happydalek discovers techno.
It's a rainy day, there are no good job ads in the paper (again), so I am bored. This means that I've been sitting in front of my computer for hours, drinking entirely too much caffeine. My accomplishment for today has so far been to discover the works of Daft Punk, including their quite good "silent" anime movie (on google video) Interstella 5555, which is based on their album "Discovery."
While I do greatly enjoy music in general, it's always been a primarily aesthetic thing for me, in that I don't pay much attention to bands and genres. I'm usually more about individual songs (or parts of songs) that will strike me as interesting. My musical taste is best described as indiscriminate. I'm not one of those people with millions of songs in an iTunes playlist (I have less than 1,000 songs on my computer and I don't even own an MP3 player.) But occasionally I do come across a specific artist or group whose works are of singular interest to me. For example, I went through a Muse phase about a year ago; last summer and fall it was country music in general, but for the past couple of months, I've been inexplicably drawn to Moby.
Every time I go through one of these little musical educations, part of the fun is finding out that I actually know more of the artists' works than I thought I did. I'm discovering the same about Daft Punk, particularly with regards to the "Discovery" album. For instance, I had no idea that the very groovy and upbeat "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" was its own piece--I thought it was original to the Kanye West song "Stronger" (which I have always thought was an incredibly obnoxious piece of self-involved, irrelevant dreck.) And I really remember "One More Time" showing up on the radio, and me being slightly embarrassed that I liked it so much (back when I actually tried to have specific, sophisticated musical taste). But as much as I'm enjoying the sounds of Daft Punk, I wouldn't have found them if not for the visual components of their work. The aforementioned Interstella 5555 is chock-full of awesome spacey imagery and 80's nostalgia, but it was the music video for their single, Technologic that really fascinates me. That robot thing is crazy creepy!
I actually had planned to do a review post for Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 book, Childhood's End, but apparently that's going to have to wait for another time when I'm less fixated on French techno anime and their terrifying robot puppet spawn. So...yeah. I hope you all found at least some of this interesting/enjoyable so I can feel a little bit less like I'm wasting my time. ;-)
While I do greatly enjoy music in general, it's always been a primarily aesthetic thing for me, in that I don't pay much attention to bands and genres. I'm usually more about individual songs (or parts of songs) that will strike me as interesting. My musical taste is best described as indiscriminate. I'm not one of those people with millions of songs in an iTunes playlist (I have less than 1,000 songs on my computer and I don't even own an MP3 player.) But occasionally I do come across a specific artist or group whose works are of singular interest to me. For example, I went through a Muse phase about a year ago; last summer and fall it was country music in general, but for the past couple of months, I've been inexplicably drawn to Moby.
Every time I go through one of these little musical educations, part of the fun is finding out that I actually know more of the artists' works than I thought I did. I'm discovering the same about Daft Punk, particularly with regards to the "Discovery" album. For instance, I had no idea that the very groovy and upbeat "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" was its own piece--I thought it was original to the Kanye West song "Stronger" (which I have always thought was an incredibly obnoxious piece of self-involved, irrelevant dreck.) And I really remember "One More Time" showing up on the radio, and me being slightly embarrassed that I liked it so much (back when I actually tried to have specific, sophisticated musical taste). But as much as I'm enjoying the sounds of Daft Punk, I wouldn't have found them if not for the visual components of their work. The aforementioned Interstella 5555 is chock-full of awesome spacey imagery and 80's nostalgia, but it was the music video for their single, Technologic that really fascinates me. That robot thing is crazy creepy!
I actually had planned to do a review post for Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 book, Childhood's End, but apparently that's going to have to wait for another time when I'm less fixated on French techno anime and their terrifying robot puppet spawn. So...yeah. I hope you all found at least some of this interesting/enjoyable so I can feel a little bit less like I'm wasting my time. ;-)