alex moulton: lindstrom meets klaus schulze meets alan braxe meets hakan lidbo meets vangelis

xp i miss mri

I dunno, I gave this a try but am not really feeling it.

- How is this record structurally any different from big room trance (Tiesto, PVD etc) slowed down and with a disco beat instead of a 4/4?

- I love Moulton's rhetoric about ambition, scale etc. but doesn't this represent disco shorn of its sexuality, sensuality and physicality - in other words without most of the things that made it enervating (and transgressive). Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre have always been the safest and twee-est form of electronic music and isn't Moulton far closer to them than any other touch point?

- Isn't this something very very pedestrian, but packaged very very well?

- I love Moulton's rhetoric about ambition, scale etc. but doesn't this represent disco shorn of its sexuality, sensuality and physicality

except for 'physicality' isnt that this whole scene though? or at least with a very hetero-masculine sexuality.

Well I kinda agree deej, and it's one of the reasons I still spend far more time digging old disco than the new stuff, but it's not universal. Pilooski's 'Send him back' or Terje's 'Spinning star' remix don't fall foul of that judgement to name just two...

haha comparing it to a pointer sisters edit doesnt seem fair

Okay then TS: Exodus vs Love Symphony

Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre have always been the safest and twee-est form of electronic music and isn't Moulton far closer to them than any other touch point?

to this i am just sort of like 'so what'

"Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre have always been the safest and twee-est form of electronic music and isn't Moulton far closer to them than any other touch point?"

This makes me wonder, "safest for whom?"

Vangelis and Jarre (and, to complete the unholy trinity, Tangerine Dream) have been critically trashed for so long that they don't strike me as particularly safe - who wants to own up to listening to prog new age? Twee, I'll grant.

But (as with attempts to discredit, say, trancey minimal) I think simply comparing current music to such reference points only gets us so far.

e.g. the notion of a discofied take on trance music actually strikes me as strategically on-point, given that the lack of swing in trance music is the primary stumbling block for so many non-fans.

I'm ambivalent re the presence of sexuality etc. in a lot of this stuff. I don't think it's necessarily a choice between hetero-masculine and gay/feminine. If you can even draw such distinctions cleanly: house music at gay clubs is mostly quite regimented and trancey feeling; conversely, all the Moodymann fans I know are very heterosexual. There's too much going on here to detangle it easily.

Let's try another tack:

Most dance music explicitly or implicitly posits some sort of motivant for dancing. This can be sexual (dancing as a kind of elaborate foreplay) but it can also be drug-related - most commonly either ecstasy-transcendent (dance music that "takes you higher") or speed-accelerant (a harder/faster punitive vibe). There are other options as well as internal hybrids of course.

It's hard to do speed-accelerant with a disco beat of course, but it strikes me that a lot of the melodically elaborate nu-disco/cosmic-disco is going for an e-transcendent feel rather than a sexual feel.

This isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing - unless we assume that "Voodoo Ray" or "Chime" are by definition worse/better records than, say, "Luv Dancing".

The best records in either category often blur the lines between these points - much in the same way that the best sex or the best drugs tend to flood all these pleasure receptors simultaneously - the experience becomes so overwhelming that you get a sensual spillover or bleedthrough effect.

My favourite nu-disco track so far this year is Aeroplane's "Whispers", which nominally falls into the e-transcendent category, but is so gorgeous, so irresistible in the pull of its groove, that I can't help but consider it to be an incredibly sensual track as well.

very much on point, tim, but what do i know; i am listening to electronic right now. oh wait, now it's faith evans. and that "love on a real train" remake/re-release/edit/whatever-it-was earlier this year was nice imo.

i was at amoeba the other day with stack full of stuff and i passed this up because i couldn't put anything back that i already had. the digipak (or whatever it is) looked sweet, too. guh.

Well all good points well made, Tim, as ever. BUT for me this particular record just pushes all the wrong buttons on a subjective level.

Things this makes me think of: irritation at the fact that sex and 'good times' and even cultural commentary have been hived off as something that happens in hip hop/rnb but not 'dance' music per se. Part of my enthusiasm for disco is the fact that it is, at its best, such a rich brew of these things (in stark contrast to the majority of 'functional' dance music).

Secondly, irritation at the recontextualising of disco as being about italo-style retrofuturism and yes, e-transcendence or (even worse) 'quirky' rock experimentation as opposed to ecstatically sexual and intrinsically earthy dance music. The fact that Baldelli, Robotnick and Chaz Jankel are the modern fans touchpoint for 'classic' disco as opposed to, say, Nicky Siano, Larry Levan or Grandmaster Flowers.

Now, yes, I'm aware that this is straying dangerously close to Pipecockian territory. And also that 'scene' cultural dynamics are not actually relevant to pure artistic quality. However you'd have to admit that it's hard to argue that Exodus is original and interesting at a conceptual level, as it just seems like the inevitable result of current discourse around this music. There's nothing surprising about what it is, or how it's packaged.

On the other hand, one could look at it on a pure craft level, and I'd have to give it another listen to be sure on this, but again, I feel it falls short. Unlike, say, Delia and Gavin (who arguably did the same thing, better, earlier) Moulton has basically one motif per song and while the modulations on each motif are solidly constructed they lack any element of joyful surprise to my ears.

Anyway that was all a little vague, am going to listen again...

J@cob--you need to look up enervated in a dictionary.

i am with max here, jacob, in the "who cares" camp

also "ecstatically sexual and intrinsically earthy" ?!?

