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Sorry but RAM is not 10/10 material.
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Jun 2, 2013 19:01
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Yeesh, that NME review was some pretty painful, amateur journalism. I received the exact same information by looking at the back of the record sleeve.
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Jun 2, 2013 20:07
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Pitchfork review was surprisingly interesting to read, but yeah that NME poo poo is awful.
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Jun 2, 2013 21:20
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Nobody really has anything critical to say about the album. Every major outlet are connected to festivals (either self-run or associated) and they're banking on a tour and they want DP at that tour. Its fairly sickening.
incoherent fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 2, 2013 21:25
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incoherent posted:Nobody really has anything critical to say about the album. Every major outlet are connected to festivals (either self-run or associated) and they're banking on a tour and they want DP at that tour. Its fairly sickening. Yes, anyone who liked the album, it's because of a conspiracy. Jesus Christ. Also pitchfork is a festival that signs medium-popularity indie and hip hop bands. Their headliners this year include Bjork, R. Kelly and Yo La Tengo. There is absolute no way Daft Punk, who have already played the biggest festivals are going to downside and play Pitchfork.
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Jun 3, 2013 04:23
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Blast Fantasto posted:Yes, anyone who liked the album, it's because of a conspiracy. Jesus Christ. I love the album, and I've had people tell me "WELL YEAH WHEN YOU'VE WAITED FOR SOMETHING THIS LONG IT'S HARD TO ADMIT IT'S NOT GOOD" oh okay Actually this same thing happened when Lost ended.
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Jun 3, 2013 07:49
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Hahaha, no offense, but if you're looking for a positive point of comparison when it comes to highly anticipated shows/albums that you think paid off, Lost's last season/episode is definitely not a good choice. Like there's a million good reasons people thought that was terrible, and I didn't even dislike it. edit: I should say, I've listened a few more times to the album and most of the tracks are either forgettable or annoying (more the former). I still wish that Get Lucky had been the template for the album rather than a standout, and I wish stuff like Giorgio by Moroder and Contact didn't have the distractingly-rocky live drums. Instant Crush grew on me a lot though I'll disagree entirely with Popcorn in that I think the chorus absolutely makes the track, it would just fall into the forgettable pile otherwise. I think people who suggested this material would do better in future remixes are probably on the money, and that track is a definite example. A remix that scrubs Panda Bear out of Doin' It Right could be cool too. het fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 07:53
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The album has close to a 90 on metacritic, I think it's safe to say most people enjoy the album. It's not for everyone, but what album is? Even when albums like thriller came out (sorry, i have to use an example that is seen as iconic) alot of people slammed it because it was recycling stuff that guys like James Brown had already been doing before and "better". Basically people have opinions. And you know what they say about opinions.
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Jun 3, 2013 07:55
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het posted:Hahaha, no offense, but if you're looking for a positive point of comparison when it comes to highly anticipated shows/albums that you think paid off, Lost's last season/episode is definitely not a good choice. Like there's a million good reasons people thought that was terrible, and I didn't even dislike it. Okay great, but what I'm saying is that people tried to pull the OMG CONSPIRACY angle when all I wanted to say was I liked it???
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Jun 3, 2013 08:01
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I love this album, even more so when I listen to it with headphones. gently caress the haters. 
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Jun 3, 2013 14:49
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There's a couple of a tracks I could skip but for the most part I loved the album. I hated "Instant Crush" when I first heard it but it grew on me majorly. I never had any issue with Touch though. I love that track and never really found his vocals distracting on it. I think I actually found Julian Casablanca's voice on Instant Crush more of a deterrent at first, but that ended up not even phasing me. I think the end of the album maybe drags on a bit for me but that's not really much of a complaint. Did you guys like "Human After All"? because that doesn't even come close to this album and people seem to be up in arms about this one. Human After All shouldn't get a pass because Alive 2007 was rad, either. Technologic was a cool song but that album is forgettable. If Daft Punk did the same concept as this album again, I'd maybe be less interested but in itself it was pretty fantastic. Not what I expected but that seems to be the case for a lot of people. I think for their next effort some mix of their older stylings with the sound on RAM would be pretty chill.
