What happened to the Chemical Brothers\Fatboy Slim\DaftPunk

Buick6 said:

I don't wanna sound like an arse, but as much as I admire Reynolds writing, it always seems that 85% of the bands he really hypes tend to date very quickly. I'm not sure if it's because of his po-mo pos-structulaist tact or a taste thing, but it shows a glaring fault of post-modernist deconstructualist critical thinking when it comes to rock criticism in particular - more often than not you end up with 'trendy' and dated crap - the 'instant pop rush' actually wears off quite quickly.

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and why is that a bad thing, rather than good? listening to the same stuff year in year out is boring. quick disappearance is a sign of quality of a genre.

People like Vitalic, Justice etc. are doing the same thing they used to do.

Buick6 said:

Innaresting thing about these three is that in many ways they were the soundtrack/posterboys of the INTERNET BOOM 1999-2000 period, and seem to have busted the same way. I'm gonna be checkin' Fatboy on New Years' Day here in Melbourne to see where he's at sonically these days (though I'm more excited by Roger Sanchez and curious on Teifshwarz on the same bill!)..

BUT, it's interesting to see how these three suffered big losses in relevance, and perhaps have even dated somewhat in the whole techno/electronica crash.

I don't wanna sound like an arse, but as much as I admire Reynolds writing, it always seems that 85% of the bands he really hypes tend to date very quickly. I'm not sure if it's because of his po-mo pos-structulaist tact or a taste thing, but it shows a glaring fault of post-modernist deconstructualist critical thinking when it comes to rock criticism in particular - more often than not you end up with 'trendy' and dated crap - the 'instant pop rush' actually wears off quite quickly.

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i think like any band that's been around for a while people only keep it up for a short time, and music critics and the public slavishly search out what they think they imagine the next big sound is.
as for the dance/electronica crash there are still as many mags in the uk for dance / electronica as there are rock pretty much, there are no style mags about anymore, which wasn't altogether synonymous with dance music but much more so with drugs.
the records sell slightly less, but so do all records .
the big new rock bands require enormous amounts of cash to hype them, there is an entrance fee to the nme 'who's big' game, so when you check it on the balance sheet, dance music is probably doing as well as rock music overall financially, and creativley i think it's really gone places all over the shop the last year and half, i find it fascinating which is something you can never say about rock.

As for reynolds championing things that date, i'm not so sure that's the case but i don't see that being bad, don't see him as a postmdernist either. Also as the alternative is often extremley mediocre, and lifeless, you just have to look at a critic like alexis petrids to see that .

"Innaresting thing about these three is that in many ways they were the soundtrack/posterboys of the INTERNET BOOM 1999-2000 period, and seem to have busted the same way. "

Use other thoughts please!

"I don't wanna sound like an arse, but as much as I admire Reynolds writing, it always seems that 85% of the bands he really hypes tend to date very quickly. I'm not sure if it's because of his po-mo pos-structulaist tact or a taste thing, but it shows a glaring fault of post-modernist deconstructualist critical thinking when it comes to rock criticism in particular - more often than not you end up with 'trendy' and dated crap - the 'instant pop rush' actually wears off quite quickly."

Quite apart from the fact that I agree with borderpolice that this wouldn't be a bad thing, I don't even think it's correct in this case - The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Daft Punk all rose to prominence in the mid-nineties, and all only started to lose their audience and quality control in this decade. The Chems only really started to go off the boil with their most recent album, <I>Come With Us</i> is actually very good with the exception of the Ashcroft track. <i>Discovery</i> meanwhile is both Daft Punk's best album and one of the best albums of the past 10 years.

In terms of the original music itself dating, I think <I>Homework</i> sounds exceptionally current today (Felix Da Housecat dropped "Rolling & Scratching" the last time I saw him and for a moment, before the recognition kicked in, I thought it was a new Vitalic track). The Chems and Fatboy Slim's early albums sound "of their time" due to the fact breakbeats have never been so popular in dance music since (and even that sound enjoys a certain afterlife with labels like Fingerlickin'). But that drop-off followed an entire decade of breakbeat-based dance music being the best stuff around.

