summer In The City (Living Is For Somebody Else)” and a cover of The Chainsmokers smash-hit “Roses” feat. Rozes which not only reflect a decided change in sonic direction for the Stockholm-based label head, producer and electronic music artist but are also marked the first three singles off his sixth, full-length effort as The Legends, Nightshift,  and with those early singles, Angergård  has developed a decidedly swaggering, neon colored, retro-futuristic sound and aesthetic that channels early 80s Giorgio Moroder, The Man Machine and Computerworld-era Kraftwerk, classic house and Holy Ghost!’s Crime Cutz as heavily vocoder-processed vocals are paired with tweeter and woofer rocking 808s, processed cowbell and layers of arpeggio synths.

Unsurprisingly, Nightshift‘s fourth and latest single “Cash” continues on a similar vein, complete with a cocksure, infectious hook straight out of 1983 and a boom box meets dance floor friendly sound.  And in some way, the song should serve as a reminder that even in our incredibly difficult sociopolitical times, that sometimes you need to have some mindless fun on the dance floor — and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.

 

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Last month, I wrote about the NYC-based electro funk/neo-disco production and artist duo Holy Ghost!. And with the release of their 2011 self-titled debut, 2013’s Dynamics through renowned indie dance label DFA Records and their 2015 self-released remix album, Work For Hire, the duo comprised of Alex Frankel and Nicholas Millhiser have seen a growing national and international profile, which has resulted in the duo remixing the work of Katy Perry, LCD Soundsystem, Moby and a lengthy list of others; made national TV appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show with David Letterman; toured with the legendary New Order; and played sets at some of this country’s and the world’s biggest festivals including Coachella, Outside Lands, Primavera Sound and Bonnaroo.

April 29, 2016 will mark the release of the Crime Cutz EP through DFA Records, and the EP’s first single and title track “Crime Cutz” further cements the duo’s reputation for crafting slickly produced  retro-futuristic electronic funk as the duo pairs shimmying synths, early 80s hip-hop break beats, undulating and swirling 8 bit electronics and a sinuous bass line paired with ethereal yet sensually cooed vocals and anthemic hooks. Sonically, the song seems to draws so much influence from Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” that it sounds as though it could easily back in 1983.

Recently, Eli Escobar remixed “Crime Cutz” and while his remix retains the retro-futuristic feel of the original, as well as its anthemic hooks, Escobar’s remix is much more propulsive and forceful — layers of shimmying and shimmering synths are paired with stuttering and skittering drum programming, a driving motorik groove, 8 bit bloops and bleeps and ethereal yet sensually cooed vocals that pushes the song in the direction of The Man Machine and Radioactivity-era Kraftwerk and classic house music; in other words, it’s an infectious and slickly produced club banger with an expansive groove.