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Jun 3, 2013 15:18
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It is suspicious to me the extremely high ratings the album is getting despite a handful of things there are to be critical about. 10/10 fuckin seriously? It is an alright album but I still skip close to half the songs on a good day. Edit: correcting phone typos thathonkey fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 16:45
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Reviews are opinion-based and getting fixated on arbitrary assigned numbers is stupid, video-gamey bullshit.
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Jun 3, 2013 16:50
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thathonkey posted:It is suspicious to me the extremely high ratings the album is saying despite a handful of things there are to be critical about. I love this album to death, and yet I find myself agreeing with you. When the mood strikes me, usually a lazy Sunday; I love putting on the vinyl, lying down on the couch and just listening to the whole thing once or twice. However in daily play on my iPhone or at work I do tend to skip over about four of the songs with regularity, as a whole work it really is more suited to the captive experience you only get with vinyl.
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Jun 3, 2013 17:00
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Rocco posted:Okay great, but what I'm saying is that people tried to pull the OMG CONSPIRACY angle when all I wanted to say was I liked it??? I think the idea that media outlets are uniformly rating the album highly because they have other financial interests in maintaining a positive relationship with the band is more than a little far-fetched, but reviews aren't done in a vacuum either. Blast Fantasto posted:Reviews are opinion-based and getting fixated on arbitrary assigned numbers is stupid, video-gamey bullshit.
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Jun 3, 2013 17:08
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Yeah exactly, to me for an album to even hope for a perfect score or high 9 then it needs to have no skippable tracks nor even lackluster ones... I already posted something similar to this but for everything I know about Pitchfork and how they review albums I even think their rating is suspiciously high. The tone of the review itself seems to peg it at closer to high 7/low 8 but whatever.
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Jun 3, 2013 17:14
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I'm saying that maybe the person who posted the NME 10/10 review liked every track enough to score it that way and it's immature to jump to conspiracy conclusions because he gave it a max score. Reviews aren't done in a vacuum but if you dig through Pitchfork, to use that example again, you'll find a lot of albums that were promoted heavily on their website and given mediocre scores, and likewise for acts that are suited for playing their festival. This is especially true for long-awaited comeback albums on that site. I feel like I've been pretty even-handed in my posts about this album, I think it's just "alright. But I totally get people who don't like it, and I totally get people who do. I just think the defenders who are going "You just don't 'get it', maaan" and the critics saying "Good reviews, well I don't like this album so it must be payola / conspiracy!" are equally dumb.
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Jun 3, 2013 17:17
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het posted:I'm not sure what point you're making with "reviews are opinion-based". Also he's specifically talking about how the album got a lot of perfect scores, it's not like we're going "oh 8.8? I thought it was more 8.3", it's more that there's a surprising number of very-high scores when even people who like the album a lot seem to have tracks they don't care for. I haven't seen any perfect score reviews mention about all these skippable tracks, only forums and such. This whole argument comes off to me like "why are they giving this album 10/10 when the general consensus on the Internet is that a lot of songs aren't incredible?".
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Jun 3, 2013 17:33
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I think the album has more mainstream legs than I would've thought, mayhaps just off of the success of Get Lucky....but I also wonder if critics are hedging their bets because of Discovery's (and to a lesser extent Human After All's) reputation.
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Jun 3, 2013 17:36
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Bown posted:I haven't seen any perfect score reviews mention about all these skippable tracks, only forums and such. This whole argument comes off to me like "why are they giving this album 10/10 when the general consensus on the Internet is that a lot of songs aren't incredible?".
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Jun 3, 2013 18:06
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het posted:I think people who suggested this material would do better in future remixes are probably on the money, and that track is a definite example. A remix that scrubs Panda Bear out of Doin' It Right could be cool too. I think remixes could be great but I suspect they won't be. I'd love to see what Daft Punk would do if they took the interesting parts from it and sampled them to create a great new song, as they did with Harder Better or Digital Love... but I suspect Daft Punk have already done that with RAM itself, in their robot eyes. het posted:Man you need to work on internalizing people's arguments in a way that isn't dumbed-down-in-all-caps. Well, to be fair, you did seem to miss Rocco's point... it should be possible to have an opinion about something (whether it's positive or negative) and not have people accuse you of having no capacity for autonomous thought/belonging to some kind of conspiracy/whatever. The perceived quality of the Lost example has nothing to do with it.
