Laurie Anderson - Big Science - C or D

just bought it. xcited if trepidatious. she's always here where i work at our Galas and stuff, with lou reed. i wanna slip her a demo.

o superman is good but a little lazy, no?

Not really? I dunno: watch the video, and it feels like it's in the perfect spot, every element given just the right amount of weight and space.

i like the sparseness OK, but i could have done with a little more texture. also, the mother's voice is a cheap effect. not sure what it's supposed to mean, or why the effect wasn't more nuanced...

i've seen the video and loved it

I have a lot of love for this, i think it's crappiness adds to it (i mean the clip quality)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_VA3wuNNo0

Laurie is a one of the Golden Greats.

well i'm super psyched to check this album out

Wait, I'm not sure what you mean about the mother's voice -- the way she lapses a little further into Chicago-suburbs accent? (That's actually one of my favorite things about this, the really subtle Mom-ism of it!)

no no, just the way -- okay to put it literally, i feel like i clicked "Orion Voices" in GarageBand. it's just a cheap chorus/alien effect. coulda been more sutble?

the accent tho IS subtle, u r right. i like that.

Ha, okay, I have zero idea what you're talking about, I guess -- I don't recall any additional effect beyond the vocoder.

I love love love vocoders, I will like pretty much anything that uses a vocoder just for the vocoders. I love how the vocoder comes in slowly on the "dear amigo, dear partner" line

i barely know what i'm talking about either but every time i hear it, it just sounds like a little weird-for weird's-sake-to-me, in a lazy way.

someone at our radio station once got a request for "O Superman" so they just went on the air and started going "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"

i mean i love them too but sometimes i find them gratuitous.

i don't know, more listens will prolly change mind. i do very much enjoy listening to it.

haha @ ha ha ha

Best use of a bagpipe in pop ever.

I was so amazed when I first heard O Superman, I was told I would love it, I didn't really know what to expect. I love it.

oohhhh i dunno man Kate Bush has pipes kinda cornered no? tho i'm not exactly clear on pipe distinctions

Sweaters.

I love the backwards voices on Example (why can't I ever find the hash key on mac keyboards?)22

To be perfectly honest I only know Hounds Of Love, and I love Running Up That Hill so much I usually end up putting it on repeat and never actually getting to the rest of the album.

ooooh boy you have some to LEARN buddy

I'm normally not the biggest fan of minimalism or sparseness, but O Superman is a masterpiece. It's in the little details. Any minimalism that I love, really, still has great attention to detail (and a perverse sense of theatre).

putting it on

!!!

xpost to IKR

I know, I know...

no, you don't.

ya just don't.

=P go get the dreaming NOW.

ok listening. i still think whatever effect she's using on her voice in this is overdone. it's not as effective when it's used in the whole song, IMO.

Okay, but it's not an effect! It's a vocoder! Without it there would be about 98% less harmonic content (up until the counterpoint at the end, I guess)

yea but the vocoder produces an effect.

whatever you wanna call it -- the stuff happening on her voice, whether you wanna say vocoder or effect, is overdone. the harmonic becomes less interesting if it's used on nearly every phrase in the piece.

i usually feel that strong harmonic content like that is most effective when you build up to it a bit.

in this case it makes the piece a little too silly for me.

Vocoder is an instrument more than an effect. I mean, I'm not arguing with your opinion here (that's fine), but you should be clear on what a vocoder does: it's taking the envelope of her voice and using it to shape chords played on a keyboard. There's no separate voice/keyboard tracks here -- just one "instrument" playing. Do it without the vocoder, and all the melodic/harmonic stuff pretty much disappears from the bulk of the song: it'd just be "ha ha ha ha" and Laurie Anderson, like, talking! So it's not some kind of vocal "effect" in an otherwise complete song; the whole thing is built on one "instrument," the vocoder line.

ok, thanks for clarification.

i think this is the problem, really -- that the whole thing is built on the one instrument. seems cheap.

i guess maybe that was her point, which i get, but i would have appreciated a bit more variation in the implementation.

o_O

*_O

i rly wouldn't mind laurie anderson just talking. obv, not for the whole thing, but in contrast with the layered vocoder sound, it would have been kind of refreshing to have just her speaking voice interjected.

"layered" being, one hopes, a METAPHOR

hmm wha? i just mean you know, the vocoder bit sounds textural and layered, which is great but i need some contrast.

i like the sparseness OK, but i could have done with a little more texture.

-- Surmounter, Wednesday, December 26, 2007 5:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

haha you're takin it to me huh?

i could have done with more texture in the backdrop -- the ha ha ha's -- only does she thicken those up near the end. amirite?

but the vox, they sound too samey and layered throughout.

Ha, dude, don't worry about it, I'm just being picky. Your opinion itself makes sense, I guess -- sounds like you just think it's too static, and want more variation.

I don't recall the repeating syllable "thickening" anywhere (though there are a couple moments where it gets put on a short on-beat delay, so that the rhythm skips forward a bit) -- what happens at the end is that a big dark synth line starts playing counterpoint on bass! During the "your ____ arms" part. That's kind of the "payoff," I suppose.

If you ever get sucked into real close listening to this, you may (or may not) find that the minor embellishments throughout wind up providing the variation you're looking for -- or anyway, for me, it's stuff like that moment of delay, or the dollop or birdsong, or the weird asymmetry of the little synth arpeggio that comes ... those are the things that provide constant change and interest, to me.

yes that's what i meant - the synth at the end thickens up the syllable.

and i completely agree, i think in a slightly more meditative listen, i would totally be enraptured with the minor variations. i mean even now they're interesting. guess i'm being kinda picky too!

although actually i think there are some parts where the repeated syllable is layered with some harmony no? ha's of different notes? i might be wrong.

right yes -- sometimes the vocoder comes in over the syllable, doing it as well. around :30

this album is hilarious

i love her little high voice

Example #22!!

given what I know of your tastes you should also check out Mr. Heartbreak.