Goldfrapp's change in style

michael

Bring out the vacuum
This is probably a few years late, but is there any mystery / story to why Goldfrapp changed sound so much between their first and second albums?

First album's got overtones of soundtrack stuff by Morricone (whistling solos, ffs!) and John Barry, up til then all the stuff Alison sang on seemed similarly mellow (Tricky, Orbital, Plaid, some track by someone I can't recall on Pussyfoot).

Then it was all electroclash-ish stuff but with that sorta blues rock swagger. Latest seems to have cemented that. And 'Strict Machine' takes it's every gesture from 'I Feel Love', doesn't it? Just the gestures, but still...

I should qualify this by saying I'm not a big fan.. I liked her voice on the early tracks I mentioned, so checked out the Goldfrapp duo, but wasn't thaaaat impressed. So maybe there are missing links I don't know about.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Ah yeah. That's one little micro-genre that's passed me by entirely.

The gist is that kind of swung/triplet/12 8 type feel in house with some electroclash type elements in there (distorted arpeggiating bass notes, crunchy beats)?

So Goldfrapp have just jumped on the bandwagon, is that it?

What I've heard made me think of that Love Inc track that sampled T-Rex. Whatever that was.
 

Tim F

Well-known member
Yeah Love Inc's "Hot Love" is probably the first "real" schaffel track, although there's heaps of previous stuff that you could make a case for (leaving aside half-serious references to "Rock & Roll Pt 2" et. al. I think Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" is probably the track that gets the sonics most spot-on, esp. the trackier Francois K mix). Wolfgang Voigt (the guy behind Love Inc.) also made "Fackeln Im Sturn" which is probably the track that kicked off the Kompakt-centric schaffel genre - notable for the fact that it <i>wasn't</i> very glam centric until '03.

Goldfrapp may have jumped on the bandwagon but they did so at a good time. Schaffel only started getting hot in '02 really, and it wasn't until after <I>Black Cherry</i> came out that it became a popular reference point and the glam affectations started piling on.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
does schaffel as a scene/micro-scene even exist anymore?
 

3underscore

Well-known member
simon silverdollar said:
does schaffel as a scene/micro-scene even exist anymore?

Tricky question, Simon. Kompakt, as the forefathers of the scene, have pretty much turned their back on it. I think the feeling was they were becoming known as a Schaffel label and they never were that. There are still labels doing Schaffel tunes every now and then, but as for being a definitive sound I think it has peaked. In fairness, it really was a development where a lot of producers created one or two tunes in a Schaffel style (Wruhme, Superpitcher, T.Raumschmiere, Naum, etc) and then moved onto other things.

I think it is unlikely there will be quite so many tunes at the same time again, if that makes sense.
 

dHarry

Well-known member
Interesting, in a MIA-ish sort of way, how an artist/band can use an electronic dance genre to re-launch their previously bubbling-under career into the mainstream, even though this genre has died in the meantime. Black Cherry was at the cusp of schaffel and they seized the day. Presumably it's the mainstream references of both schaffel & Goldfrapp (T-Rex, Gary Glitter, the Sweet + Moroder/Summer) that make it so accessible.

But no-one seems to despise (or care about?) Goldfrapp for this, the way they do the MIAgpie... no politics involved in Goldfrapp I suppose, just pure pop/dance intertextuality. I actually don't get the MIA-hate, Galang is a fantastic pop hybrid of cool references, and right up Dissensus' street I would have thought, before the furore began. Surely Bow Wow Wow are one obvious precursor for the mud hut publicity wind-up aspect of it? Except MIA's music sounds better!?

(BTW is MIA the new Can of this forum?!)

Just as Ooh La La came out I heard this typical shuffle-riff come on daytime radio. Must be Goldfrapp I thought, I like the way they've carefully recreated that warm fuzzy 70's ambience and distortion, slightly shaky timing, carefully programmed to sound "live" no doubt, a gorgeous falling/dying guitar note reminiscent of Tricky's Suffocate/Neneh Cherry's Manchild... but the tune turned out to be Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky!! :eek:
 

Tim F

Well-known member
"Ooh La La" was largely pilloried on ILM, not for the politics but because schaffel is boring now (I think this is half-right: explicitly glammy schaffel is kinda exhausted now, all the good recent stuff is abstracted and super-complex like Alex Smoke's "You're A Bit Rough"); not so much a case of "how dare she jump on this bandwagon" but "how dare she not have the good sense to know when to jump off?"
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
The Frapp got bored with doing all the sad downbeat stuff on a personal level, so that's why they changed modes. Can't say I blame them but it must have really pissed them off when Richard X took "their" sound and used it for Miss R Stevens <s> (He was doing a Frapp remix at the time)
 

Tim F

Well-known member
"Some Girls" and "Crazy Boys" are much better than "Ooh La La" though!

Seeing as Goldfrapp had glammy schaffel remixes of the <i>Black Cherry</i> tracks from the get-go (e.g. see the T. Raumschmiere and Ewan Pearson 6/8 mixes of "Train") I think it would be a stretch for them to claim any kind of ownership over the sound even on a subjective level (i.e. "we came up with it independently").
 

Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
I don't think they are claiming they own a "sound" more that Richard took what they where doing (they gave him the parts) and applied it to Miss S's single, I guess they are pissed that Strict Machine didn't make it, even after it was released twice, and that single by Rachel did.

