A friend of mine asked me recently if I'd heard any new music. Since leaving university, actually since I got a real job as opposed to working for that record label I've found it increasingly difficult to find new music. I've ended up like 6 CD man who goes into HMV and buys arm-fulls of any old cack I might have read about or heard something of. Finding good new stuff is all the harder as the magazines I used to read have folded - in particular I really miss Jockey Slut.
I don't actually end up in HMV. I'm often to be found rooting through the second hand CDs in the Notting Hill Record Exchange but that place is past its heyday. When ipods really took off there was a firesale as new owners cleared out their physical formats that meant that muggins here made a killing. Normal practice is that you can pick up a good album for £2 and then the ones for £1 are real randomites. I found some really good Layo & Bushwacka stuff there. The alternative is torrenting but I don't really like that for music or, as I said earlier, ending up in HMV. That's how I acquired 'I Created Disco' by Calvin Harris which is pretty cack unless you've never heard electronic music before in which case its new and and exciting and refreshing. Otherwise its pretty much crap. That said his collaboration with Dizzee Rascal is excellent.
I bought The Klaxons too. I can't really remember what it was and it sounded pretty shite too. I think it won a Mercury prize or something which is seen as something of a millstone.
So then, Daft Punk.
I was in Japan this summer - more of this later - was in Kyoto escaping the blistering heat outside and ended up in... HMV! But it was a Japanese one and that's ok. Price wise cds are about £10 but DVDs were very pricey especially the Ghibli Studio films. I really wanted to get some good Japanese music but its hard when you can't read the script or speak the language or know anything about it. The 'Lost in Translation' soundtrack has some great Jap-rock (more a ballad) on it.
I ended up in the electronic section looking for a new electro album from former psy-trance egghead Tsuyoshi Suzuki. I'd earlier spent some nights in an out of season ski resort called Zao Onsen, 40 minutes from Yamagata. Next to the hotel turned out to be a really hip bar with chilled people and using the international language of psy-trance, babelfish, my friend's digital dictionary and beer we talked a bit about, among other things, music.
I couldn't find any Suzuki stuff but I did find Alive 2007 by Daft Punk which is a live album recorded last year in Paris. I bought it as I really like Daft Punk, Discovery being one of my favourite albums, and it really is amazingly good.
Electronic albums live are a weird thing. I saw Mylo live in Brixton 2005. My pill was shit so I was more aware of the fact that he had quite limited material but what he had was really good, it was played live, and what wasn't live was mixed in a very clever manner. Now this Daft Punk is live in the sense that they went into a studio, remixed all their music into a tightly wound, very bass heavy set, then dressed up as robots and brought along an amazing light system then spend 70 minutes making the listener wish they'd been there. It helps that you can hear the crowd too.
I mean of course its live because like The Chemical Brothers they're tweaking knobs on big mixing desks but essentially there are some massive computers backstage and they are just robots playing the music, but then that's what they've always been.
Highlights for me are Around the World/Harder Better Faster Stronger in which they've unleashed a 303 and put in some epic bass. The production is so great that that stomach quaking bass that you can feel in club loos is carried into your living room or head without your features sliding off your face. It also helps that these are my two favourite songs off Homework and Discovery but then they knew this and that's why they put them together. Face to Face/Short Circuit is a highlight too and later on there is ten minutes of pretty ferocious techno which actually goes somewhere. I wasn't so keen on their new album 'Human After All' but some of the new material live is very good.
All round an excellent purchase.
Its a brilliant album and my best random purchase for quite some time.
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