goldfrapp 'supernature'.

(xpost)

i.e loved by ILx, ignored by everyone else.

the M83 remix of "black cherry" blew me away ... as i said on the m83 thread, some kind of collaboration would be delicious.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1528298,00.html

WHERE THE *HELL* IS THIS THING?

funny that...

it's funny how thanks to p2p programs i always subtract a month from the official release date and designate it as the "unofficial internet release date"

Tiefschwarz remix ditches the shuffle, adds quasi-mentasm keys and sounds like a euro-cheese Armand Van Helden??

I would be very very very loathe to use language like all image no substance as a criticism, but when the image is so hackneyed and obvious I think it's fair enough .

I have never disagreed with you more Tracer! I even like much of Natalie Merchant's singing, but I don't think they sound alike!

"Album oriented electro" is perhaps a tad misleading I think Ronan - implies that she's watering down club-oriented electro when I suspect that she's actually just updating twenty-five yr old album-oriented electro... always thought Andy K was spot on with the Associates comparison, specifically Fourth Drawer Down...

exactly how she was when i interviewed her. i didn't much care for black cherry (not because he bitchy attitude during the interview, it just left me *cold*.)

what's the point of AOP (Adult Orientated Pop) you mean? as opposed to what? The fact that it's heavily electronic is surely irrelevant now no?

I wouldn't care if they never made another album. I didn't expect them to have made another one so soon anyway.

And I can't understand why someone would object to music DVDs either!

Same here. Like some people here, there's something about Alison Goldfrapp's persona that I don't quite like. But at the same time, Goldfrapp are capable of creating a few sublime moments that more than make up for any image/attitude turn offs.

or it's a faster take on "Strict Machine"

What T.Rex to be exact? I'd like one or two pointers...

Haha Ned, as soon as I saw Goldfrapp's album title I thought "Hey! That's an Erasure song! Oh, wait, it's a cover. Aaanyway." It was on the cassette version of The Innocents as well. D'you think Goldfrapp have been plundering the Mute archives for ideas*?

*and have they ever *not* done that?

I found "Jeepster" a bit lacking in oomph although it does seem to be in the same key. My T.Rex compilation doesn't go beyond 1971 is why I asked...

they're both just different ways of being an absolute cunt to people though.

no it wasn't, it was a WILD! b side.

didn't play Black Cherry much, don't remember it..

The single has been available on iTunes for a few weeks now.

i feel the same of annie... sorry.

Goldfrapp pwns Annie on the live front it has to be said. But they're quite different beasts I mean women.

I would like to see someone start doing house remixes of their schaffel tunes.

Pearson did one electro-house mix and one schaffel mix of "Train". His mix of "Strict Machine" was house though, as were the mixes by Rowan and Benni Benassi.

That'd be Felt Mountain doing that- their first album wasn't quite Portishead or whoever, but wasn't a million miles off from some of Massive Attack's better stuff. And she did song "Pumpkin" on Tricky's Maxinquaye...

Does that mean... that... I like trip-hop?

All the promos I have seen (even the first DJ promos of the Tiefschwarz mixes) have had their recipient's name on. The bog standard DJ mix CD promos are all copy protected now too. Mute aren't very into people stealing music off the internet! I would imagine you would be stabbed for saying the word "Soulseek" in the office.

P.s. It's all great!

scroll to the bottom of the page, it's the Supernature EPK "Little Bits of Goldfrapp"

i shouldn't have watched it, now i want the album to leak IMMEDIATELY

or maybe they're ahead of the curve on the upcoming (third, fourth, seventh?) seventies revival.

http://s46.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1TNH2ZZ2AXIWF0Y19F0QCSZF4Z

Bukkake?

Expect their next album to feature a horn section and guest appearance by Aretha Franklin.

did this happen in 1985 too?

Eurythmics were mostly fantastic anyway.

I wish I had seen this TOTP performance.

Goldfrapp have about 26 decent songs. Eurythmics ended up releasing some far worse stuff ('The King And Queen Of America' stands out for wrong reason).

I wonder if exactly the same things that are making me like it (popism? girlism? indieism? lovely-moogy-sound-ism?) are making others hate it.

I'll probably buy the new album.

In any case, nobody is doing schaffel tracks anymore really. But the point is, if "Ooh La La" was just a one off single, who cares, but such bombast and ceremony for a band who are just a vague rip off of other peoples good ideas is sickening.

I don't know, I really dislike everything about them right now, it just feels cynical and a really packaged form of cool. You just think they're only actually in the "we make albums and go on tour" scene cos it's the best way to make money for now, and hence they need to be marketed to hell, cue the dreaded LIVE DVD.

how so? where so? could this be as much an assumption by the media as 'arrogance' on their part?

'three or four stunning moments per album' applies to most artists surely - Missy and Ciara for example. There's very little on either Goldfrapp album I'd class as filler personally.

Musically/sonically Will Alexander is definitely as talented a producer as Chris Lowe or Wiggs/Stanley, if pursuing a different strain of 'alt pop'.

I would venture that it is all too symptomatic of the decadent 21st century world of music that a genuine and individual talent such as that of Marissa Marchant is scorned and ignored whereas talentless turds like Goldfrapp are promoted purely on the basis of who they know/shag.

So I'd work on that if I were her. Everything else is fine.

Later: empty vessel

Oh, okay. Rockism, then.

I agree though that there's not much point of Goldfrapp going on Popworld or TOTP if she's not gonna laugh it up sincerely. Maybe this is a therapeutic process for her or something.

Or what about that Dizzee Rascal, eh? Grumpy little grouch! Someone should hold him down forcibly, with an electrified cattleprod if necessary, and paint a toothy, merry minstrel grin on his sour visage (indeed, why stop at the mouth? why not apply the white paint to the whole of his face? that would make things so much simpler, wouldn't it?).

I won't buy you that Complete John Wayne Collection DVD boxset for Christmas then Lex. You can have a Nine Black Alps live bootleg instead.

ronan made the same criticisms of LCD, which makes me think maybe i should try to bother to listen to actual dance music instead of 2nd-tier acts like the frapp and LCD.

huh? WHAT?

that's what most of electroclash was in the first place ; regurgitated and crap.

As for the straight thing, yeah I hate Goldfrapp cos I'm straight! Compared to the PSB Goldfrapp are about as camp as Tom Petty.

well, i think they've shot themselves into the Top 10 at the same time.