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Jun 3, 2013 18:06
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Huh. I noticed today that the songs I listen to the most correspond to the Fibonacci sequence. Those sly robots.
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Jun 3, 2013 19:37
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http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=SICP-3817 Gah, I so want to order this. Just for "Horizon". And for the record (no pun intended), I love the whole album, and never skip any track. And I still listen to it all day. Well, the last week I've been alternating between it and some older playlists with Pink Floyd and some newers with chill and balearic trance, but it's mostly RAM all day and all night.
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Jun 3, 2013 20:18
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het posted:Man you need to work on internalizing people's arguments in a way that isn't dumbed-down-in-all-caps. I thought what I said was pretty loving clear but thanks for the tip.
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Jun 3, 2013 20:53
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So, I've never been a big fan of Daft Punk. Not saying I disliked them, but never got into techno/house/electronica/dubstep or any of that kind of stuff. I've known of Daft Punk for a long time though, as I remember downloading Around the World and One More Time back in the Napster days. That being said (you probably didn't care anyway) I heard this whole album while out on a boat last week and absolutely loved everything about it and promptly bought it when I got home. I've read some of this thread and some of the criticisms of this album. I imagine with artists that are as famous/successful as Daft Punk that there was bound to be a certain amount of anger/disappointment over how different I imagine this album is compared to their older stuff. I respect the opinions that RAM is cheesey, or even mellow, but fail to understand the criticism that this album doesn't make you want to dance. That is exactly what it makes me want to do. I don't know what people are necessarily talking about when they say "dance" though so maybe we're talking about different things. Do I have some incorrect preconceived notion of Daft Punk's older music and its "dancibility"? I mean when I think of those types of songs, I think of people jumping up and down to the beat. Maybe thats what people mean when they say "dance" but to me that's more bouncing than dancing. I could be way off, as I have already said I don't know a lot about this type of music. Anyways, I find this album so much fun in a much more traditional and accessible way. I guess what I mean by that is you could go to a wedding reception with a mix of young and old and everybody would probably be dancing to songs like "Get Lucky" or "Lose Yourself to Dance" without being able to put their finger on whether its an old song they've heard a million times, or a brand new song they've never heard before. I feel like this album will bring Daft Punk a lot more fans. Maybe that's bad news for those of you who are longtime fans, maybe not...I don't know. This album hooked me though by seeming familiar (with the disco/Michael Jackson type sounds) while also being obviously new/different (vocoder, electronic sounds, etc). So...thought I'd drop in and give an "outsider's" perspective.
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Jun 3, 2013 21:41
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Mahoning posted:This album hooked me though by seeming familiar (with the disco/Michael Jackson type sounds) while also being obviously new/different (vocoder, electronic sounds, etc). I hate to be a horrible pedantic jerk and everything but... what's new about these sounds?
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Jun 3, 2013 22:16
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Popcorn posted:I hate to be a horrible pedantic jerk and everything but... what's new about these sounds? Maybe I didn't mean "new" but instead "modern". Like I said...its newer to me since I've never been into this genre before. But by "new" I meant "not old" and by "not old" I meant "Not actually from the 70's"
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Jun 3, 2013 22:23
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If we're talking from a radio-play perspective straight up vocaloid-style vocals from no source but electronics are still pretty novel. Outside of Japan anyway. I think if there's anything from Discovery onward that's going to peg them as big innovators who were ahead of their time it's going to be their skills with that. If the vocaloid community is any indication I'd bet we are within 10 years of an all electronic-vox phase for pop music and half the time we won't even be able to tell.
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Jun 3, 2013 22:29
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Mahoning posted:Maybe I didn't mean "new" but instead "modern". Like I said...its newer to me since I've never been into this genre before. But by "new" I meant "not old" and by "not old" I meant "Not actually from the 70's" Yeah but all those electronic sounds are from 70s and 80s music too. That's what they have Giorgio Moroder talking about on the record.
