total steely dan.
― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Friday, 13 December 2013 00:21 (ten years ago) link
Cannot agree re Trans Am, only overlap in that they both do "80s" but Trans Am's production sounded like a band on Thrill Jockey (they were good though).
― Mark, Friday, 13 December 2013 00:48 (ten years ago) link
Those are probably my five favourite songs on the album. Good work everyone.
― Kitchen Person, Friday, 13 December 2013 00:55 (ten years ago) link
I want to find voters of "Lose Yourself to Dance" and slap them with Trans Am cd's.
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 December 2013 00:58 (ten years ago) link
Hi!
― Kitchen Person, Friday, 13 December 2013 01:01 (ten years ago) link
By all means slap me with trans am. I haven't heard anything by em
― a beef supreme (dog latin), Friday, 13 December 2013 01:59 (ten years ago) link
saw them in 2001 -- ick. Bad makeup.
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 December 2013 02:00 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQsAkl8cRS8
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 December 2013 02:24 (ten years ago) link
I always appreciated Trans Am as the dumbest looking band in rock.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 December 2013 02:25 (ten years ago) link
There's competition, especially in the early 2000s
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 December 2013 02:26 (ten years ago) link
Lol I voted for "Lose Yourself to Dance" and have no idea who Trans Am are
― The Reverend, Friday, 13 December 2013 23:57 (ten years ago) link
as I said before, LYTD is awesome bc it sounds like DJ Quik
― The Reverend, Friday, 13 December 2013 23:58 (ten years ago) link
Seems like no one ever goes "that track sounds really like Daft Punk"
― freemen (on the) space (seandalai), Saturday, 14 December 2013 01:07 (ten years ago) link
so i turn on this DirecTV music station called SubTerranean station that normally plays Synthpop type stuff. anyways it's reading "Fragments of Time" even though it has moved on to the next song couple of songs. stuck in time, actual song that is on is "Dreaming of Me" by Depeche Mode.
― Bee OK, Saturday, 14 December 2013 04:54 (ten years ago) link
only just hit me that contact sounds like when i used to listen to the disco biscuits lol
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 11 April 2015 02:31 (nine years ago) link
"Give Live Back to Music v. Fragments of Time"
bingo. surprised "Instant Crush" and "Lose Yourself" were so high...cringiest songs on the album i thought. except maybe "Giorgio," w/ its nu metal breakdown and structural incoherence.
"Horizon" might not really count as an import bonus, but it's pretty lovely background music. top-tier Air basically, but that's miles above most of this stuff.
― soyrev, Saturday, 11 April 2015 04:32 (nine years ago) link
in retrospect this is a pretty terrible album
― but then again, who really cares? I don’t. (dog latin), Saturday, 11 April 2015 09:09 (nine years ago) link
"Seems like no one ever goes "that track sounds really like Daft Punk""
"that track really sounds like Daft Punk" is one of my most-heard music comparisons. it just tends to be about songs by other artists, that sound like something off Discovery. no one says it about RAM for two true but somewhat contradictory reasons: 1) it's a Daft Punk album, so no one's going to state the obvious; 2) RAM actually sounds nothing like Daft Punk. i remember when this album was out and 'trending'/'killing it' my friend groaned in a cafe that he couldn't believe that what he was hearing in some restaurant ("Instant Crush") was the new Daft Punk song. his girlfriend just said, "it's not" -- and she was right.
"in retrospect this is a pretty terrible album"
said friend and i, as fond as classic Daft Punk as anybody, couldn't believe how alone we felt in hating this fuckin' record when it came out. it was a very rhetorically clever move on the band's part, in that they came to the conclusion that they could never again meet their fans' expectations by sounding "like Daft Punk," so they came up with this elaborate hoax about channeling the sound of the types of albums they used to sample -- a period of music almost none of their fans, or active critics today, really know anything about. hence the terminal defense of this album (see: lastfm, youtube) as "a type of music *you* just don't like/know anything about" from Daft Punk obsessives, despite the tendency of the people hating it to actually know a lot more about prog, mainstream disco and the '70s album golden age of studio excess than the people who really loved the thing. by the standards of the genres it's channeling, RAM is godawful.
but hey: "Give Life" and "Fragments" are quite nice. "Doin' It Right" isn't too shabby, either.