AG's evidently keen on unifying image with sound or at least highlighting that aesthetic union. I've always gravitated towards artists who are big on that, whether it's Kraftwerk, Public Enemy, Daft Punk, KLF, PSBs (was their image/aesthetic 'obtrusive' to their music? if not, why is it with Goldfrapp? Sure there are obvious differences but still I smell a straw rat), the Wu-Tang Clan (just thinking back to the whole martial arts thing), Radiohead, the White Stripes or even bloody U2. Big band, big sound, big vision. I'm just a sucker for it, even if it is 'real-fake' as with Goldfrapp (apparent contempt for some aspects or shades of pop but sincere love for otherssurely).

But the Superpitcher way is of course desirable too - that sense of worthiness and nobility amidst the passion often bugs me though. The other problem is that I've found it harder than I should to get into his stuff (and others like him) or be moved by it sincerely myself (I'll take the M83 original over the remix for example). I think it's too isolated/distant and perhaps too subtle/cool in relation to where I am. I suppose it's another case of me finding the middle ground between the two the most comfortable place, which would explain my sympathy towards acts like Goldfrapp who appear still caught between wanting to be pop stars (whilst wanting to destroy most other pop stars at the same time) one minute and wanting to be completely 'other' the next. Makes them come off badly to some people understandably (that still wouldn't be so much of a problem if she flashed her teeth as well as her knickers though). Somehow Bjork and Kate Bush managed it by not being quite so cautious and conscious, somehow their oddness felt less contrived yet natural and still pop. Different times for sure, but with 'Ooh La La' Goldfrapp have/has seemingly distanced themselves/herself more from comparisons to those artists now. But it's too early to tell whether that movement benefits them (or others) more. In the meantime I do still really like their work.

I do sympathise with Ronan's general argument that scenes and tracks are more important/better than artists/ego and related aesthetic models. I can understand why one would think that. But I value both and admittedly tend to occupy myself with the latter still.

exhibit a: PiL's OGWT performance of 1980, in which he was dressed in something like the bastard offspring of Max Miller's overcoat shagging Rod Hull's emu - painted red

(except not quite, because M.I.A.'s music is terrific and 'Ooh La La' is terrible)

Blondie

DH always had that killer (and yes- dead serious) coke-fried soulless pornstar sass going on, and she dropped some terrible tracks, but also dropped some brilliant pop anthems.

Same thing going on here, minus the heroin....

And dude- I wouldn't accuse people of being white belt wearing scene-sters when you're suggesting they talk about MIA and/or Gwen Stefani. Are you kidding?

I kind of wonder if there has been an "electroclash backlash" backlash on ILM yet?

I mean, now that all the trend-chasers who ran around with their white belts and Fischerspooner haircuts have since moved on to stringy hair and beards, can we accept that DJ Hell has always used excellent points of reference?

I still don't really care about Felt Mountain, although I have tried to. Black Cherry is maybe 60:40 ace/iffy, but I am hoping the new songs are much tighter and crisper and more 'obvious' perhaps.

ET TU BRUTE?

OK but all electroclash is 4/4 130bpm+ and NOT shuffley and Goldfrapp haven't done anything like that. Granted the starker, metallic sounds of 'Black Cherry' suggest they may have picked up on the mood that had descended trendy clubland, but there's other stuff going on too - a lot of it is still close to Orbital for example, so it wasn't that great a departure/bandwagon jump sonically. Tho funnily I can actually envisage AG having come up with something like 'Rippin Kittin', plus Kittin's 'da-da-dummms' on 'Silver Screen Shower Scene' remind of her a little too.

I can't imagine ARE Weapons slower tracks were played out much - were they? I saw electroclash as strictly a dancefloor thing. W.I.T. were all over the shop (booty bass, electro, pop etc.).

But electroclash was so marginal and fleeting really that I suppose everyone has different ideas about what it was/is. I leave Goldfrapp out of that equation personally.

If we're talking about 'personal aesthetics' then Felt Mountain should be right up my street, I was conscious of this when it came out and pretty disappointed that I couldn't get more into it. I love "Lovely Head" for the first 30 seconds (before the harpsichord/singing start) and I like the broken gurgley whooshes after about a minute. "Utopia" is nice bigness. Not the rest. I found her stagey and defensive and guarded, the St Et/PSB comparators upthread throw me a bit as I never saw her/them as being inclined to hug souls or, y'know, feel better in the dark, or whatever. No vulnerability or warmth, BUT how much am I influenced by her reputation here? etc. I liked all the FM stuff much better live, yes.

I said on the Alison vs Roisin thread that Black Cherry was better than any Moloko album, which I entirely disagree with now, but it is mostly great and (particularly when it becomes verse-chorus conventional) somtimes superfantastic. Yet again I warm to someone lots more when they wobble away from 'soundscapes' and start 'going pop' (obviously I have decided that the two are mutually exclusive extremes, tsk)

you arse.

surely Deer Stop?

definitely disagree with this, massively.

goldfrapp are absolutely electroclash, for me, just 3 or 4 years after all the other electroclash acts stopped writing songs.

still having trouble thinking of examples of electroclash (shuffley or otherwise) below 120bpm tho.

Good lord, man, liking Gwen Stefani is thoughtcrime. Not that I'm biased against the shrill obnoxiously-voiced annoying little insect or anything.

A track like "Black Cherry" is not as stark and wracked, it feels more luscious and indulgent (like A Big Nice Bath) which is easier to square with the gosh-what-a-selfserving-harridan Alison perception somehow. I am wary of the fact that I seem to be hatin' on carefully sculpted performer-personas here, and am making quite a lot of assumptions about what she is is REALLY like.

the fact about electroclash that everyone misses as well was that it was more new-beat and bitch-house related than anything. goldfrapp are looking at electronic beats more through a disco-glam angle than an "i wanna be the second coming of yazoo or jade 4 u or sweet pussy pauline."

digressing, you can just not rule out the angle of being around add n to x for the glam-raid sound that they are exhibiting now and i don't think it was copying... they are all in the same age range and glam was probably very important to all of them and i think it was a natural development. honestly where would a lot of people be without the influence of t.rex and the glam scene in general... to me, they have carried forth the torch, now that antx have quit the scene due to people not seeing their genius. goldfrapp, however, take it a different direction and merge that glam sound with a moroder-ish touch and a wall of sound intensity touch of associates.

alison's voice is a weapon regardless, her vocal prowess is quite admirable and how anyone can not hear that is beyond me.

i think that goldfrapp are a pleasure and for someone who sang for tricky, orbital, juryman and add n to x, she has earned her stripes and derserves a little more appreciation.

"Out Of Your Mind" is certainly a far better record than anything Goldfrapp's ever done.

even if this is the general consensus i don't see how this is really relevant. there are hundreds/thousands of pop songs better than anything Goldfrapp have done.

i worry about you dude!

i agree that Bright Eyes and Ryan Adams seem like wankers tho ;)

i think this already happened and everyone realised they loved it, maybe even more than 'Groovejet' now.

