Group Listening Party Fun Time II: Craner vs. Craner

[woops]

The Shadow6 months ago
Kids don't know about this type of music with intricate production & composition.

 

[craner]

This is from the Kashif and Paul Laurence album Never Say Never which I only discovered recently. It’s an immaculate 80s soul statement, from the angular postmodern sleeve to the detailed synthetic sound design.

 

[craner]

This song is a hidden jewel in Kashif’s career: it launches like a huge white yacht out of Miami Beach Marina and then glides on through deep aquamarine water into an oversaturated screen sunset. It’s a big love declaration assembled with scientific precision, artifice and grace.

 

[luka]

have you pre-prepared these comments Oliver Craner?

 

[woops]

40(?) years in the making?

 

[craner]

I made a few notes today.

 

[woops]

craner i am convinced i knew your name before i went on dissensus or met luke. are you famous.

 

[craner]

Is that OK?

 

[luka]

craner i am convinced i knew your name before i went on dissensus or met luke. are you famous.

he is. maybe he went to the same university as you?

 

[luka]

Is that OK?

i approve. shows youre taking it seriously

 

[craner]

I am hosting after all, need to make an effort for you all.

 

[craner]

Onto Kreamcicle now.

 

[woops]

why do you never mention your days of attending glamorous dinner parties and sitting next to famous writers anymore.

 

[craner]

This lot did the Sam records boogie smash ‘Hold On’ which is alright, but a few weeks ago when I was going through the Bluebird discography on Discogs I somehow stumbled on this. It has a vocal version but I fell hard for this instrumental: its blank surface and glacial glide is very evocative, even poetic.

 

[woops]

some of the best instrumentals include vocals (not a joke)

 

[craner]

why do you never mention your days of attending glamorous dinner parties and sitting next to famous writers anymore.

This may happen as we get deeper in.

This track allows images to be projected onto it, images that evoke vague feelings: the ineffable connection between visuals and emotions. It’s city music, but the spectacular, romantic side of the city, rather than the dark and diseased underbelly: lights and freeways, connections and liaisons, culture and eros. It’s a minor masterpiece that I just found lying around on the ground, forgotten, unwanted. I picked it up and showered it with love.

 

[luka]

its sophisticated and urbane but it also contains the kind of primitivism of early house and grime and hiphop

 

[luka]

change of pace

 

[woops]

it's like planet rock with newer synths & reverb units

 

[luka]

this is not sophisticated and urbane.