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Jun 3, 2013 22:34
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Popcorn posted:Yeah but all those electronic sounds are from 70s and 80s music too. That's what they have Giorgio Moroder talking about on the record. OK, so you got me? I don't quite get what point you're trying to make when my only point was that it sounds new/fresh to me. Like maybe because it takes some elements of 70's or 80's music and cranks them to 11. I don't know. I mean sure, we've heard funky guitar in every disco song ever, and synthesizer in every 80's song ever, and vocoders or similarly "electronic" voices as a novelty thing in Mr. Roboto and P.Y.T., but never all of them together so intensely. But maybe I'm wrong, but after all, we do all have different experiences of music and our own histories of listening to and enjoying music. So what's new to me may not necessarily be to you. So you pointing out  "It's not actually new" doesn't really matter to me, or my enjoyment of the album. I imagine many "outsiders" may agree with me, but either way I don't really give a gently caress because I have fun listening to it anyways.
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Jun 3, 2013 22:57
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I've listened to Instant Crush like maybe 10 times in the last couple of hours. This album really clicked with me.
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Jun 3, 2013 23:02
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Well sure and I'm not going to tell you to hate the album now or something... but the explicit point - message - of the album is that there's nothing new about it. It's nostalgia as an aesthetic. That's why the NME quote is so laughable. I don't mean to just pop up from behind a bush and snigger "YOU JUST SAID SOMETHING TECHNICALLY SLIGHTLY WRONG!!  " , but I think this is the defining identity of the work. Nothing in it is new, by design.
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Jun 3, 2013 23:06
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Popcorn posted:Well sure and I'm not going to tell you to hate the album now or something... but the explicit point - message - of the album is that there's nothing new about it. It's nostalgia as an aesthetic. That's why the NME quote is so laughable. I don't mean to just pop up from behind a bush and snigger "YOU JUST SAID SOMETHING TECHNICALLY SLIGHTLY WRONG!! I think just because it is using Nostalgia doesn't mean strictly that nothing is new. It is still Daft Punk making these songs and not whoever they are drawing influence from. Also, if we want to be pedants, I think Thomas admitted that this album could not have been made in the 70's/80's for one reason or another. So it is obviously using some stuff that couldn't have been used from those eras, although I couldn't name exactly what. Anyway, took a break from the album for a couple days, flipped it on today, still great and can't wait for the remixes although I am curious if they are going to be a part of another body of work or if we're just going to get the Get Lucky remix and then a tour?
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Jun 3, 2013 23:21
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Popcorn posted:Well sure and I'm not going to tell you to hate the album now or something... but the explicit point - message - of the album is that there's nothing new about it. It's nostalgia as an aesthetic. That's why the NME quote is so laughable. I don't mean to just pop up from behind a bush and snigger "YOU JUST SAID SOMETHING TECHNICALLY SLIGHTLY WRONG!! But the point is, just because something is designed to be of a certain era/genre does not separate it from the reality of the time in which it was created. To say it another way, you can try to mimic a certain style but never fully succeed because trends are a product of the time in which they're created. You cannot separate the two. No matter how hard he tries, Michael Buble is not Frank Sinatra and will never be confused for him. He is mimicking the style of Frank Sinatra but still creating something new (maybe its not the best example but it was off the top of my head). "Lose Yourself to Dance" may sound like some Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 song when it begins, but as soon as you hear "come on, come on, come on, come on..." you're instantly aware that this isn't a product of that era. An homage to an era can still be fresh and new.
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Jun 3, 2013 23:34
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Yeah Mahoning said it better than I ever could.