― soyrev, Saturday, 11 April 2015 09:40 (nine years ago) link
while i'm bothering to piss on this record's lingering embers: anyone remember the comedy that was Daft Punk's promised "remix series" for the album, song by song? even fans who loved RAM rejoiced that Daft Punk was finally going to be putting out new music that sounded like Daft Punk. then that abominable "Get Lucky" remix came out, everyone despised it, and Daft never said a word about the "series" again.
also annoyed that the one gift this record could have given us -- a touring lineup of Daft Punk with live musicians who could mix this material in with their older stuff in a sort of living, breathing Alive 2007 -- never came to fruition (and that all-star Grammys performance was weak af). but since Daft Punk tends to tour/do a live album in decade intervals, maybe we'll finally get that in '17.
― soyrev, Saturday, 11 April 2015 09:46 (nine years ago) link
lol wtf this record is gr8 fuiud
― davey, Saturday, 11 April 2015 09:49 (nine years ago) link
soyrev yeah a live daft punk band would have made this a bit more worthwhile. I like a bunch of the songs on their own but this is a really misshapen record that needed streamlining.
― but then again, who really cares? I don’t. (dog latin), Saturday, 11 April 2015 10:02 (nine years ago) link
Fragments of Time is pretty great but the rest of the album feels like quite a mess now and really needs editing.
Instant Crush & Lose Yourself to Dance are decent but drag on too long and could both easily lose a minute, which is really emphasised by Pharrell only writing a single verse for Lose Yourself to Dance. The single version of Get Lucky is definitely superior to the extended album version. Doin' It Right is horribly out of place and sounds like a terrible Panda Bear demo. The Game of Love, Within & Beyond are all kinda nothing-y songs that really miss what was good about the era they were replicating
― ufo, Saturday, 11 April 2015 10:47 (nine years ago) link
Tbh I think this record did Ok culturally/commercially and DP can live w disappointing you guys
― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Saturday, 11 April 2015 10:56 (nine years ago) link
yeah so can Pitbull, what say we shut down the boards and just not talk about music anymore? great thanks
― soyrev, Saturday, 11 April 2015 11:17 (nine years ago) link
"The single version of Get Lucky is definitely superior to the extended album version."
yes yes yes. the structure/pacing on the single is just right. if that were what's on the album, i'd add it on the shortlist of keepers i mentioned above. the album version plods like hell and feels really unsure of itself, though. interesting how a really nice song can be slightly extended into something almost unlistenable (equally true of Perfume's "Spending All My Time," the only other recent single to which i think this phenomenon applies)
as for "lose yourself to dance," i think it approaches self-parody. the way the vocoded "come on" grates against what's already a thin arrangement, over and over and over...still a very Lonely Island moment to my ears. "The Game Of Love" also feels pretty jokey, too, as a kind of sneer at the ancient "sad robot" cliche.
― soyrev, Saturday, 11 April 2015 11:24 (nine years ago) link
Love this album, hope they do a sequel w same cast
― Dainger! High Doltage (wins), Saturday, 11 April 2015 11:49 (nine years ago) link
imo the peak form of 'get lucky' was the teaser trailer, next daft punk album should be a couple of hundred 15-second long snippets of songs that'll never be heard
― cis-het shitlord (Merdeyeux), Saturday, 11 April 2015 12:00 (nine years ago) link
in retrospect at the time this is was a pretty terrible album
― but then again, who really cares? I don’t. (dog latin),
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 11 April 2015 12:03 (nine years ago) link
this album is still amazing (most of) you guys are nuts
― courtney barnett formula (seandalai), Saturday, 11 April 2015 12:40 (nine years ago) link
still love every minute of this album but this^ is 100% otm
― gr8080, Saturday, 11 April 2015 12:50 (nine years ago) link
the way the vocoded "come on" grates against what's already a thin arrangement, over and over and over...
This. I like the song okay but it goes on for ages and always sounds like the robot's begging for it to end.
― but then again, who really cares? I don’t. (dog latin), Saturday, 11 April 2015 14:23 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, I still love everything about this album.
Voted for Lose Yourself To Dance at the time but would probably go with Fragments Of Time now.
― Kitchen Person, Saturday, 11 April 2015 14:47 (nine years ago) link
"Get Lucky" is a great single. RAM is not a great album.