Not for DaftPunk who seem immune to fashion but the other 2 should really have reinvented themselves to stay current. FBS used to use many different names but carrying on with the persona is a mistake with that kind of music.

I think the Chems bombed shortly after they became famous. I mean after their No.1, did they do any good? That said, what a great No.1 record 'Setting Sun' is.

wonk_vitesse said:

Not for DaftPunk who seem immune to fashion but the other 2 should really have reinvented themselves to stay current. FBS used to use many different names but carrying on with the persona is a mistake with that kind of music.

I think the Chems bombed shortly after they became famous. I mean after their No.1, did they do any good? That said, what a great No.1 record 'Setting Sun' is.

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The single with q tip recently was ace.They were always popular as they indified dance music, like the whole of that big beat thing they made beats with rock and roll samples, big fat rock drum beats and not too much techno, crossover cameos etc, part of cool brittania or whatever.
In 97 when i was working in a place that played x fm all the time that was literally the only 'dance' music they played - big beat. It's funny the way that genre works though as the only tracks that are memorable now from that genre are the big ones heard on xfm, there were never any quality underground smashes that people remember in the same way that other dance genres have them, big beat rapidly filled the bargain basements and you don't see any of the records on the wall in the exchange etc...

the new busta rhymes single samples daft punk...

first, reynolds gets paid to be a trend-spotter -- i.e., it's an unavoidable occupational hazard for music critics (unless you're a small-time critic writing for a narrow publication)

second, reynolds spots better trends than his competition -- i.e., he's got better taste in music than any other music journalist i know of

third, i don't recall reynolds being too heavily behind big beat or any of the three acts you mention-- granted, he ends "energy flash" by endorsing big beat, but it's clear that this was only b/c (a) uk garage had yet to give rise to 2-step and (b) jungle had gone crap w/ the turn to the tech-step

AS FOR the larger question, of whether it's better to stick with the same sounds or hop from one trend to another -- i.e., as fans and consumers and club-goers and djs, not as critics writing for papers -- i think this can be argued both ways

similarly, how long a particular sound or genre or scene lasts is not an indicator of its quality -- whether good or bad

perhaps there are two different kinds of suspicion at work here?

(1) the critic is on guard against complacency, stagnation, easy satisfaction, tedium

(2) the fan-scenester is on guard against trend-spotters and infidels

ALSO, bear in mind that critics both (1) read an awful lot about music and (2) listen to an awful lot of music, especially thanks to promo copies -- so they get sick of sounds, genres and scenes a lot faster than most --

by comparison, most people (like me) only have so much money to spend on records, such that if they buy 12" records (albums allow for more diversity in purchasing decisions) they'll stick with the same set of sounds after they're no longer deemed trendy, b/c (A) it's *easier* and more practical than keeping up with every new trend and (B) the *quest* for the best records in a genre or set of genres is unending

borderpolice said:

quick disappearance is a sign of quality of a genre.

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it is?

dominic said:

ALSO, bear in mind that critics both (1) read an awful lot about music and (2) listen to an awful lot of music, especially thanks to promo copies -- so they get sick of sounds, genres and scenes a lot faster than most --

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also, the critic must keep his distance from particular scenes -- his relationship to music is private and intellectual

so whereas the scenester is reluctant to leave a scene where he has so many friends and emotional investments (unless he tires of his friends and the same old faces), the critic always has his eye out for the next hot spot of cultural-musical production

the critic is like the hipster in this respect -- and, indeed, it is for hipsters that most critics write, if not by intention then as matter of fact

i.e., the music critic, the scenester and the hipster are different species

I think esp. in the areas of dance music Reynolds used to write about heavily, quick disappearance <i>was</i> a sign of quality - the transformation of 'ardkore into jungle into 2-step into grime was not so much about trendiness as it was about a certain creative restlessness and taste for sonic innovation. And this sort of thing was present in other dance music as well for a long time - a certain privileging of inventiveness/novelty in groove construction which one can see in early Chemical Bros and Daft Punk as much as any more didactically modernist IDM artist. (it's still true to a lesser extent now, just as there was still a hankering after the inventive step in rock in the 90s - a good comparison point which Reynolds hit upon I think - but it's done in a more subtle way, a sort of two-steps-back-one-step-forward retro-modernist recombinant manoeuvre)

BTW for those interested in following such things, The Chems' biggest hit ever wasn't actually <i>Setting Sun</i> but <i>Hey Boy Hey Girl</i>, which actually seemed like a pretty massive change in direction for them at the time (following it up with "Let Forever Be" undercut the effect somewhat though).