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Jun 3, 2013 23:35
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Intel&Sebastian posted:If we're talking from a radio-play perspective straight up vocaloid-style vocals from no source but electronics are still pretty novel. Outside of Japan anyway. I think if there's anything from Discovery onward that's going to peg them as big innovators who were ahead of their time it's going to be their skills with that. If the vocaloid community is any indication I'd bet we are within 10 years of an all electronic-vox phase for pop music and half the time we won't even be able to tell. Haven't all Daft Punk's vocals had a human origin though? I thought most of their robot voices were made using a vocoder - a human voice as a modulator signal, and an instrument (synth, or guitar on Human After All) as a carrier signal - and the rest have been pitch-shifting of a normal speaking voice or Autotune. Although I don't know how they made the vocal effect on Something About Us (or the similar songs on RAM) - that sounds too human to be a vocoder. Is that a speech synthesizer/Vocaloid-like program? They were definitely really creative with vocoders, though. The way it's used in Harder Better Faster Stronger is genius.
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Jun 3, 2013 23:44
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Mahoning posted:But the point is, just because something is designed to be of a certain era/genre does not separate it from the reality of the time in which it was created. To say it another way, you can try to mimic a certain style but never fully succeed because trends are a product of the time in which they're created. You cannot separate the two. No matter how hard he tries, Michael Buble is not Frank Sinatra and will never be confused for him. He is mimicking the style of Frank Sinatra but still creating something new (maybe its not the best example but it was off the top of my head). "Lose Yourself to Dance" may sound like some Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 song when it begins, but as soon as you hear "come on, come on, come on, come on..." you're instantly aware that this isn't a product of that era. An homage to an era can still be fresh and new. OK, I agree, in that nothing is ever completely new or completely non-new... but there is still a continuum of originality and RAM sits somewhere low on it. I don't rate RAM as something like the work of Tarantino, for example, who samples and remixes his sources in a style more comparable to, say, Discovery. As homage, RAM is very literal. I'd be interested in hearing about why I'm wrong about that; so far the examples of newness/differentation you've given are "electronics" and "vocoder", which is why I called you up on it in the first place. e: to expand further, I don't actually think the album suffers from being un-new, per se; I'm far more bothered by the lazy songwriting and lack of editing. But I resent the unprecedented cloud of hype that surrounds it, its self-proclaimed mission to "give life back to music", the fans and critics who are calling it new and brave, etc. Popcorn fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jun 3, 2013 |
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Jun 3, 2013 23:51
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Hammsturabi posted:Haven't all Daft Punk's vocals had a human origin though? I thought most of their robot voices were made using a vocoder - a human voice as a modulator signal, and an instrument (synth, or guitar on Human After All) as a carrier signal - and the rest have been pitch-shifting of a normal speaking voice or Autotune. Although I don't know how they made the vocal effect on Something About Us (or the similar songs on RAM) - that sounds too human to be a vocoder. Is that a speech synthesizer/Vocaloid-like program? I think everything on RAM is vocoder/talkbox, but I thought there was a quote about them being really into squeezing human emotion out of computer voices. Could just be a mushy quote but I remember getting the impression that they were creating vox through a vocaloid like process.
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Jun 4, 2013 00:00
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The classic Daft Punk robot voice (eg Get Lucky) is done with a vocoder, I think, which uses the human voice as an input to modify envelopes and shape a synth sound (in the same way your mouth shapes noises made by your voicebox to create words). I suspect the more Glados-like vocals (eg Game of Love) were made with a tool called Melodyne, which works quite differently; you sing/speak whatever you want, and then pitch-shift the notes around as you like afterwards. What really foxes me is the vocal effect in Instant Crush. You can hear a dry Julian Casablancas 'underneath' the vocals, sounding low and throaty like he always does, but the main vocal is somehow processed to be an octave or two higher. What I don't understand is how they achieved that without getting a squeaky helium hamster voice effect. I'd really love to know, as I do consider it one of the less hackneyed sounds on the album.
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Jun 4, 2013 00:08
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Popcorn posted:What really foxes me is the vocal effect in Instant Crush. You can hear a dry Julian Casablancas 'underneath' the vocals, sounding low and throaty like he always does, but the main vocal is somehow processed to be an octave or two higher. What I don't understand is how they achieved that without getting a squeaky helium hamster voice effect. I'd really love to know, as I do consider it one of the less hackneyed sounds on the album. Julian isn't afraid to go high on Comedown Machine, I'd be willing to bet they had him put in a few different takes and the vocodered the one in a higher key.
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Jun 4, 2013 00:10
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