https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxU1ShItt9s
"Shakespeare" doesn't have lyrics that warrant the title; as far as I can deduce, the title was free-associated from the "funk it and you funk it til your monkey don't stop" chant (if infinite monkeys dance on infinite typewriters, they will eventually choreograph the entire works of etc). It seems, furthermore, like an easy kind of song to make. There's barely any melody; the time signature is 4/4. It's fast, it's relentless, and how hard can fast and relentless be when you've got the security of a recording studio to fake both in? True, there's a variety of different hooks: different drum layers playing different rhythms, dextrous bass patterns, mechanical whirring noises, free-jazz saxophone. There's several lyrical rabbit holes for rap-mode Jim Marcus to plunge down, dislodging varying showers of gravel. But no element is individually that advanced. You listen to "Shakespeare" and it moves you or it doesn't. I bounce around all over the place, personally, flapping different body parts to different percussive flurries. Still, maybe kinesis doesn't seem like such an achievement.
Indeed, "Shakespeare" isn't the most obviously impressive song on its own album (Engine).
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Showing posts with label electronica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electronica. Show all posts
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Guided evolution at 130 beats per minute
Notes on seeing Simian Mobile Disco in concert at Moogfest in Durham:
1. Moogfest 2017 is the first multi-day music festival I've ever attended. Electronica is not my field, but I owed K for dragging her to see Jesca Hoop and (although she'd volunteered) Ben Folds, singer-songwriters without even the grace to have English accents. In the specific case of Simian Mobile Disco, the act she was most eager to see, I even know that I liked their 2007 album Attack Sustain Decay Release. The album has songs, with guest singers, although Simian Mobile Disco themselves are two geeky white guys standing in front of banks of switches and knobs and faders.
2. Their performance, on the other hand, was 80 minutes of voice-less improvisation. "Electronica" is as large, encompassing, and (at core) distinct a genre as "Classical", "Jazz", "Pop/ Rock", or "Hip-Hop", and the first 15 minutes or so, I spent at an intellectualized remove -- dancing all the time, sure (and happily watching K and a large portion of the crowd do the same), but while trying to decide how to process the experience. In Simian Mobile Disco's favor,
1. Moogfest 2017 is the first multi-day music festival I've ever attended. Electronica is not my field, but I owed K for dragging her to see Jesca Hoop and (although she'd volunteered) Ben Folds, singer-songwriters without even the grace to have English accents. In the specific case of Simian Mobile Disco, the act she was most eager to see, I even know that I liked their 2007 album Attack Sustain Decay Release. The album has songs, with guest singers, although Simian Mobile Disco themselves are two geeky white guys standing in front of banks of switches and knobs and faders.
2. Their performance, on the other hand, was 80 minutes of voice-less improvisation. "Electronica" is as large, encompassing, and (at core) distinct a genre as "Classical", "Jazz", "Pop/ Rock", or "Hip-Hop", and the first 15 minutes or so, I spent at an intellectualized remove -- dancing all the time, sure (and happily watching K and a large portion of the crowd do the same), but while trying to decide how to process the experience. In Simian Mobile Disco's favor,
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