BiSection
Eric Stuteville
May 22 2013
Daft Punk: RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES
Majical Cloudz: IMPERSONATOR
As recording and production technology has evolved, simplified, and cheapened, the ability to create compelling electronic music has become entirely feasible to the bedroom (broke) artist. Writing electronic dance music is probably a more democratic endeavor than most music creation as the composition of a piece is not necessarily limited to any instrumental virtuosity (save for the manipulation of a given piece of software). The only limitations reside in the power and features of the computing and the good taste and talents of the writer.
Thousands of burgeoning bedroom DJ’s were alerted to this musical entry-point via Daft Punk’s classic HOMEWORK. The title states without ambiguity where the heart of even a major work could be accomplished. Listeners were provided with a roadmap of influences dear to Daft Punk in the track “Teachers,” suggesting that if one were to investigate these personal heroes, charting Daft Punk’s sound and style would be pretty straightforward. Except it wasn’t. Daft Punk wasn’t an amalgamation, a mishmash of their forebears. Their embrace of the cold, mathematical Kraftwerkian aspects of their work rested uneasily with the bouncy superficiality of disco/house, but that tension produced some of the grooviest tracks the late 20th century could come up with.
RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES could not have been created in the bedroom. Instead of typing a playlist into the expressive SimpleText, Daft Punk went ahead and gathered up all of the “teachers” and friends they could find and invited them to play live on the record. “Give Life Back to Music” is the opening cut and lays out the thesis: The robots despair that Music is dehumanized and soulless. How can we help music find it’s heart and way back to the body? Give it back to the people.
Granted, after years of success, the people that Daft Punk encounter are decidedly more human than human. Their availability must’ve spurred the queries: Why sample an AOR artist like Barry Manilow when you can actually have real life insipid songwriter Paul Williams (“Rainy Days and Mondays”) on your record? Why sample a Chic riff when you can have the real Nile Rodgers play rhythm guitar? A falsetto like Pharell William’s is a nice analogue for the ubiquitous vocoder and Panda Bear ably serves as a proxy for Brian Wilson’s vocal runs, samples cannot suffice when the originals are avaliable. Disco and soundtrack legend Giorgio Moroder is misappropriated a 1:30 of spoken word time to narrate his eponymous tribute song, but Giorgio’s monologue is probably the least interesting contribution he could’ve made to the record. Children’s choir? Yes, bring in the children’s choir! Schlock. Production excesses and a more is more sheen seems to keep the plebeians behind the velvet rope. It’s all very beautiful and bright but I feel nothing, a plastic smile. Life was not given back to music.
I’m reminded of Bowie’s take on Warhol, “Dress my friends up just for show/See them as they really are,” when hearing the Strokes Julian Casablancas unrecognizably processed croon and how Daft Punk seem to work against the concept of collaboration. While the music is as inoffensive and pristine an electronic album can be (and it is. Every sound has been mixed to utter perfection. Machines don’t make mistakes), the utilization of specialized and high profile guest stars just to be relegated to unrecognizable, Daft Punkian caricatures is more than a little perverse.
Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz is an artist hitting his stride, and Majical Cloudz second LP IMPERSONATOR is as confident a musical statement as HOMEWORK ever was. It’s the kind of record that likely couldn’t have been made without the efforts of a younger, riskier robots on HOMEWORK. The onus to assemble a band is lifted for the musician Without the benefit (?) of an endless bankroll, Welsh relies on the atmosphere of Matt Otto and conceit that the his voice, without liberal amounts of processing, is a compelling and expressive instrument all on his own. Welsh’s vocals recall John Cale and Andrew Bird, the National. Lyrics, minimal in execution, evoke existential ennui, the mire of ability dashed by procrastination and the thousand other things. The delivery is more wry than sad and his voice, that wonderful rich tone, reminds me that problems don’t get solved just by throwing heaps of money at them. We see Welsh at the dawn of his powers whereas Daft Punk is trying to reassert theirs. As any human could tell you, aging is just part of the natural process.
Ironically, there’s probably as much Rhodes assisted balladeering present on IMPERSONATOR as RAM, but Welsh is obviously reaching for places deeper than getting’ lucky or losin’ yourself to dance. Without the explicit declaration, Welsh uses organic instruments that are lightly processed. While the tunes aren’t concerned with BPM, the desire to connect with the audience is very palpable. The electronic atmospherics and percussive pulses that comprise Cloudz sonic palette makes IMPERSONATOR a very introspective record, a fabled bedroom record constructed with more ideas and fewer engineers.
Daft Punk seem to want it all: The headphone record that is indispensible to clublife henceforth. They have the budget to achieve this lofty goal and the accompanying light show will render the science behind the sound indistinguishable from magic. Welsh, seems to just want the ONE: One listener, one single soul to connect to and get it, less a mission than an invitation. As Majical Cloudz audience grows, I’m hoping Welsh remembers what is to be human after all, relying less on homage and montage to voice his otherwise singular ideas.
@estuteville 