I've bought it up before but one thing that irks me as a Goldfrapp fan is how when they do go more pop they lose as much as they gain, in that AG's voice ends up 'wasted' really. Certainly her vocals on 'Ooh La La' are quite unremarkable, even compared to 'Train' and 'Strict Machine'. So it really does feel a bit 'lazy' in that sense.

I didn't know that she'd dated Add N To X guy, that's quite a neat thing.

alison is a vocalist firstly which should always be taken into account. there is a certain sense of precious-ness that vocalists of her magnitude have. look at billy mackenzie, liz fraser, diamanda galas, marc almond, beth gibbons... and then through the history of vocalists, which goes on at some length including some over the top diva-opera vocalists. they are generally looked at, especially in the formative years of their careers as being over-the-top, dramatic, pretentious, feigning boredom, etc... it just happens, maybe there should be some theory on this. :)

alison is entitled to act as she wishes, no one has to like "her", some of my friends who love her music also do not like "her" but, they certainly would not claim that she is talentless, etc... be sensible in critique.

i just happen to like divas... and real ones like alison, not these two-a-penny talentless trollops that generally blur my vision field in remarkable numbers these days. just because you can fluctuate in key whilst carrying out a grace note does not make you a formidable talent.

And then he starts writing fan letters.

i don't think that she, alison, is always technically brilliant and that is not necessarily what i go for all the time as i stated in my last post. sarah cracknell and cosey are two of my favorite vocalists and yes they have imperfections that make them what they are.

i like alison's voice for the power... and the fact that she can caterwaul like hell when she wants to as demonstrated on "black cherry" in several tracks. (twist and slippage in particular)

I would've thought even the most ardent, devoted Frapp fans would agree that 'Ooh la La' is the weakest single they've ever released, so OF COURSE it will be their biggest hit by a million miles.

Compare/contrast with "Train" in 2003, which I believe was released early enough to escape charges of bandwagon-jumping (I don't think many people in the media/public were actually making the glam-schaffel connection for Goldfrapp prior to the Superpitcher mix of "I Walk" emerging several months later).

I don't think of Felt Mountain as being an electroclash album even though it feels aware of electroclash's influence. I think this is because I experienced electroclash as primarily a dancefloor phenomenon, and compared to that the album mostly feels too lush, soporific, eerily ethereal. Having said that I actually wanted (want?) Goldfrapp to go in a vaguely electroclash direction - more icy disco in the vein of their covers of "Physical" and "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie".

The name i'm surprised isn't cropping up more frequently with respect to "Ooh La La" is the Scissor Sisters - the way it tilters on the edge between knowing pastiche and straightforward recreation of the past seems quite similar to me. It's easy to assume this sort of song is in bad faith because it wants to appeal to the "knowing" younger audience and the actual glam-fan middle-aged audience (in the same way that "Take Your Mama Out" works as both an Elton John/Billy Joel pastiche and a convenient track for baby boomer radio stations to play between actual Elton and Joel songs) - hence its chart placing?

Where the Scissor Sisters were very canny was in realising that this kind of approach delivers diminish returns upon repetition, so they ensured that their album was so diverse no-one would have a chance to become sick of any particular sound tied to them.

I'm not sure if Goldfrapp will be that canny, but I hope that apart from "Ooh La La" the album have very few glam-schaffel tracks indeed.

SS are clearly game for anything and everything and it's paid off beautifully for them (they are actually the most popular band in Britain right now apart from Coldplay and Radiohead, at least in terms of album sales). The range of homage on their album aids their cause here without a doubt.

I never cared too much for the ethereal super-high-register trilling and swooping and stuff. I like the fact that she's singing in a much straighter style when she has this amazing voice. It's like a guitarist choosing not to put a superfast hammered solo in or some Jazzanova type programmer just doing a four-four beat. It's refreshing.

Saw them once at the Union Chapel and she and some mates were dressed up as '40s ice cream sellers or cigarette girls by the queue. Having a right laugh and smiling lots.

And, as we've learnt from discussions of Gwen Steffani, women who are older than 30 should just give it up, start wearing baggy woolens and take up knitting... right?

This whole "she's not better than she should be!" thing is quite odd, I must say. Thank God for Tim Finney, say I, and not for the first time.

oh and jamie OTM... misogyny served up once again to a woman above the age of 18. maybe we should start tapping the womb for women singers, that way they can have more than 10 years career in the male run music business without being called out on it.

"i have noticed goldfrapp are increasingly rubbing people up the wrong way these days, and not only on this thread. i think the essential reason for this is that even the musically illiterate can clearly hear that not only are train, strict machine, and ooh la la essentially the same tune; the tune in question is not even theirs. there is a huge contrivance at work here and it is offensively transparent; these tracks have been a pretty blatant succession of attempts to get the mortgage paid off - to "crack it". of course that's all well and good if you hold your hands and admit the fact but in this case the whole thing is dressed up in a tissue thin veneer of credibility whereas in actual fact the records are indistinguishable from those of [...]"

as he says, it wouldn't be so bad if the frapp weren't presented as hot shit.

it wouldn't be so bad if the frapp weren't presented as hot shit.

hmmmmm. maybe the reason i can't get into Superpitcher is because i heard too many people on ILM say how amazing he was?

"it wouldn't be so bad if the frapp weren't presented as hot shit."

that argument could be used for almost everything in music... FACT.

You're right Steve, and I don't think the schaffel thing would be an issue if "Ooh La La" didn't feel like a regression, a contraction of possibilities - both "Train" and "Strict Machine" were much more interesting production-wise. I listened to both today and I was struck again by how detailed they are, how dynamic. And I thought Goldfrapp's "We Are Glitter" remix of the latter was a really interesting attempt to make the track simultaneously more rock and more dance. "Ooh La La" by contrast seems content to plow the field that they've already conquered - compared to the huge leap b/w the first two albums it seems like a backwards step.

(vaguely related maybe is the point people have brought up re Boards of Canada's new album cover - if all three album covers were similar it would seem like an expression of artistic purity or something, but the switch back to a Music Has The Right/... look after Geogaddi comes across as a regression).

Re schaffel generally, Marcello (who takes the position that stuff like "Strict Machine" was inherently always-already hackneyed) and I have argued about this, and I think the split centers around the fact that he considers Goldfrapp, Richard X et. al. to be straightforwardly reviving Gary Glitter/T. Rex etc. whereas I think the existence of schaffel (notably non-glammy schaffel) complicates things, and makes every schaffel-glam effort at least partly a combination of old and new.