― Eric H., Saturday, 11 April 2015 15:20 (nine years ago) link
it is a timeless classic
― And let’s say a new Hozier comes along, and Spotify outbids you (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 11 April 2015 15:29 (nine years ago) link
I think it's a great album. Can't think of anything else that I played front to back as many times as RAM in the past couple of years.
― circa1916, Saturday, 11 April 2015 15:32 (nine years ago) link
This album is total horsehit aside from three songs
― DJP, Saturday, 11 April 2015 18:40 (nine years ago) link
so they came up with this elaborate hoax about channeling the sound of the types of albums they used to sample -- a period of music almost none of their fans, or active critics today, really know anything about
:|
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 April 2015 18:45 (nine years ago) link
i haven't listened to it in a while but iirc i still like this very exhausting record
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 April 2015 18:49 (nine years ago) link
i think the wrongness and the skeletal and drifting qualities of some of the pastiches actually contributes to my enjoyment of the record? you can hear the music they're aiming for spectrally, but it's impossible to precisely simulate, and the tension between those things is very rich imo
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 April 2015 18:53 (nine years ago) link
also "nu metal breakdown" smh
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 April 2015 18:54 (nine years ago) link
― DJP, Saturday, April 11, 2015 6:40 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
If those three are "Giorgio By Moroder", "Get Lucky", and "Give Life Back to Music" then this is OTM!!
― Mr. Snrub, Saturday, 11 April 2015 19:36 (nine years ago) link
haven't heard it in a while, but pretty sure I would still love it, aside from "Giorgio"
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Saturday, 11 April 2015 19:50 (nine years ago) link
this album is ... not for me
― the late great, Saturday, 11 April 2015 19:55 (nine years ago) link
listened today and confirmed it is still the best album of music
― And let’s say a new Hozier comes along, and Spotify outbids you (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 11 April 2015 20:32 (nine years ago) link
to add to this i guess my main criticism of the record is that discovery already did this, but i enjoy the sound of them going full tribute act. it's like george benson fanfiction
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 April 2015 20:47 (nine years ago) link
hahaha yes "george benson fanfiction"
― The Reverend, Saturday, 11 April 2015 21:06 (nine years ago) link
if by "you can hear the music they're aiming for spectrally" means "enduring Pharrell's fucking awful singing on 'Lose Yourself to Dance,'" then write your own fan fiction.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 11 April 2015 21:27 (nine years ago) link
Oh Mr Snrub *chuckles to self while bemusedly shaking head*
― DJP, Saturday, 11 April 2015 21:29 (nine years ago) link
lol alfred
― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Saturday, 11 April 2015 21:37 (nine years ago) link
This record genuinely helped me through an exceptionally difficult period. I can't think of any other album in at least the last 10 years that I played so often, and absorbed so intently. The sequencing felt spot-on, and the cumulative message hit me where it mattered.
But that was two years ago, and I've not since been minded to break out of the inevitable refractory period.
Until now. I'll give it another listen tomorrow, and will pray that it hasn't all turned to shit.
― mike t-diva, Saturday, 11 April 2015 21:59 (nine years ago) link
record is comparable to recent dangelo record for sheer sonic pleasures.
album has some ropey drumming on it - i dont care if the drummer played on thriller. hes obv been playing some dodgy stuff since 1982.
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 12 April 2015 20:13 (nine years ago) link
I played most of it again today. It's still too soon to return. Refractory periods have their place.
― mike t-diva, Sunday, 12 April 2015 22:13 (nine years ago) link
i dont care if the drummer played on thriller. hes obv been playing some dodgy stuff since 1982.
he played on Off The Wall not Thriller and that's JR Robinson you philistine
― example (crüt), Sunday, 12 April 2015 22:17 (nine years ago) link
i'll concede that Omar Hakim has played on some dodgy records though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkVW-y1pbME
― example (crüt), Sunday, 12 April 2015 22:19 (nine years ago) link
I don't mind the drumming on this album at all, it's part of the reason I like 'Giorgio By Moroder' and 'Contact' so much!
― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican), Tuesday, 14 April 2015 21:07 (nine years ago) link
Hakim played on Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms, if I remember correctly?
― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican), Tuesday, 14 April 2015 21:10 (nine years ago) link
"Touch" intro sounds like the intro here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Z_mR3em1U
― welltris (crüt), Thursday, 27 August 2015 18:16 (eight years ago) link