If you claim somethings most obvious refs are Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre then it's kinda dumb to say that it doesn't also do something a totally different music does.

Hopefully will remember to order this from Amazon tonight.

i dunno, jacob, i'm trying to work out your statement in light of my current favorite disco songs being "open sesame", "happy man", "san salvador" and "bougie bougie". ok, one of those three has some social critique but none of them really can claim earthy sexuality and i'd say they're all guilty of some brand of quirkiness and OTT production.

you have to realize, this whole larry levan thing -- yes, we love you larry, thank you larry, without you there'd be no djhistory.com, no resident advisor comments box, no geir hongro pipecock, oh noes -- was itself a (very disingenuous) recontextualization of disco as the last step in the lineage inherited by house music.

I think I'm going to see if I can pick a copy of this up on the way home tonight.

i certainly have no regrets about it - i'd say it compares favorably to much of lindstrom's work

Strangely, ordering this on Amazon, I'm told I may enjoy this sponsored link: www.blackface.co.uk

"you have to realize, this whole larry levan thing -- yes, we love you larry, thank you larry, without you there'd be no djhistory.com, no resident advisor comments box, no geir hongro pipecock, oh noes -- was itself a (very disingenuous) recontextualization of disco as the last step in the lineage inherited by house music."

Yeah this is an interesting point, I wonder how much Levan's current profile is based on how favourably his work looks in the light of house music's subsequent emergence and development.

"Things this makes me think of: irritation at the fact that sex and 'good times' and even cultural commentary have been hived off as something that happens in hip hop/rnb but not 'dance' music per se. Part of my enthusiasm for disco is the fact that it is, at its best, such a rich brew of these things (in stark contrast to the majority of 'functional' dance music)."

Hmm I don't know if this is super macro-commentary such that my mentioning of examples to the contrary will simply seem pedantic - but does this explanation account for:
- Fuckpony, Kalabrese and other sexually/sensually explicit housey minimal
- US house and garage which is probably enjoying a relative highpoint in crossover appeal (Dennis Ferrer, Quentin Harris)
- erm, pretty much all of mersh electro-house, which is nothing if not "sex and good times (and cocaine)" if not cultural commentary so much (although "Flaunt It" made a brave plea for polysexuality with its boast "Kiss the boys, kiss the girls, it's all the same (and I don't care)")

I tend to think that generally speaking broad-based categories of musical qualities (such as sex, earthiness, dreaminess etc.) never wax and wane too significantly across dance music as a whole, but get rearranged and reassembled in different genre articulations.

"sex and 'good times'" sounds like exactly what all the french/australian electro-filter-nurave stuff is going for

Actually I think the indie end of the Oz stuff puts both 'sex' and 'good times' in scare quotes.

"was itself a (very disingenuous) recontextualization of disco as the last step in the lineage inherited by house music"

when you say disingenuous do you mean in a received wisdom kind of way?

"sex and 'good times'" sounds like exactly what all the french/australian electro-filter-nurave stuff is going for

-- max, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 9:27 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

not very sensual at all though

yeah + definitely hetero to the max

This is what I mean re you can't just construct a binary whereby sex, good times, sensuality, social commentary, womyn and teh gays are all one one side and furrow-brows, existentialism, keyboard solos, good drugs and straight men are on the other.

"yeah + definitely hetero to the max"

Except The Presets' "This Boy's In Love".

thing is the similarly-vibed electroclash could be exceedingly gay

nu-rave's gay dad, if you will

Yeah, not to mention the unacknowledged debt a lot of the current stuff has to the scissor sisters.

At almost all the self-consciously queer/alternative/unshaven nights here nu-rave/nu-electro is the music of choice.

got a sweet signed poster of the cover art in the mail today!

signed by alex moulton or boris vallejo?!?!

also how do i get one???

moulton.. maybe i should send it to vallejo and get him to sign it too??

i got it cause i emailed alex about his offer to send a link to a downloadable version of the album to anyone who bought it on itunes... he responded really promptly, got the 320 kpbs version with no breaks... one of the label reps from expansion team emailed me the same day to ask for my address and the poster came in the mail today

ALEX HOOK A MOONSHIP UP

wow @ this

paradise is the jam of all jams

Finally got a CD copy of this. One of the best this year I think.

"one of"

...stil waiting for my copy... Store's reliably slow so I'll just be patient, checking this thread once in a while to marvel at the cover art.

Was put off this for so long by the name. That is, saw moulton and assumed tom moulton, realised it was not actually tom moulton and did not continue reading. In fact, in my case, if his name had not had moulton in it, I would probably have listen to this guy about two months before I did (last week)

is this actually out in the uk ?
i've not seen a copy on any shelves yet

play.com have it listed but I've not physically seen it either - emailed my local rekkid shop about an hour ago to ask though so hopefully they'll know what's up

HMV Oxford Street have had some in (in the dance section). I got it off an Amazon seller pretty cheap.

ilx I kiss you for introducing me to this album. the packaging is amazing amazing amazing but somehow the music manages to be EVEN BETTER

WHAT IS WRONG WITH TOM MOULTON

No I love Tom Moulton, it's the disappointment that its not Tom Moulton that put me off for so long cos you know I see Moulton first. And, like, it's an unusual name.

did they fix this on itunes yet? i am confused now that beatport won't accept maestro and displays prices in dollars

got it (cd) in the mail half an hour ago! looks great indeed. artwork by wife/girlfriend, from what i gather from the sleevenotes. now, over to the music...

artwork by boris vallejo