The problem with the glammification that schaffel has undergone post-"I Walk"/"Monstertruckdriver"/"Train" is that producers increasingly act as if Marcello's take is correct, increasingly ignore the potential for making interesting and new-sounding grooves in favour of adhering more and more strictly to a glam-revivalist aesthetic... consequently what was a breath of fresh air has become a bit of a drain on inspiration. I have a general-application theory on this (basically comparing schaffel and 2-step and the way they both have worked with genre affectatios) which is germinating but i won't bore everyone with it now. Suffice to say that I don't think it's a coincidence that the schaffel tracks I still listen to regularly (e.g. Mayer's "Amabile" AKA best tune ever, the Rauschmiere mix of 2Raumwohnung's "Ich Weiss Warum"...) are those which play down the glam connection.

I'm reminded a bit of what Simon R once said about pre-2step speed garage: "Such a simple idea--fusing the best of house and jungle--simple, and once the initial surprise has worn off, kind of obvious."

No. It doesn't work like that. Not for me anyway - and I worry about those for whom it does. I expect I will like them though.

Linda Lamb is also so much better than Goldfrapp, except her schaffel take probably works better because it comes from the "Call Me"(/"Way Down"?) template rather than the overworked Rock & Roll Pt 2 one.

Horses for courses. But conversely I'm surprised at how anyone manages to enthuse about electroclash/microhouse/electrohouse so much all the time - considering my own reactions to so much of it now. I could pick ten to twenty tracks from all three and then it's like why bother with anything else? I'm actually finding most of what I hear in these fields really quite staid and boring now. granted there's a lot I haven't heard, but 4 times out of 5 I pick something out from the massive threads for them where it seems everything attracts ott hyperbole, and I'm unmoved.

Someone remind me why 'Train' and 'Strict Machine' are not great pop songs - either on paper, in execution or with hindsight. Or why 'Black Cherry' isn't a successful meld of the popular and the avant-garde - without using media-fuelled projections such as 'smug' or 'clever' or 'pretentious' (not always bad things in the right context anyway), assuming it CAN be done?

which? which?

i think 'black cherry' (the song) and 'hairy trees' are GREATE. but i don't like the cut of alison's jib, is all.

Alison Goldfrapp is, like Annie Lennox before her, a classic exemplar of the "Buggins' turn" principle in British state/Government pop; an indifferent singer who was deemed to have paid her dues and is therefore to be put forward and marketed as the face of acceptable "alternative" pop. This was accomplished by paying no more than lip service to the transient musical trends of their respective times, and the dozens of Brit awards which Goldfrapp will doubtless accumulate over the next decade will serve to demonstrate nothing more profound, and nothing less depressing, than the fact that corporate Stasist lickarses will always win out over true art.

i love mum and dad, and have always felt that they were the best band in the world that was universally ignored, but referencing them in the case of goldfrapp is kind of pointless. mum and dad were far more into prog influences especially van der graff, not to mention the love of bruce haack and film soundtracks. mum and dad were a far more unique breed than goldfrapp admittedly so comparing is silly, completely different worlds.

everyone should read the review of goldfrapp at the guardian, finally someone gets it right.

I HAVE SEEN... THE FUTURE... JUST... TOO... BRIGHT

Missing the point entirely again there. Well done.

Does one person doing it 20 or 30 years ago mean it should never be done again? Never be played around with by someone else? There would be no new music at all if everyone felt this way. The shuffle rhythm was a good idea and should be used as and when people see fit to use it. Likewise, the influence of Grace Jones.

Alison Goldfrapp and Annie Lennox are really good vocalists, technically, creatively. And they both chose to put this to use in the pop domain instead of staying in the shadows where it's easier to avoid derision. Plus to be fair to AG, Lennox rarely looked that pleased when performing either, seemed a pretty key part of the aesthetic dynamic, prior to 'There Must Be An Angel' at least. Perhaps 'Ooh La La' is Goldfrapp's equivalent of that track. It won't be quite as big but a significant move even if there's less invention in it.

i never have felt that they were deep and profound as tons of other people that i like, but i think they are great fuck-friendly fun, and she has a voice to knock things over to boot.

etc.

Still, you'll all be agreeing with me in six months' time once you've taken your thrice-played copies of Supernature to your local second-hand dealer.

i could list about a hundred people like that over the past year alone that i think are pulling the wool over a collective's eyes.

"Still, you'll all be agreeing with me in six months' time once you've taken your thrice-played copies of Supernature to your local second-hand dealer."

the same could probably be said for people like grace jones records back in the day if she had actually sold enough to resell. as much as i might like her, most people that i know think she was a total scam and fraud and not worth spit... these are older friends of mine from ny that actually spent time with her clubbing. they basically refer to her as "that joke", sort of like rupaul... and no this is not my opinion, i like her.

please do not encourage Uncle Joe over there...

"In 2005, the archetypal British pop star is Rachel Stevens, who has some of the best songs money can buy, yet the personality of a boiled egg."

Not bad, except that in 2005, the archetypal British pop star is actually James Blunt (also an engineered con).

So now that people hate pop stars who have 'boring' personalities (Rachel) and they hate pop stars with 'interesting' personalities (Alison), I presume they will no longer be listening to any new pop music?

Dream on, kidda.

(stevem xpost)

you're not keeping up with the kids! they don't want faux-wacky wonky popism nowadays! they want "real" "sensitive" songs sung by "real" people like coldplay and keane and j blunt and j em!

or if you're in south london, they just listen to american r&b 24/7.

Ihaven't heard this record. Neither that useless prat who does the morning show on r1 or zane lowe have played it (this = where i hear pop these days, listening to the radio in the van)

they just did a few party type things. i saw them at liverpool academy. u will gather from my previous comments i was none too enamoured. i'm not a member of the cool police but honestly there was something so desparate about the whole thing. was a bit of a cringer to be honest. and the crowd were proper lunkheads. mind you the support band, the shortwave set, were great, though proper odball.

i can't believe someone is criticising music because they think a man who may wear a burtons jacket might possibly like it. what guff.

first it's crap because it's in swing time. then it's crap because she didn't like you when you interviewed her. now it's crap because the wrong people might like it. hasn't anyone got any real reasons?

-- bill the roof (problematic22...), August 12th, 2005.

can you elaborate bill? wjat made it desperate?
i don't get you. and what are lunkheads?

it was just a bit emporer's new clothes, the noise from the stage wasn't anywhere near as impressive as the light show or the posters. there was also a slight karaoke edge to proceedings. alison stopped singing a couple of times and her voice was still belting out of the pa. supernatural indeed.

lunkhead - cerebrally challenged, semi agressive beer boys with contraceptive personalities. it comes with the territory.

and doctor d... you could not be more on it if you fucking tried. i fucking salute you.

this crit. certainly seemed fair when applied to Annie, but the difference between Annie and Goldfrapp live is pretty huge. the desperation thing is interesting - after reading that Grauniad interview i can see why there might be an element of that coming through, but that could make it all the more interesting (given the Cabaret - as opposed to karaoke - nature of the act now) rather than an abject flaw.

