In other words, your shit won't sell if the post doesn't go live that day, and more usually, that hour. Except in rare circumstances, the later one publishes a review of any given album, the less chance there is of social interaction. The hits are the commodity that pays for the entire operation. Much of this, obviously, has to do with the money imperative behind site traffic. The internet has virtually zero patience for thoughtful, reasoned critique. And when would-be critics race to opine about a new song, video or album, whether it's through established music outlets, blogs, Facebook, or YouTube, they do a disservice to the audience.Įverything is about velocity. Piracy really isn't at fault jackasses with opinions and platforms and itchy Twitter fingers are. It's turned into a disintegrating force in music. Instead, I'm going to blame the internet. This time, however, it's not because Daft Punk supposedly failed to live up to Homework and Discovery (depending on one's preference between the two). What I know after listening to the new record for a couple of days: critics-and especially critics on social media, offering their first quick impressions-really don't know what the hell they're talking about when they talk about Random Access Memories. When it’s something with as much history, anticipation, and relevance as the new Daft Punk project, is that really how we want to handle it? We are literally trying to review albums-no, album leaks-within 24 hours. We know that everyone wants to figure this out as quickly as possible, but that’s not the way to take in music, and an album release like this one just shows more clearly than ever how unhealthy the state of music really is. Music isn’t a science-it breathes and moves, it adjusts to its surroundings. when you’re high/drunk/sober/happy/ alone/with friends/depressed/whatever. At Pigeons and Planes, someone wrote an article called, “ Why It's Too Early to Judge Daft Punk's New Album”: But even indifferent listeners had reason for skepticism. This wasn’t going to sit well with Daft Punk’s fans. Never thought in a million years that Get Lucky would be the best track on there. It remains the last time humans have been on the moon.Sorry I take that back. But there's somethin’ out there.” This was the Apollo 17 mission, December 1972. “As we look back at the Earth, it’s, uh, up at about 11 o’clock, about, uh, well, maybe 10 or 12 diameters,” the sampled voice of astronaut Eugene Cernan says on “Contact.” “I don't know whether that does you any good. There was joy in it, but there was melancholy, too: Here was a world seen through the rearview, beautiful in part because you couldn’t quite go back to it. “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance”-spotlights both for Pharrell and the pioneering work of Chic’s Nile Rodgers-recaptured the innocence of early disco and invited their audience to do the same. “Touch” was “All You Need Is Love” for the alienation of a post- Space Odyssey universe “Give Life Back to Music” wasn’t just there to set the scene, it was a command-just think of all the joy music has brought you. The concept, as much as the album had one, was to suggest that as great as our frictionless digital world may be, there was a sense of adventurousness and connection to the spirit of the ’70s that, if not lost, had at least been subdued. The theatricality that had alway been part of their stage show and presentation found its musical outlet (“Giorgio by Moroder,” the Paul Williams feature “Touch”), and the soft-rock panache they started playing with on 2001’s Discovery got a fuller, more earnest treatment (“Within,” the Julian Casablancas feature “Instant Crush,” the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-The-Doobie-Brothers moves of “Fragments of Time”). So while the live-band-driven sound of 2013’s Random Access Memories was a curveball, it was also a logical next step. But it also marked Daft Punk as a group with a strong, dynamic relationship to the past whose music served an almost dialogic function: They weren’t just expressing themselves, they were talking to their inspirations-a conversation that spanned countries, decades, styles and technological revolutions. Within the context of 1997’s Homework, “Teachers” presented the group as bright kids ready to absorb the lessons of those who came before them. There is an early Daft Punk track named “Teachers” that, effectively, served as a roll call for the French duo’s influences: Paul Johnson, DJ Funk, DJ Sneak.
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