Although I must say, it's not my arguement, just something I read, don't really see the grounds for it really - as you could come up with that sound from listening to 3 albums (Glitter/Bolan/Sweet), I do find it ironic when people kick off about sampling - it's even funnier when the people doing it own labels with back catalogues full of samples...
 

shykitten

peek-a-boo
ok i am really showing myself up here but what is schaffel??

i am somewhat clearer on the subject of the Frapp, and would say that beyond the singles, there is actually still quite a bit of common ground between Felt Mountain and Black Cherry, although a lot of the latter tracks upped the energy level, and the official line is that they wanted a looser, more discoey sound which was more fun to play live. also Alison's lyrics, and the basslines, got a lot dirtier (although the sci-fi themes remained).

my own view is that overall the retro-fitted, commercially driven style of third album Supernature represents a more drastic (and less successful) shift in direction than occured between the first two.
 

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
I loved strict machine when it came out & i still think it's one of the best singles this decade. I thought Ooh La la was a poor xerox of it which bummed me out. i havent got the album yet.

I'd never heard of 'schaffel' - i presume its german for shuffle? The timebase thing is just a case of quantising everything to triplet time, not that hard and not really worthy of its own genre name. A headache to mix. I wonder if thats why people stopped making techno that way (poor sales)?

Definitely works better in pop that dance music. That said, a strain of schaffel gabba crossbred with sped up marching band samples would be awesome to behold. I might experiment with some of that right now...
 
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Omaar

Guest
yeah this genre completely passed me by too - read this article a few months ago which put things in perspective:

http://www.exclaim.ca/index.asp?layid=22&csid=1&csid1=2432

Michael - coincidentally it was a discussion with your mate jeremy in NZ that got me wondering about this genre.

Actually a lot of this stuff has echoes of Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene I reckon, specially some superpitcher stuff. I guess Jarre uses a lot of non 4/4 time signatures.
 

minikomi

pu1.pu2.wav.noi
i think i know a schaffle track! "monstertruckdriver"


"thats a bit rough" - just checked this out & was pretty impressed!
 

owen

Well-known member
mike leander- unheralded genius

there's loads of fantastic proto-schaffel, it's not all 'spirit in the sky' nonsense--

interested folk should beg, borrow or steal a copy of new order's 'video586' (rec 1982 i think, came out on Touch in abt 1998) which leaps from moroder metronome to glitter-stomp throughout.
a few of marilyn manson's more fun things are sehr pre-'monstertruckdriver'...there's a very sultry postpunk schaffel thing by pink industry that i have somewhere....there was even a kind of grime-schaffel thing on the pirates around 2003 or so. but as the KLF point out in The Manual, people's tolerance for the glitterbeat lasts only so long...

'schaffelfieber 2' is fantastic btw- i kind of think kompakt's stepping back from the glam abyss was an absolute copout- imagine if koze or superpitcher decided to compete with goldfrapp and rachel stevens for cd:uk, and the microglam joy that might have ensued...bah. (tho the alter ego mix of 2raumwohnung's 'spiel mit' is pretty close to that level of darkling goff-pop excellence)
 

Tim F

Well-known member
Owen I have a half-serious theory that the reason all the German producers abandoned glammy schaffel is that they heard the Alter Ego remix of "Spiel Mit" and decided they couldn't top it!

But as well I found myself tiring of it - or at least the glammy variant of it - late last year as well. Got Jake Fairley's <i>Touch Not The Cat</i> album, which is about half glammy schaffel and about half Sender-style monolithic electro-tech, and ended up skipping all the schaffel tracks when I listened to it (this also may just be a reflection on Fairley, who is much better in the latter style).

I still listen to all of the moody/atmospheric stuff heaps though. Mayer's "Amabile" has become one of my absolute favourite tracks ever, as has the Raumschmiere mix of "Ich Weiss Warum". Also Joachim Spieth is very good at atmospheric schaffel. And I can't forget the winsome pop joy of Borneo & Sporenburg's "Boys In Shorts" or the Wasserman remix of Kohncke/Dorau's "Durch Die Nacht" (or, indeed, "Frei/Hot Love").

Best proto-schaffel track ever though surely = "Personal Jesus"...
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
owen said:
a few of marilyn manson's more fun things are sehr pre-'monstertruckdriver'...there's a very sultry postpunk schaffel thing by pink industry that i have somewhere....there was even a kind of grime-schaffel thing on the pirates around 2003 or so. but as the KLF point out in The Manual, people's tolerance for the glitterbeat lasts only so long...

i played the beautiful people by marilyn manson one night when djing, mixed out of monstertruckdriver, which in turn was mixed out of personal jesus agood while ago now. i totally lost everyone on the floor.
 

Tim F

Well-known member
I would have danced Dave!

I was just listening to an old Mayer set which goes The Orb's "Masterblaster -> "Personal Jesus" -> "Monstertruckdriver" -> Naum's "Ari" --> that Wighnomy Bros track with the Busta Rhymes sample. Hands in the air!
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I quite like the new album - seems to be an interesting move back into the space between the first and second albums...

You can really hear the Kate Bush influence in it...

Do most people still hate them, tho? ;)
 
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