Someone remind me why 'Train' and 'Strict Machine' are not great pop songs - either on paper, in execution or with hindsight. Or why 'Black Cherry' isn't a successful meld of the popular and the avant-garde - without using media-fuelled projections such as 'smug' or 'clever' or 'pretentious' (not always bad things in the right context anyway), assuming it CAN be done?

I don't really see Goldfrapp as pop, and it's not out of smugness or pretention though that's the right ballpark. It's the knowingness, and sure you can say the PSBs or whoever were "knowing" but there is no emotion in any of Goldfrapp's records, they're just pure pastiche.

There are very very few bands who make me criticise that and who make me really feel tempted to say "style over substance", but Goldfrapp are one. It's a really damning criticism of them and I can't really escape it.

Ronan this might be a plausible criticism of the big singles but Black Cherry was almost over-ripe with emoting (and not merely a pastiche of emoting, although of course the natural criticial conclusion when you don't like an emotional piece of music is that it's fake...). I really do believe that hearing their glam tracks in the context of their other stuff gives said glam tracks rather different resonances.

Contra Doctor D I'm passionately committed to over-analysis, but I agree that an obsession with caricatures of the "wrong" people liking something is one of the less convincing argumentative weapons deployed in this thread. At the end of the day most people in the world are pretty shit and a lot of them like awesome music.

...which is better than nothing, perhaps. I want to hear the full record because of how much I love the scraps contained herein, it sounds sharper and sleeker than before, and less concerned with being electroclash or schaffel or whatever than with being eminently loveable mass-appeal pop music to sit alongside Kylie/GA/whobloodyever at the top end of the charts and obviously the five year business plan and ruthless careerist scheming that have led to her manoeuvring herself into this position makes her worse than hitler but I think this is delectable stuff, more immediate and wily and consistent than everything (by them) that has come before it, and so I am excited.

(xpost)

One can always turn these sorts of factual/historical tidbits around to service one's position - Jesus's crucifiction as a criminal isn't the defeat of his movement but the very foundational cornerstone! etc.

The only pop war going on at that time was the Osmonds versus the Partridges, and to a lesser extent Slade versus the Sweet.

It seems to me that Alison quite likely saw what Richard and Rachel did with 'Some Girls' and thought she could do it so much better. I certainly prefer the idea of Goldfrapp as shameless pop tarts than Phillip Starcke coffeetable electroclash.

Of course, "Celebrate" by Simple Minds predated "Train" by some 23 years, and "Spirit In The Sky" by some ten years further.

There is no war between Goldfrapp and electro-house/schaffel producers either - T. Raumschmiere/Ewan Pearson/Jacques Lu Cont/Benni Benassi/Tiefschwarz all to thread.

The actual lack of wars in both cases is the precise point: There is no necessary connection between what is factually occurring on the ground and how people construct oppositions in their head.

I heard "Ooh La La" again yesterday and rather liked it, albeit fleetingly. I think I will withold final judgment until the album.

The only other worthwhile comparison is that "Ooh La La" got to number four, just like "Virginia Plain."

goldfrapp are like the last japanese metaphors to come stumbling out of the figuarative forest here though, aren't they? it's kind of: hey! art school! obvious fakery! wow! haven't we had these exact references 3,487 times already?

The Marcello/NRQ reacharound is one of the more queasily weird tagteams of ILx, isn't it?

In order: yes, imminently, misprint for "Dadapop"

"It could be a lot worse, look at [x]" is a weak argument of course, but seeing as Goldfrapp are being singled out as if they've committed particularly heinous pop crimes... Is the issue here that Goldfrapp seem to those who hate them as a group they could almost like were they not hateful, and hence their hatefulness is exacerbated? And, likewise, is it the fact that they're not so openly generic as the Kaiser Chefs that makes their perceived "hidden" genericism so offensive?

BTW Marcello I finally heard "Hide & Seek" (and promptly remembered that I'd heard it before on The O.C.). I'm surprised you like it!

would be useful if you referred to what it was and why here or on the board (instead of just the blog) generally.

imminently

good luck with that one

misprint for "Dadapop"

most of it surely isn't that meta

Too busy mopping up all the blood and gore!

My fandom is based on Black Cherry, which I think is a very good album, not a life-changing one. I love the arrangements and production: thick and viscous and swirly and always suggestive of depth (in the strictly spatial sense) - this is what unites the fragmented stylistic detours on the album, from the artifice melancholy of the title track to the alienated shimmer of "Deep Honey" (which is like those early Happy Rhodes girl-in-the-nursery-which-is-really-an-asylym-who-is-really-a-monster synthetic lullabyes) to shuddering mechanical widescreen epic feel of "Tiptoe" to the endlessly redoubling layers of "Train". Oddly Alison's voice is not nearly as crucial to me here as it is on her guest work for Orbital and Tricky (all of which i adore), although I think it complements the music pretty much perfectly.

I thought I did. Like the voice a lot (esp. when she's really using it, tho Alex's point about her under-using it was interesting I thought), since Orbital days natch. Why do I like it? Hard to explain but comes down to that sensuosness in it perhaps, without the overdone melisma, and I think there are traces of emotion in there often, whether subtle (Utopia) or euphoric (Strict Machine). Think the production on the albums is terrific, regardless of how much is borrowed from Morricone/Barry on the first album and late 70s/early 80s electronic producers on the second album. The themes, imagery and general aesthetic conjured up seem quite rich and evocative, always good. Considering these things, complaints such as 'trying too hard to be cool' or whatever just don't really have any effect.

Sweet Dreams My LA Ex > Train/Strict Machine > Some Girls

The themes, imagery and general aesthetic conjured up seem quite rich and evocative, always good. Considering these things, complaints such as 'trying too hard to be cool' or whatever just don't really have any effect.

i think, for me, it's not about getting riled by 'style over substance', and turning this into a major part of enjoying pop, because lots of great music came wrapped in terrible design. it's about *ignoring* all that stuff where possible, and especially on the 'frapp's glam tracks, i find this difficult. i *like* the fact that there's very little style (=substance) to rachel stevens.

Ned go listen to "Are We Here" and concentrate on the section where the beat cuts out and the warm synths come flooding in.

