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- The Retrographer, Issue 56 (August, 2 0 1 9)
The Retrographer, Issue 56 (August, 2 0 1 9)
Ariana Grande, Social House, Burna Boy, Normani, Taylor Swift, Baby Rose, Young Thug, Gunna, Rapsody, D’Angelo, Jay Som, Bon Iver, Lana Del Rey, Daft Punk
The Retrographer, Issue 56
Bulletins
My friend Nate recently opened a beautiful restaurant in Williamsburg called Gertie. It has floor-to-ceiling windows which flood the space with light. The light wood of the bar and the white paint on the walls glow all day and even into the night.I was sitting there back in May and thought, is there anything I can contribute to this project? Can I reflect this light back? Then an idea came to me. Readers may remember earlier this year I made my friend Steve a playlist for the restaurant he worked at, lasting the length of a full shift. It seemed to go over well! What if I did the same thing for Nate?I thought back to an earlier conversation I had with two friends of mine, Daisy and David, who also work in restaurants. They told me that a single playlist wouldn’t do – even 12 hours of music will get old when played day after day. A restaurant really needs a whole week of music.You may see where I’m getting to: I decided to surprise Nate with a playlist for each day of the week. Each playlist is inspired by its day (Sunday should feel like Sunday, etc.), each taking the premise in a different stylistic or conceptual direction, each sequenced intentionally to meet the morning, afternoon, and night, (so don’t shuffle!). And each is inspired by, above anything else, the light that washes Gertie each day.Here’s the slate:MONDAY (LINK)Start the workweek gently with the music that inspired, and was inspired by, neo-soul and independent rap.Ingredients: Erykah Badu, Noname, Eddie Kendricks, Q-TipTUESDAY (LINK)A psychedelic conversation between Brazil, San Francisco, and London of the late 1960s and early 1970s.Ingredients: Jorge Ben, the Zombies, Os Mutantes, The Mamas & the Papas, Gal CostaWEDNESDAY (LINK)Blues: Country, roadhouse, Malian, Delta.Ingredients: Willie Dixon, Jimmy Reed, Taj Mahal, T-Bone Walker, the Rolling StonesTHURSDAY (LINK)A pairing of folk and shoegaze. Occasionally noisy.Ingredients: Bob Dylan, Wilco, Paul McCartney, Ian Wayne, Japanese BreakfastFRIDAY (LINK)Bold, bright red rock and soul to break the weekend open. Inspired by hot blacktops.Ingredients: Aretha Franklin, Mark Morrison, The Supremes, Cam’RonSATURDAY (LINK)African music – Soweto, Township music, Afrobeat – and the artists it inspired abroad.Ingredients: S.E. Rogie, Hugh Masekela, Vampire Weekend, Fela Kuti, Paul SimonSUNDAY (LINK)The om of hum.Ingredients: George Harrison, Talk Talk, The Byrds, Grateful Dead, The War on DrugsI hope you enjoy!
Did you know I’m in a band called Office Culture? Did you know we put out our first single from our forthcoming second album, A Life of Crime? Did you know you can listen to that song, called “Hard Times in the City”, on Audiomack (and everywhere else) right now? Who said this newsletter wasn’t educational?
Ariana Grande, Social House, “Boyfriend” (Spotify / YouTube) – In the vein of “thank u, next”, “Monopoly”, and “Be Alright”, this is Ariana on her positive, contemplative, wise, accepting tip. These washed pinks and purples gauze her doubt and dreaming. Great bassline, too.
Burna Boy, “Destiny” (Spotify / YouTube) – The African Giant over strobing synths, bucking nativism (thank god) worldwide: “We was just a bunch of fuckin' foreigners / No one to trust, I know that they don't want me here / Came a long way from standing in the corridors / Dunking feds in the coroners.”
Normani, “Motivation” (Spotify / YouTube) – A stunning music video that fully succeeds in paying tribute to the 106 and Park / TRL era of music videos, and showing how bygone it is. That basketball scene was shot in one take.
Taylor Swift, “Cruel Summer” (Spotify / YouTube) – Taylor Swift’s album cuts are almost always stronger than her singles; how did this Jack Antonoff / Annie Clark co-write get ranked below “ME!”?. One of her newly iconic moments: “‘I love you, ain’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?’ / He looks up, grinning like a devil”, yelped like the emo singer she’s always been.
Baby Rose,“In Your Arms” (Spotify / YouTube) – Thanks to Ry, who first heard Baby Rose at sound check to open for Ari Lennox and stopped everything to learn the name of the singer who owned this voice. “Show me how to give / show me how to die / in your arms.”
Young Thug and Gunna, “Hot” (Spotify / YouTube) – Gunna and Thugger flow down this Matterhorn beat from Wheezy like an avalanche, echoing, rumbling, unstoppable. Thug is shapeshifting and liminally decipherable, rending rap into its atomic phonemes.
Rapsody, D’Angelo, and GZA,“Ibtihaj” (Spotify / YouTube) – The rare traditionalist who commands the admiration of her sound’s architects. Joined on this flipped Wu beat by two legends who dominated when she was 13 or 14, Rapsody’s icy verses pair with D’s bizarre Funkadlica while GZA continues “weaving wonder with words.”
Jay Som, “Devotion” (Spotify / YouTube) – Melina Duterte once seemed like a pitch-perfect impressionist: Her excellent 2017 Everybody Works could pick up any style and land it. But Anak Ko probes territories unheard or just hinted, like this twinkling Simple Minds mutation, where sounds meld together, a fretless bass forms continuum with an electric piano.
Bon Iver, “Naeem” (Spotify / YouTube) – “I fall off a bass boat / and the concrete is very slow.” Surrealism has always been present in Justin Vernon’s music in Bon Iver, but since 2016’s 22, A Million, he’s woven that into his music too. A brilliant songwriter, but now a singular producer, someone who can make a familiar progression or song construction sound new.
