Classic mistakes made by artists when they go to make an album?

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Blackdown

nexKeysound
1. Roping in random, unrelated vocalists.

"What would sound really great over this jungle beat, yeah, is if we brought in Marilyn Manson. Kev, could you get our people to speak to his people about the paperwork?"

2. Forgetting their audience.

"All that dancefloor stuff is cool, but I always really wanted to make a 12 minute jazz funk epic. Y'know, 'real' songs."

3. Rolling out the cliches while describing it.

"I just wanted to make something you could listen to all the way through in you car or at home... just take people on a journey. An album people will listen to in 20 years time."

4. Spending so long doing it they're no longer relevant.

DJ SS circa The Lighter tune v his album last year.
 
D

Don Rosco

Well-known member
All true, but if you've made your name knocking out twelves, you're kind of between a rock and a hard place when it comes to doing an album. Do you throw together a load of floor tracks (inevitably one or two belters and a load of filler), stick on one or two 'leftfield' tunes? That would please the DJs, but not anyone else. Or do you go all out and try something different, put together a real 'album'? Invariably, you end up falling flat on your face, with maybe a couple of exceptions.

Nearly all the artists i've loved over the years (at least the ones who i've loved because of their twelves) have released albums, and I NEVER listen to them as albums. Never.
 
B

blunt

shot by both sides
Blackdown said:
Classic mistakes made by artists when they go to make an album?
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How about: the desire to make an album at all when the long play format is, in and of itself, increasingly irrelevant?
 
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Logos

Ghosts of my life
Yeah...there's something about the album format which makes 12" oriented artists temporarily insane. All the points above are valid, sometimes the LP can shine through on the strength of the standout tracks (e.g. Timeless) but thats the problem, for example if you spent the years from 92 onwards following Goldie's career, buying all the Reinforced and early Headz bits the LP itself would be an irrelavent addition to that collection.

There's also the paralell insanities connected with artitst compilation albums - the usual mystifying ommissions. The Photek Form and Function comp is the classic: you have room for all the 12 form and function tracks yet you junk half of them in favour of some very medicore, timebound remixes, thus denying posterity the necessary historicisation of an artist at his peak.

Is it the fault of the record labels/a&r men?
 
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bassnation

the abyss
blunt said:
How about: the desire to make an album at all when the long play format is, in and of itself, increasingly irrelevant?
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how does this square with the enormous thread gushing about burials new lp? ;)
 
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shudder

Well-known member
yeah, I think burial shows that even among people who listen to 12"-dominated music, there's a desire for album-length stuff. Although of course his stuff sounds more albummy than most of the other things in dubstep right now.. (cf gutter's review, etc).

of course, for us young'uns for whom vinyl seems hopelessly anachronistic, the thought of actually listening to 12-inchs is kinda weird. I mean, do you really just put on a record for 2 songs, having to flip between them? It seems like so much work!
 
B

Blackdown

nexKeysound
i guess this thread does relate more to dance/urban producers doing LPs than bands but there's an interesting comparison in approach.

indie bands spend two years making a body of work, promo it with one single, then drop the lot as an album.

dance producers tend to make a sequence of 12" singles then think about dropping an album, perhaps as a collection of their 12"s or new material. the producer already has a large body of work, but lots of it is scattered around a disparate collection of 12" single releases.

given the importance of albums to bands, perhaps its safe to say the band approach (collate large body of (new and unfamiliar to the audience) work, drop in one go) works better?
 
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Poisonous Dart

Lone Swordsman
The Phrase Of Doom!!!

"There's something for everyone on this album!" It's the kiss of death in 80% of the cases I hear that phrase used...worked for Kelly Clarkson, though. One.
 
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Logos

Ghosts of my life
Blackdown said:
i guess this thread does relate more to dance/urban producers doing LPs than bands but there's an interesting comparison in approach.

indie bands spend two years making a body of work, promo it with one single, then drop the lot as an album.

dance producers tend to make a sequence of 12" singles then think about dropping an album, perhaps as a collection of their 12"s or new material. the producer already has a large body of work, but lots of it is scattered around a disparate collection of 12" single releases.

given the importance of albums to bands, perhaps its safe to say the band approach (collate large body of (new and unfamiliar to the audience) work, drop in one go) works better?
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I think that has a lot to do with cultural factors - in a lot of dance-based scenes, especially ones arranged on the hardcore continuum, the 12' single is a singular event in itself - it might have been a bad tune battered on dub for ages which picks up a buzz around it for example...'everyone waits for the track (single) to drop'. In addition the 20 year + history of the continuous DJ mix has disrupted the meaningfulness of the artist album for dance music. Most of the time when a dance artist does an album my first reaction is 'why'?

