As I’ve been writing for the past year, Electronic Dance Music has been a mess since Black eyed Pea’s The end failed to do anything but make a ton of money. I really felt at that time that between Black eyed Peas and Drop The Lime, a concept was happening, EDM as a rock band format, drop the guitar, add a second bass, and off we go. Live not Memorex.
That didn’t happen, though Trance Music, with its highly melodic bent, sure feels like an alternative to the alternative, still it lacks stars, it lacks pizazz.
With their new album, Random Access Memories, after the up to nothing much 2010 Tron: Legacy soundtrack , Daft Punk are back to trying to prove they are human after all. But really, how three years ago is that any way. Mixing real voices and real time recorded music and mixing it into Daft Punk songs, what is so out of the ordinary about all this? Surely, it is a business model Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, and many others have taken to heart with decidedly mixed results.
Daft Punk might be right when they claim EDM is not moving an inch, but they might be wrong. It depends where you’re at and where you want to move to. After five years of turmoil, there might be the stench of status quo but surely that is coming from Daft Punk as well.
Whatever Random is, what it isn’t is very exciting: a guest list of a setlist: “Nile Rodgers, Pharrell, the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, Giorgio Moroder and Panda Bear… not to mention Paul Williams. It seems like a circle jerk of pop, rather than the future of EDM.
Dismissing Daft Punk because Tron sucked is a suckers game, until we hear we won’t know, and sure, the death of the recorded sample, while strange indeed isn’t a terrible concept. But if the concept is to change EDM by making it more like what it was born to replace, it is sure passe.
How about some more quotes: “Today, electronic music is made in airports and hotel rooms, by DJs traveling," Bangalter said. "It has a sense of movement, maybe, but it's not the same vibe as going into these studios that contain specific things … You hear a song – whose track is it? There's no signature."
I don’t see what’s wrong with making music in hotel rooms and airports. That’s where musicians live.