Also I love on "Nothing Left 2" where the brothers loop a little segment of her cooing "oooh ooh oooh ooh" and then this gorgeous little breakbeat comes in momentarily, and then the tune is off again on a rrrravey rrrrush.

This is a bit circular, I did qualify my criticism by saying that it normally would not prevent a band from being good, far from it, but in Goldfrapp's case it just seems to be something a step further down the line from "style over substance". And of course this is all highly subjective but not just from my side of the argument.

That being said I am not an uber-fan, for I now find Felt Mountain boring in what can only be described as a contrived-bourgeoisieMercury-nominee way, and pretty irksome in its occasional carnivalesque whimsy. I went against the general opinion and thought Black Cherry fulfilled much of their initial pomo potential, but haven't heard "Ooh La La" yet, and am currently just glad that she hasn't gone "back" to do something more fanciful or string-laden, what have you. For Alison, the trashier the better, imo

another track sounds has John Foxx / OMD type keyboards and does sound like a complete "One Dove" rip off

...I was unsure whether this was a criticism or not. I do like One Dove a whole lot but then I was about only tiny when they blazed into the popcharts and blissfully unaware of them at the time, I have no real idea how they were regarded then (Select liked them rather a lot, didn't they?)

They had some support from Select/ Vox/ Melody Maker / NME.

But they released their debut album way too late.

They would have had more success if they released the album closer to Primal Scream's Screamadelica album.

did anyone manage to grab it? could someone ysi?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/urban/oneworld/goldfrapp_willsaul.shtml

I've been reading this thread while trying to tease out what this is from my perspective, because while the style-over-substance line of thought rings somewhat true for me re: 'Ooh La La', it's not a criticism I feel v comfortable making given how much those attributes normally appeal to me (including on the best Black Cherry tracks).

I think the 'emotionless' criticism is definitely a red herring, and don't really agree with the 'emotional' defence either: one of Goldfrapp's strengths surely used to be their ability to sidestep the whole messy business of emotion but still move you, like beautiful scenery or something - Alison's voice has never seemed particularly human, but rather than being remotely robotic it's more like distilled ether. This is definitely missing from 'Ooh La La', at any rate.

I wonder how much of this is due to the way they're now so obviously conscious of the role they've been allotted to play by the music press, which seems to be a very one-dimensional reading of what Goldfrapp where doing on Black Cherry: playing up the robovamp/sex kitten/persona-driven aspects of that album, which at the time were derivative but fun, and pulled off well, but which are now just unbearably tedious and clichéd and on the evidence of 'Ooh La La' performed with little to no enthusiasm on Goldfrapp's own part.

Lady Sovereign is heading down a similar route - noting that the media are paying attention to the more cartoonish aspects of what she is, and then jumping on to that surface reading with undue haste, becoming a parody of herself because it's easier. Although with Sov this just manifests itself in less-good songs rather than actively dreadful ones.

ENJOY !!!

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016046/01_Ooh_La_La.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016158/02_Lovely_2_C_U.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016297/03_Ride_A_White_Horse.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016385/04_U_Never_Know.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016577/05_Let_It_Take_You.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016711/06_Fly_Me_Away.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016808/07_Slide_In.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016886/08_Koko.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4016976/09_Satin_Chic.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4017094/10_Time_Out_From_The_World.mp3.html

http://rapidshare.de/files/4017168/11_No_1_.1.mp3.html

THIS FILE IS FORBIDDEN TO BE SHARED! Complaints received.

Quit complaining people!

torrent??

i really wanna hear cant find it any where!

I actually got to Goldfrapp from the Add N To (X)/Mum & Dad connection, I starved to find more records in that electronic glam vein and got what I wanted with "Train" and "Strict Machine" and the whole of "Black Cherry". So, though maybe it's embarrassing to admit it, I actually liked Goldfrapp back then *because* of their derivative glam sound. I liked the idea of people reliving some glam signifiers, and I enjoyed that meme of Moroder being way ahead of his time not only with "I Feel Love" but also with "Son Of My Father"!!!

That's the same reason I liked that Justus Koehncke cover of "Hot Love", and secretly wanted that to become a trend -ambulance chasers releasing albums filled with glam covers sang over slightly reworked schaffel tracks. I would have loved it! (go figure)

Right now, the world isn't precisely starved of updated shuffley, glittery rythms, and since I've been hearing records like that for years I feel a little tired of the formula. Also, I think everyone agrees that "Oh La La" it's not the best take on that trend, huh? But it's not Goldfrapp's fault that I'm a little tired of their influences, or is it?... the fact is, I would have loved "Oh La La" way back in 2001 a lot more than in 2005, and it only means that I heard Cooler's "Supersod" waaay too much some years ago. I still like Goldfrapp and look forward to the album -they are not only 3/4 rythms, even though it's obviously their most appealing feature.

Anyway, I agree with this,

"goldfrapp wouldn't even touch public consciousness if it wasn't for electroclash"

While at the same time thinking that Goldfrapp would have ended doing "Black Cherry" whether electroclash happened or not; I think Goldfrapp are more like a glossy take on the northern electronics *scene*, what some people thought Add N To (X) were by reading a style magazine 50 words review. Or something.

yum, and YES, certainly on Black Cherry.

I downloaded six tracks this morning prior to work, but didn't have time to listen. Now I do. It is exactly what I wanted, glee.

coincidence? or NOT?

!!!!!

etc.

Only Alison Goldfrapp could make the word "Winnebago" sound sexy.

Goldfrapp seems to hold out a promise of something that could result from a tension of sadness and crunching clappy dance-stomp, something Marc Bolan was usually a little too.. proud? or professional? to fully exploit -- although those were different days -- but she elides it too much, or takes the tension for granted. It seems too easy for her. It ought to be harder, and that difficulty should be audible.

Listen to the Jeans Team album instead.

'Lovely 2 C U' is 'Ooh La La' but een more embarrassing, I guess 'Ride A White Horse' could be salvaged but the rest plods so predictably.

I've never given much thought to the albums before - I've enjoyed having them around but my listening was confined to the singles, mostly.

I thought "bill the roof" was pretty OTM.

Possibly the only thing worse is a blinkered, fortysomething door whore trying to hold onto other youths and in the process being mistaken for a musical innovator by solvent retards.

I give it a 10.99

"nothing worse"? are you really sure about this? i was (obviously) short with spencer for saying there's "nothing more important" than defining one's aesthetic, but again, have you thought this one through? "*nothing*"?