Whereas the single for indie bands tends to be less of a thing in itself and more a promo for the album. I suspect a lot of the NME-indie fraternity turn their noses up at the single format as somthing to be pursued in itself because of its association in their eyes with pop...so culturally the whole label/recording/touring machine tends to orbit around and be contingent on the album.
 
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shudder

Well-known member
outside of dubstep right now, which scenes operate with exclusive dubplates making the rounds with top DJs for a while before they get released?
 
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Logos

Ghosts of my life
shudder said:
outside of dubstep right now, which scenes operate with exclusive dubplates making the rounds with top DJs for a while before they get released?
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Well it doesn't have to be actual plates...the format is irrelavent to an extent.

At the very least techno, drum and bass operate on an economy of exclusive tracks via AIM or on cdr, played using cd decks, final scratch, lappys and the like. I'm sure it is an important factor in house and every little micro genre you can think of.

Anyway we are off topic a bit now...
 
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throughsilver

Well-known member
Blackdown said:
2. Forgetting their audience.

"All that dancefloor stuff is cool, but I always really wanted to make a 12 minute jazz funk epic. Y'know, 'real' songs."
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While I appreciate the perspective you're coming from, I think a major problem bands make when it comes to new music is paying too much attention to their audience. Bands especially get scared when they think they might alienate their audience.

So you get disasters like the final Pantera album, or the last Radiohead full-length, which tend to be ugly compromises between what the artist wants to do and what the fans want.

I'd much rather bands/musicians just do whatever it is they want to do, and if I don't dig it, I listen to something else. For example, Neurosis have made a career of doing what they want. I think the last album was dull as ditchwater, but that's what they wanted to do so fair play to 'em. I'll just listen to Angels Of Light or Kayo Dot instead.
 
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tox

Factory Girl
shudder said:
of course, for us young'uns for whom vinyl seems hopelessly anachronistic, the thought of actually listening to 12-inchs is kinda weird. I mean, do you really just put on a record for 2 songs, having to flip between them? It seems like so much work!
Click to expand...

I actually think this singles vs LPs thing becomes more prominent are you move into the realms of mp3, rather than physical discs. While it might be a pain to constanly be putting on 12"s, its not hard to throw together a load of singles on a playlist.

I guess in this digital age you could argue a pretty strong case for traditionally single orientated artists (I'm thinking of dance floor stuff here) moving well away from the LP format as we know it.

In a way MP3 blogs can be like the digital equivalent of club DJs playing 12". For some genres there's definately a culture of tracks making their way around the internet, garnering promotion for the artist. Its certainly the way I hear a lot of big techno tunes first, and then go on to buy mixes or albums afterwards.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I'm in favour of the "album as mixtape" approach, because dance artists tend to produce dull "albums". See one of my favourite dance groups of all time - Basement Jaxx - who make great singles and fab mixes, but extremely patchy albums, apart from the 12" compilations. Contrast with Chemical Brothers, whose first few albums were basically segued (if not mixed) compilations of tracks as much as they were LPs.

Interesting that hip hop seems to do much better out of artist CDs than dance music does. In the end doing an artist album is a different discipline to doing a 12" and if you're not good at it, go the compilation / mix route.
 
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Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
mistake: "A CD is 70 minutes or so, we're gonna fill it all up with with 15 4:30 minute tracks to give the punter value for money". As opposed to 35-40 minutes of top notch.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
"Hey- ya know what would be just grand??? Skits or 30second long tracks between every proper track... " Not just talking about hip hop here but loads of electronica people as well, and it ruins any flow and makes the album bloated as fuck (ie 23 track long single albums are mad...)
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Blackdown said:
indie bands spend two years making a body of work, promo it with one single, then drop the lot as an album.
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Spending two or three years making the body of work is often a mistake in itself. Bands these days often seem to have lost the zeitgeist by the time they get to their second album and to be getting past it by the the time they get to their third.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
gek-opel said:
"Hey- ya know what would be just grand??? Skits or 30second long tracks between every proper track... " Not just talking about hip hop here but loads of electronica people as well, and it ruins any flow and makes the album bloated as fuck (ie 23 track long single albums are mad...)
Click to expand...
It works on Bytes by Black Dog Productions, with all the phils. If it's done well it improves the flow and makes the album work better as an album rather than a series of tunes stuck one after the other. I'll admit that if it's done badly or even averagely it's pretty shit, though..
 
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Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Skits in hip hop absolutely baffle me. Particularly when they're at the beginning of the track so you can't skip them without skipping the track. Do the rappers genuinely believe that anyone enjoys them the 20th time round?
 
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