Lana del Rey, “Norman fucking Rockwell” (Spotify / YouTube) – A brutal opening couplet for a brilliant album: “God damn, man-child / You fucked me so good that I almost said ‘I love you.’” A timeless lament, like Joni’s “A Strange Boy.” Lonely, hopeful, romantic, heartbreaking, modern, classic.
Like rap, dance music was created to serve a function: Keep the people dancing. Beats that could loop as long as the night was destined to go. And like rap, this created opportunities for development and narrative: When new sonic elements were introduced, and when they disappeared. They subtly changed, or exploded before the listener’s ears. Mixing allowed DJs and producers to pivot sonic elements that the ear had heard long enough to ignore into new landscapes.Like rap, dance music exploded from its birthplace in the Bronx, Detroit, Berlin, and elsewhere to become an international phenomenon. Soon listeners didn’t need to be on the dancefloor of a club in the presence of a bishop like Larry Levan to feel its heat. Dance music became arena music, and its practitioners took on a scale that had only previously been accessed by the biggest rock stars in the world. And the biggest stars in dance music history were Daft Punk.In 1997, the year they released their first album Homework, Daft Punk also released Alive 1997, drawn from a live show recorded at Birmingham, England’s now-shuttered Que Club. This was a radical idea. To many at the time – and even now – the value of seeing live music lay in hearing live musicians play instruments, putting one-of-a-kind performances into the air. Dance music, based on recordings, samples, loops, and beats, seemed removed from this kind of spontaneity. Weren’t all the sounds already finished? At best, wasn’t the point to be in the room, with the dancers? Rolling Stone panned the album, giving it 1.5/5 stars, calling it an “extended rehash of four Homework tracks with a bit of crowd noise”, and “great if you have a billion-watt sound system and a mountain of drugs at home, but it’s not too useful otherwise.” Robert Christgau was even less generous, wordlessly giving it his worst “bomb” rating. Those listeners heard a recording of Daft Punk in a 1,500 capacity British club as a poor match of media and medium.Ten years later, Daft Punk released their second album, Alive 2007. Though its predecessor followed an album that had sold over two million copies globally, Alive 1997 didn’t chart anywhere and played to a room the size of a medium-sized high school. Alive 2007 was recorded at Paris’ Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy, which could seat tens-of-thousands, followed millions more sales of Daft Punk albums, and went double platinum itself. Times had changed.Alive 2007 is a towering triumph, a singular document of dance music’s power, range, growth, musicality, and potential for storytelling. In every passing second, it feels as electric, vital, and huge as any rock or pop album that laid claim to live music. All the while, it asserts control over the listener, with rising and falling action, sonic development, and endless, relentless, unforgettable riffs, completely reinvented from the group’s three preceding studio albums.Yes, being there yielded special experiences. At Alive 2007, Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter stood onstage in the now-iconic, electronic geodesic pyramid that housed their DJ setup, shot through with fluorescent lines like a dance Tron. Daft punk stood at its apex, wordless engineers in their now-iconic helmets. It is a true tribute to Daft Punk, and a validation of Alive 2007, that this barely needs to be described. But this album is a landmark even as audio alone.Alive 2007 begins with crowd noise. Over the din rises a sort of thesis statement, the sample from Human After All’s “Robot Rock”. In a digital voice, two words – “Robot” and “Human” slowly stream over the crowd, growing closer and closer over time. The tension rises, and is suddenly released as a hi-hat rolls in. A tremor rolls through the crowd. When stomping guitar hits land, the audience locks into psychic alignment. Two minutes in, with the song hardly began, and it already feels as if the room has found oneness with the beat. A synthesizer rises, and the mix explodes to fiery release. Everyone is moving together.For listeners who had memorized Daft Punk’s music, heard their studio recordings but had perhaps never seen them, each passing moment is full of invention, deception, and revelation. Among the group’s most unforgettable riffs – the indomitable “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” – emerges over arpeggiated synthesizers. Minutes pass and anticipation grows. As the sound gains steam, it’s hard to not feel as though the song’s unconquerable refrain becomes a sort of mantra, if not a claim Daft Punk proves before your very eyes.Daft Punk’s vision – that the swell and twist of dance music could meet arena rock in scope and swell – is cheekily stated in the album’s meld of “One More Time” and “Aerodynamic”, which begins with tolling bells reminiscent of AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells”. As cheekily, it breaks halfway through over synthesized electric guitar (not so different from Angus Young’s playing) which builds and builds and eventually breaks open, like a vista, to the song’s eschatological chorus: “You’ve just got me feeling so free / I’m going to celebrate / one more time.” But where AC/DC’s end times promised hell, Daft Punk’s delivered heaven.That same year, Kanye West kicked a hole in the wall between dance music and rap, sampling “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” for his 2007 hit “Stronger”, turning both into pop music in ways neither had ever been. The reverberations are still being felt today: Rap, which had until then been largely based on soul samples, became inundated with electronic music. Nicki Minaj dominated pop charts with her electronic-rap hybridism. Together, dance and rap music ascended, arm-in-arm, to the top of festival bills and pop charts. With it, Daft Punk’s audacious vision became inescapable.
Alive 2007’s closing track, a quadruple-medley of “Human After All”, “Together”, “Music Sounds Better With You”, and “One More Time” brings back the sample from its intro, but this time only the word “Human” rings out. The ideas from Daft Punk’s songs merge together, as the words “Robot” and “Human” seemed to inexorably approach in the album’s intro. As the final track ends in a crush of low, apocalyptic synths, Daft Punk’s ideas seem to come together. The story ends and the robots come, finally, alive.
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