Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

Discoists.

they may be rockists...they undoubtedly now have some appeal to a strain of rockism

when i was talking about something rotten at the heart of this it was more about its unsettlingly rapturous reception, for what it is - to not be able to find elsewhere and all around in the world what this song offers seems like a fundamental act of rejection, a fear & loathing of the here & now

― r|t|c, Monday, April 22, 2013 4:31 AM (2 hours ago)

kind of hate this line of attack. i'm not talking about "fear & loathing of the here & now" (which i'll leave aside for a moment), but rather the "not be able to find elsewhere" angle. that a collectively hyped release has precedent or rough equivalent doesn't make it undeserving of acclaim, doesn't corrupt whatever success it might achieve. as noodle said, daft punk are popularizers, and popular to boot. they have a fairly high profile, and so that naturally extends to what they do. there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, just as there's nothing wrong with a bunch of reasonably well-informed critics and fans getting behind this track - even if one happens to see it as a middle instance of its genre. it may simply be that others disagree. i loved this track and assumed it would be a hit on some level or other from the moment i heard it. i don't claim to be encyclopedically knowledgeable about the genre, but i listen to a LOT of music, and very few tracks of any kind hit me that way, perhaps a small handful in a good year.

the "fear of presentism" charge is similarly flawed. while daft punk have recently said and done a few things that smack of nostalgic retrenchment, "get lucky" stands or falls on its merits as pop. pop is always of the present, even when it's enamored of the past. the present isn't ever just the present, after all. it's a dialogue between the past, present and future.

getting gee'd up for BIG NEW ALBUM is pretty rockist

as long as we can not go off onto a mental tangent cos somebody dropped the R bomb

I want to believe the hype, it's fun getting excited by a big album release. Get Lucky's leaving me feel a little underwhelmed, though ... I feel like the nu-disco territory's been covered pretty extensively over the past few years, and this single just doesn't add all that much to it.

the "fear of presentism" charge is similarly flawed. while daft punk have recently said and done a few things that smack of nostalgic retrenchment, "get lucky" stands or falls on its merits as pop. pop is always of the present, even when it's enamored of the past. the present isn't ever just the present, after all. it's a dialogue between the past, present and future.

― I have many lovely lacy nightgowns (contenderizer), Monday, April 22, 2013 2:16 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're attacking a point you've mischaracterised.

as long as we can not go off onto a mental tangent cos somebody dropped the R bomb

― Sarushima baby jive (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 22, 2013 10:17 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

that rockist rain just wont let up

i'm pretty certain if tim wanted to pull a grunge speak-style hoax on ilx we'd all be swingin' on the flippity-flop in the space of a day

― some dude, Monday, April 22, 2013 2:08 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm gonna choose to be flattered by this.

eh this thread is ooc now but ftr daft punk are perfectly entitled to be as retro as they want, i don't expect any presentist obligation from them and it's not the point i was making

oh great, I jumped into the conversation during a fart sniffing contest

fwiw i don't think it's a 'flight-from-presentism' - to me, the reference, use, and recreation of disco has the same effect (and affect!) that a particularly astute crate-digging rap producer has when they find the perfect record to sample

we are using this public forum to wrestle contortedly with our terrifying and overwhelming fear that daft punk may secretly be, in their robot hearts, rockists

which is weird, because the lines of attack are so profoundly rockist in themselves (rejection of "sold-out" pop in favor of this better, realer, present-er thing over here that you'd know about if you weren't some mainstream dunce, easily distracted by the shiny bauble of the moment).

god forbid people make music that's supposed to have a timeless appeal. how rockist.

knew that word wasnae gonna help

gah all I meant is that they don't want to sound like what else is on the radio and they want you to know that!

as usual, whenever i deploy the r word on these boards, my tongue is firmly planted in my left cheek

tongue in cheek or not i think the space for debating underlying values/assumptions has probly been concreted over some time ago

listen to this really loud like club loud the kick drum is crazy cool,it's not really there at the start then later on it's like bangbangbang dancedancedance

You're attacking a point you've mischaracterised.

― Tim F, Monday, April 22, 2013 7:18 AM (7 minutes ago)

here's lex on "the fear of presentism":

"fear of presentism" is v accurate here, and it's absolutely the same as the mbv/bowie excitement - there's a real air of seizing on to a familiar, safe name bolstered by both nostalgia from one's adolescence and the knowledge that it's canonical and no one's gonna mock you for getting it wrong

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Monday, April 22, 2013 6:33 AM (52 minutes ago)

while it's reasonable to characterize daft punk's rejection of the musical now as an instance of explicit "fear of presentism", it's not at all fair to characterize the popular anticipation and embrace of "get lucky" in those terms. there's no evidence of such fear outside certain statements made by db & their collaborators. unless we can point to some tangible expression now-fear on somebody else's part, our perception of it is nothing more than projection, assumption. fondness for things that have precedent does not necessarily reflect a fear of the present.

ah, you're assuming that lex, open daft punk hater, gets to define all terms.