Agreed Diego, which is pretty much what I said several postings back... they are a glossed up Add N to X, I mentioned them initially because of the sound inflections that came about more prominently in Black Cherry... and I dispelled the Mum and Dad connection musically as well, as I said Mum and Dad were more prog influenced and a bit of metal as well. :)

I think quite a few people got into her because of those connections. I have not heard the new record yet so I can not say what it is going to do for me, I may totally hate it. I can also completely understand where you are coming from on the time line issue with Ooh La La and I think that might be my problem with it as well.

mrs fiendish has just wafted in to tell me she thinks i'm talking absolute shit and this is a great album.

"no. 1" has completely and utterly lifted the melody (the main synth line) from something else, and it's driving me mad trying to work out what. fuck fuck fuck i hate it when this happens. fuck.

Good job at taking your own advice there.

Also, Alison Goldfrapp apparently killed Marcello's pets at some point in the past. Seriously Marcello, if you hate this that much, ignore the thread or at least make your jabs funny.

(Alt answer: it comes from "Stay" by Lisa Loeb. Or it doesn't.)

you learn something new every day. in my country they are known as "decent tracks."

Actually, it's a shit term, I should stop using it.

this article made me feel very nauseous. i don't want to know about conor mcnicholas likes to have sex to!

yes isn't it? fantastically great. like the first and the second album in a blender. i wish more of it were like this.

well on this... i could say even though i love alison, and no, i have not heard the new record. mum and dad would take it without breaking a sweat. alpinestars... puh-leaseee. once mum and dad plugged in their equipment and chainsaw, and claire let go of one gutteral wail it would be all over! sorry alison, i luv ya, but... damn, mum and dad!

i wish they would do another record, though it seems unlikely. :(

"Keepers" comes from fishing, I'd guess. They're the fish caught that aren't thrown back for being too small. (Thus the usage by women for male lovers, haha.) I can understand the parallel to ripping or downloading an album, but it's been common in record reviews since long before today's digital antics.

(for the Tiefschwarz Dub, the original is not on it)

That Guardian article linked is wretched. Goldfrapp is too "edgy" for sex while Nevermind is the prime shagging album? If anything it's a little too self-consciously "sexy."

In the Tiefschwarz dub I love the string stabs best of all I think. Drama!

Tiefschwarz are kinda threatening to go on a hot streak again, with this and that amazing Freeform Five remix before it.

Really reminiscent of 'Vernon's Wonderland' I thought, so big points there no doubt.

'Ride A White Horse' has a fleeting touch of similarity to Daft Punk's 'Burnin' sneaking in after the chorus. Eurythmics 'Love Is A Stranger' also sprang to mind at one point.

Lovely 2 C U, Fly Me Away and Beautiful seem like the only relatively weak links in comparison. I don't mind 'Ooh La La' at all now.

'All Night Operator' from the 'Ooh La La' is excellent too, really. I will be listening to that along with the best tracks on this album as long as their other work no question.

This is pure coffee table for the most part but it's probably the apex of that (because it's not so forlorn ala 'Dummy' or whatever), in that it does sound great, predictably so, but better than I expected considering the attitudes that pervade them and my own low expectations/pessimism. I suppose this means it sounds impressive when playing in the background without you thinking too much about it. But engaging with it fully provides just as much reward as with any overtly upbeat and energetic pop album that attempts to stride both sides of the leftfield/mainsteam rift in this way.

There is interesting detail spread throughout, as I said above I think Gregory is totally on it production-wise. Eschewing this notion of (laptop) 'edginess' which I don't see as really relevant here, the sound here is glossy and rich but still sharp and deftly switches from warmth to coldness accordingly, to good effect. AG's voice still feels under-used at times and at times feels a bit obscured in the haze generated by 'Let It Take You' and 'Slide In' - maybe it's just that neutral key she drops into so regularly now, akin to Stevens during the verses of 'Some Girls', only naturally sounding much more adept here. She sounds more like herself on U Never Know more than anything else here perhaps, and this is maybe the only track that matches 'Deep Honey' for drama, or 'Crystalline Green' for that 'blown away' effect. Hard to escape that sense of 'Black Cherry afterthoughts' about the whole thing.

I say it's generally an 'up' sort of album but not in the same way the much more obvious and jaunty Robyn album is. It's still too strait-laced and cautious in this respect, but this 'strained joy' thing has worked for other artists (PSBs, Eurythmics) in the past albeit it in somewhat different ways so is not a massive flaw by any means.

I hear "Ooh la la" on the radio quite a bit. I like it, I must admit.

ha, vindication. we listened to it driving up the A9 at the weekend and she decided that on a proper listen the whole thing was in fact quite dull and disappointing.

i also played it to some (very mashed) friends after optimo on sunday - one of whom was a big fan of "black cherry". they made me take it off after three songs and put duran duran on instead. draw your own conclusions.

i think i might have been wrong about this album.

on saturday, in a little cafe in fort william (of all places), they played half the album. and it sounded absolutely fucking great. when we got back in the car, we put it on ... i'm not an audiophile by any means, but the bitrate of the songs on the version i, ehm, acquired is all over the fucking shop, and i think that loss of quality accounts for the "dullness" i referred to above. i don't know what it was, but sitting there in that cafe, drinking an americano and eating a bagel (this was part of a long-running joke about new york being based on fort william), it sounded like one of the best things of the year.

i'm going to buy it. it's the only way i can KNOW.

The idea that "Ooh La La" is some kind of weak link in the Goldfrapp chain seems like the strangest notion ever now. I don't just grudgingly admire this record, I love&adore it.

I also think I may have been wrong about this album.

On Saturday, while wandering beningly around Brighton, I heard it being blasted out of the Rounder Records shop, and it sounded so much more powerful and compelling than it did on the promo which I got sent a couple of months back. It sounded completely of the moment, fit in precisely with the general mood and tenor of the afternoon, of the weather and of the place I was in. So I purchased a Proper Copy of the album (for a tenner, which is yet another thing you can't do in London) and blow me down if it doesn't sound 200 times better than the promo, soundwise and productionwise!

Track 4 in particular hit a raw nerve in me. What I am kind of hoping the next Kate Bush album will sound like.

"No. 1" is the next single. Good choice.

But I did see a bit of Grace Jones on the Sunday. Unfortunately she made us wait a whole hour before appearing (as to be expected I suppose) but 'Slave To The Rhythm' and 'My Jamaican Guy' ALMOST made up for this i.e. they were deep and dense and it was hard to tell what she was singing half the time but she looked suitably Grace Jones (legs 6ft alone, bizarre hats etc.) and it made a good if not great spectacle.

Can't wait to see Goldfrapp live again though to be honest.

I want Alison Goldfrapp to do some demented show-tunes. Diego and I decided on MSN that someone needs to mash up "Slide In" with this year's Swedish Eurovision entry.