"But since then his taste has improved somewhat, and I take his word as gospel for what's cool amongst the pomo-boho-trainspotting-I-have-more-references-and-StarTrumps-one-up-but-can't-get-it-up indie nosepickin' scene."

Oh yeah, thank god we're all listening to Animal Collective and Ariel Pink these days rather than rave and jungle eh?

As per blunt's quote in the Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music thread, this says everything I ever thought about Fatboy Slim:

Nah there's some good Trance around I guess - esp in the early `90s before it became Hard House, back-packer fodder etc. eg. Exquisite Corpse, and some of the Australian stuff by Ollie Olsen and friends. A lot of that minimal techno and Kompakt/Schaffelhaus seems pretty trance-y to my ears.

Tim F said:

I think esp. in the areas of dance music Reynolds used to write about heavily, quick disappearance <i>was</i> a sign of quality - the transformation of 'ardkore into jungle into 2-step into grime was not so much about trendiness as it was about a certain creative restlessness and taste for sonic innovation.

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that's only if you accept reynolds' position without reservation

and it's only (or mainly) if you make "sonic innovation" the central criterion for judging dance music and dance scenes

or rather, his argument in fact had two prongs -- the hardcore continuum as (A) the most sonically innovative sector of dance and (B) the most politically charged and authentic sector, in terms of both class and race

so it's a hard argument to resist

however, i think it's highly questionable that the leading edge was the "best" place to be

the reality was and is much more complex

i think there's much to be said for various "old guard" people and "lifers" -- the gate-keepers who, if cast in the wrong light, can come off as petty bourgeois -- the people who continue to play the same kinds of sounds, carry forward the same traditions, adhere to the same trajectories as 15, 20, sometimes 30 years in the past

except that no arguments have been made on behalf of such people that can rival the arguments made by reynolds

and, indeed, one reason for this is that the leading edge always has cohesion (the hardcore), whereas as other sectors are more disparate and fragmented -- they're about party tribes, really, with different djs in a tribe playing different kinds of records -- so making useful generalizations about what gets played by "house" djs as against the "leading edge" djs has never been an easy task

[indeed, many "house" djs -- using term "house" very loosely -- go out of their way to have a relatively unique sound, to play records others don't play -- and so they avoid playing what's trendy -- and if the hardcore ain't trendy per se, it's necessarily popular to a significant degree, such that djs "soldier" in hardcore sounds]

and another reason for the victory of reynolds' position is that once you get away from the "leading edge," away from the single-minded concern with pushing things forward, then the argument has tended to become more about the dj and his taste and the vibe he sets -- and b/c this kind of thinking led to the dreadful cult of the dj and dj mix cds on labels like moonshine, etc, etc -- all the bloated late 90s superstar dj bollocks -- all arguments that revolved around this or that dj's "taste" or the kind of "vibe" he set were, accordingly, discredited

a third reason is that reynolds combined knowledge with power over the written word that others with similar, if not greater, knowledge of dance music -- i.e., all the djs -- could not answer effectively -- i.e., they were illiterates by comparison

Actually I basically agree with you dominic - I was saying that <i>for the styles that Simon wrote about</i> the short shelflife/innovation thing was a sign of quality, i.e. it was intimately bound up in what made that particular music exciting and interesting.

Whereas with other genres (like house, which I love) constant sonic innovation is <i>not</i> intimately bound up in what makes the music exciting and interesting - house's long shelflife is not, I think, a sign of its quality or it's lack of quality (though it adds perhaps to its emotional and identity-based appeal, and certainly annoys people who don't like house to begin with).

in other words different scenes (or even different parts of the same scene) will operate according to different logics, with different political/communal/sonic/aesthetic combinations throwing up both good and bad results.