Anyway some dude is right and endlessly debating the meaning of a term I just thought was a better fit than modernity is nagl. I'm out.

how is daft punk rejecting the musical now? the sound they're going for has been all over the place for years. if you're talking about people looking backwards for style cues, that shit's been happening since the dawn of civilization.

couldn't decide whether to go with "new board description" or display name

i'm not even that averse to 'presentism' as a coinage, it was just funny that it immediately popped up 12 more times in an hour

stop trying to make 'presentism' happen

god presentism is so done

almost as retro as Futurism

the present has no ism

like, what is the present, man? is it even like ... a thing?

presentism
the practice of the present
"i am doing some yoga. fear my presentism. i inhale the future through my nostrils, process it as my present, and push it out of my mouth as the past"

"presentism" is already another thing though

tim: i wasn't letting lex define terms so much as rejecting his specific use of the phrase, but w/e

how is daft punk rejecting the musical now? the sound they're going for has been all over the place for years. if you're talking about people looking backwards for style cues, that shit's been happening since the dawn of civilization.

― Spectrum, Monday, April 22, 2013 7:46 AM (19 minutes ago)

complaining about the complacency of edm, making a point of the quiet master, boasting about real instruments

keep in mind we're assuming that daft punk believes what the hype machine (largely in the form of pharrell) is pumping out. maybe the record label just decided that the "'real' instruments" narrative made for a coherent publicity campaign.

also who gives a shit?

(sometimes i feel like half of ILM is just enforcing a popist party line. so what if DP deviates a bit? it doesn't make one damn of a difference to anybody in this world.)

Dammit, have I missed the window where everyone makes up words to bolster their arguments? I had a great argument about this "Get Lucky" being a vanguard of a new wave of fungibilly.

given that the narrative of the album/publicity campaign also heavily features Georgio Moroder and Todd Edwards i don't think "real instruments" is really that much of an angle?

"fungabilly" and "farts" go well toether

quiet masters & real instruments are perfectly legitimate aesthetic decisions musicians should be able to (& do) make all the time even in the present

real instruments could just be a selling point thrown in, as opposed to some ideologically-driven move by rockist fanatics. if you have a widget with an extra doo-dad, you use that to sell it. it's not like we're in the age of music as SERIOUS ARTFORM URHGHHH, i doubt there's really all that much behind it. it's not like we have people rioting in the street over the latest Todd Terje remix.

keep in mind we're assuming that daft punk believes what the hype machine (largely in the form of pharrell) is pumping out. maybe the record label just decided that the "'real' instruments" narrative made for a coherent publicity campaign.

also who gives a shit?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist)

given that the narrative of the album/publicity campaign also heavily features Georgio Moroder and Todd Edwards i don't think "real instruments" is really that much of an angle?

― some dude, Monday, April 22, 2013 8:16 AM (0 seconds ago)

yeah, agree w all this posts (crut and spectrum, too). i'm no popist, and i figure the promo campaign is just blather, perhaps ironic or "controversial" for its own sake. doesn't fuss me much. still, i can see as you could build a case for the present-fear thing from parts of it.

tim & rtc are just jealous bc daft punk aren't collaborating with the ineffable genius DJ Q

are analog synths embraced and fetishized by rockists now that fruityloops/garageband/reason et al are so prevalent, or have they always been. are they a 'real instrument'

lol my god now I'm being painted as a grinch, I love this track!

edm has made rockists of us all tbh

are analog synths embraced and fetishized by rockists now that fruityloops/garageband/reason et al are so prevalent, or have they always been. are they a 'real instrument'

when Rush started playing them

edm has made rockists of us all tbh

gimme "bangarang" or "starships" every day over this

both those songs are like over a year old, grandpa

lol my god now I'm being painted as a grinch, I love this track!

― Tim F, Monday, April 22, 2013 11:22 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aw i was just playin

analog synths are definitely embraced & fetishized by musicians, idk if they are rockists or not, certainly not by the classic definition of "rockist"

idk if they're a "real instrument" because it depends on how you define "real instrument." you can play them physically on some level and get an instant response so in that sense they can be performed "live," but there isn't an acoustic sound source like guitar/bass/piano/drums

#thingsualreadyknow