But anyway, her as sex kitten is boring. Listening to this, I honestly think Alison Goldfrapp has never had good sex in her life.

?????? What has happened to Marcello?

you people all make me very sad. i can't believe how much time and emotion you all expend on trying to argue your points to one another.

does no one else realize how futile and ridiculous it is to argue something like musical taste, especially in a medium as flat and emotionless as the internet?!? you all just get so fired up. it's really quite baffling.

first off, it's depressing so many people have bad things to say about alison goldfrapp stricly because of who they think she is. none of you know her, how much or how little she enjoys her work, and to dislike someone's work because you have preconceived notions of their personality is unfair and, arguably, immature.

secondly, does any ONE person in the world agree with me that any album should be listened to objectively, as its own work, without the bias of past works, whether it's the artist's previous album or something that came out three decades ago?

thirdly, i have noticed that people like most of you seem to be OBSESSED with genre. you have to fit everything into this tight little nitch so you can analyze and criticize and demonize it to death to fill these bizarre holes in your lives, or something...

i just don't get it. you all seem so angry. if you hate supernature then who the fuck cares if other people like it?!?! if you love it, then why do you care if other people don't get it? if you think they're just rehashing black cherry, then don't buy it OR steal from the artist. what a novel idea.

.....but you should also take into account that this is only their third album and they've already been more diverse than 90% of the pop acts out there.

that is all.

man, i can't wait until you all tear me apart and call me a douche bag because i'm right and it pisses you off.

anyway, woah: thanks for helping me see the light. i'm taking a vow of silence.

Come And Get It is possibly the worst album ever in terms of track order yes (but one of the best otherwise!).

others think 'Chemistry' beats them both (and thinking about 'It's Magic' again right now i can see their point).

Never heard Chemistry. I must be the only person on this board who hasn't.

Wouldn't mind hearing it though, if its as good as everyone says.

Probably too harsh a distinction but it felt easy enough!

re: come and get it, the track listing it was eventually released with was strange and wrong.

What would've the 'right' listing be for CAGI, Lex?

2. I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
3. Crazy Boys
10. Je M'Apelle
1. So Good
6. All About Me
5. Negotiate With Love
11. Funny How
8. Nothing Good About This Goodbye
12. Every Little Thing
7. Secret Garden
13. Dumb Dumb
4. I Will Be There
9. Some Girls

but 'Waiting Game' should've been on this, perhaps in place of 'Some Girls'

still prefer "Number 1" b-side "Beautiful" to anything on the album.

and I like the track order of Come And Get It:
helps having the weaker tracks at the end of 'side one' (won't ever be on vinyl now?), although even weakest song "All About Me" doesn't spoil the flow. and I can see that "I Will Be There" is a natural closer, but I'm glad they went out on a cheeky/fun ("Every Little Thing") to keep 'em guessing meta-Rachel mystery ("Dumb Dumb").

1 so good
2 crazy boys
3 je m'appelle
4 i said never again (but here we are)
5 nothing good about this goodbye
6 some girls (extended version)
7 every little thing
8 dumb dumb
9 funny how
10 negotiate with love
11 secret garden
12 all about me
13 i will be there
....
14 sweet dreams my la ex

back to Goldfrapp. the DVD version has some fun docu stuff. Gregory looks not like how one my expect. Their studio looks great tho.

just listened to those final two Rachel tracks again: brilliant.

OTM. Who cares about 'album flow' when you can simply press >. Indeed CAGI was my favorite album of 2005.

Supernatural's remixes have been quite good and "Beautiful" should have been on the album instead of one of those waste-of-spaces like "Lovely 2 C U" or "Satin Chic".

See, this is a very major reason why music's going down the toilet now. Maybe Danger Mouse was right; maybe we should all go back to cassettes.

though empirical evidence (ie this thread) suggests that since everyone has a different flow preference it should just be up to us to rearrange the songs accordingly.

token goldfrapp comment - the c2 rmx of 'fly me away' is so gorgeous!

and Lex, I reckon your order looks pretty good, although I don't remember all of the songs on CAGI. And take out "secret garden" and "all about me" altogether.... err..so that's pretty different then.

I think maybe the whole album is basically minor tweaks to an fairly straightforward stomp-glitter theme and it reminds me of Kylie Fever in this respect (although the Fever singles were probably more spread out and all seemed fantastically worthwhile and Justified and self-contained and loving attention lavished on the videos in a way that the non-"Ooh La La" Supernature ones haven't).

When Supernature came out I was eagerly anticipating that it was likely to be a GA/CAGI (pre-CAGI, admittedly)-tastic stack of standalone succulent pop songs rather than expecting it to be the kind of record that was preoccupied with 'flow' or whatever (although obviously the two aren't mutually exclusive, and perhaps Chemistry has since illustrated this best); I would have been totally happy with something more disjointed and less cohesive or whatever than the previous two Goldfrapp albums, which I'd felt were both hampered a bit by the occasional, um, uneventful noodle. In the event I think Supernature is probably as 'flowy' as both predecessors, hence something like "Ride A White Horse" (my initial favourite on the album, still sounds entirely mighty now) stumbling a bit when singléd out in a half-arsed stylee and limping onto the radio and into the charts and off again very quickly for no particular reason.

I probably love this record infinitely more now than I did at first because I'm no longer listening for future singles (and I always do this with new albums by People Who Get In The Charts and it's self-defeating really) so I can bask in the heavy sparkly luxury of the whole thing and now it does sound like the best Goldfrapp album by a mile, and the album I wanted them to make (tighter, more dynamic, 'etc') and it doesn't matter that lots of it sounds the same as lots of the rest of it because the joy is in the aforementioned minor tweaks.

(also it feels less drama-school-hats than Black Cherry really, which is a good thing)

01 Satin Chic (Bombay Mix by the Shortwave Set)
02 Lovely 2 C U (T.Raumschmiere Remix)
03 Ooh La La (Benny Benassi Remix Extended)
04 You Never Know (Múm Remix)
05 Satin Chic (Through the Mystic Mix, Dimension 11 by the Flaming Lips)
06 Number 1 (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Main Remix)
07 Fly Me Away (C2 Rmx 4)
08 Ride a White Horse (Ewan Pearson Disco Odyssey Part 1)
09 Number 1 (Múm Remix)
10 Ride a White Horse (FK-EK Vocal Version)
11 Slide In (DFA Remix)
BONUS TRACK:
12 Strict Machine (We Are Glitter Mix)

mum remix?!?! lolol!

------------------

i love the phrase but...what?

http://www.michaelcorcoran.info/pics/roflcopter.gif

territory.

Triple disc 20th (!) anniversary edition incoming.

They’ve made a new remix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxsOUJij49U-