Discovery vs. Rooty

I mean.. Rooty's not bad, but let's be honest here..

prefer "Rooty." but then again, I really hate "one more time."

Holding any record from the last ten years up to Discovery is pretty unfair IMO

good poll but who are we kidding here

british people vs. robots

voted rooty to be difficult

in all honesty its definitely not been victim to the same insane amounts of overplay in the past couple years

Holding any record from the last ten years up to Discovery is pretty unfair IMO

Fixed.

it would take something spectacular to stop Discovery being my favourite album of the decade, so. but Rooty might be my favourite British album of the decade. i stopped listening to albums in 2001 btw.

can you stop posting to ILM then

i wish :(

I voted Rooty because I don't want this to be too much a bloodbath.

me too lol. might even vote rooty again tomorrow!

Early polls indicate: Rooty in landslide victory.

That's what I'm thinking.

was going to vote Discovery because it has better songs but rooty might be a better album.

Romeo has one of the best video clips ever.

these came out right before and after my 21st birthday, the summer before i took a year off from school to live with friends in a huge college town. so many good times while these two cds were playing.

^^ Like many, I loved Discovery, but considered it to be front-loaded. It wasn't until I started reading about, and listening to, the live stuff from last year that I started seriously revisiting the second half of the record. And goddam if it didn't blow me away all over again. That album is the gift that keeps on giving.

er.. xxpost to gr8080

homework vs. remedy??

Human After All vs. Crazy Itch Radio

Discovery, but both are hella dope

^

these are like the only two canonical dance albums i don't like :(

i mean, rooty obv. still only really like about two daft punk tracks, none off discovery as far as i know. rooty is the least good basement jaxx album but it's still ok.

i mean least good basement jaxx album out of their big three, the radio itch thing doesn't exist to me

these are like the only two canonical dance albums i don't like

Is there a canonical dance albums thread? There should be.

I went Rooty on this for album-as-album reasons.

discovery is so much better but i am feeling rooty when they're paired up like this

that sentence makes no sense but i guess i'm falling into the "discovery is overplayed" camp

discovery is a stronger overall album imo, but rooty is much more fun.

rooty!

Discovery better on paper
Rooty better in practice

interesting how much Discovery seems to resonate with young Americans or is this gateway album to dance music (despite the DP not being American can o' worms). or maybe it's just ILM. when i first got here it was Tom Ewing leading the 'omg best album ever' parade for it but 99% of the time now it's US dudes treating it like the Sgt Pepper of House.

listened to 'rooty' for the first time in years last week. its brilliant indeed and its better than i thought it was but my heart belongs to 'discovery'. there was quite a few people disspointed with 'rooty' when it came out, no?

you could say that about 'Discovery' just as easily (half the people who bought and adored 'Homework' for starters)

yeah i know it's always boring bringing up pitchfork but didnt they give it a v average review and then put it top (or almost top) of some list of the best albums 2000-04?

Pitchfork review of Rooty.

Who the fuck was Malcolm Seymour III. Google coughs up nothing more recent than 2004.

i killed the fool

The album's single, the creepily Janet-esque "Romeo," commences the program on a bitter note.

so many things wrong with this sentence

these are both great albums, this is a bit of a toughy, i mean obv discovery but i kind of agree that rooty has a bit more shine right now cuz i've heard discovery stuff so much over the last while while poor b jaxx seem so unloved these days.

god what is the deal with that rooty review.

COME ON MALCOLM

what does creepily janet-esque even mean?? it's creepy to sound like janet?

Best Daft Punk album vs second worst Basement Jaxx album. No contest.

2nd best album by both.

Man that Human After All vs Crazy Itch Radio poll is gonna drive you mad.

Discovery is so ridiculously overrated.

Lex, do you dislike the Robyn song on Crazy Itch Radio and "Take Me Back To Your House"? Both of those pretty much make the album for me (along with "Run For Cover" but I totally get why that would not be anyone's favorite song).

lol 'second worst', makes it sound like they've released over 10 albums as opposed to just 4

there's not a track on 'Rooty' I dislike (which is making me re-evaluate greater love for 'Remedy' love more because e.g. 'Bingo Bango' is kinda weak really. i don't know how/why someone would've been disappointed with 'Rooty' if they loved 'Remedy' tho.

with 'Discovery' there's only one track i can't be doing with (the closer).

Man that Human After All vs Crazy Itch Radio poll is gonna drive you mad.

Jaxx remix of 'Technologic' beats both

what does creepily janet-esque even mean?? it's creepy to sound like janet?

i know, that sentence makes so little sense that it doesn't even get to wrongness.

i can't remember any of the songs on crazy itch radio now...am definitely sure i didn't like the robyn one though (as i dislike robyn generally).

remedy is just a mighty, mighty work.

because it is one of the pinnacles of postmodern excess and simultaneously transcends that.

I really think if you're going to say something like this, you need to say what you mean by "postmodern excess" and how Discovery is both the epitome of it and transcendent of it, otherwise you come dangerously close to coming across as saying "I like it and I am very very high".

I think what Dan said is, certainly in practice, why I liked Rooty more at the time and still do now. That makes it sound a bit like a work that rewards people who can't pay attention but their ATD is frequently super-high and massively rewarding (tho no more no less than on Remedy or Kish Kash).

dan preferring rooty is like a caricature of how i see dan's taste (minus the goth-y parts) but everyone voting discovery is like a caricature of how overblown that record's rep has become

i still love both tho

Yeah, it's pretty obvious between the two albums which one is pandering to my musical tastes!

"This one sounds like accessible French house music, while this other one sounds like someone threw Prince, New Order and Cece Peniston into a blender. Which one do you like more?"

on some level i 'know' that discovery is bigger, and feels more 'important,' and probably has stuck with me and has less rough edges or however you want to explain it, is less 'everything in a blender!' and more focused

im just enjoying the contrarianism of preferring the record that hasnt been played to death the past couple years

"I really think if you're going to say something like this, you need to say what you mean by "postmodern excess" and how Discovery is both the epitome of it and transcendent of it, otherwise you come dangerously close to coming across as saying "I like it and I am very very high"."

thank you for the belly laughs.

i sincerely do believe it and i am not very very high unless lack of sleep counts.

the simplest way i can put it which is not plain enough is:

"postmodern excess" = everything about discovery quotes something else; it is top quality pastiche
transcendent of it = you can safely ignore the above and the album loses none of its power because the musicality is so strong

imo all the best works of art embody this quality (contradiction, paradox) in some form or another.

so it's The Ramones of house?

summing up discovery as "this sounds like accessible french house music" makes you sound like a reductive doofus

That's what it sounds like, though!

so it's The Ramones of house?

No, that is officially Mylo's Destroy Rock'n'Roll

For me, it's Discovery, no contest. It still sounds amazing. I don't think Rooty is even the best Basement Jaxx record.

yeah, Kish Kash 4 life : D

is my 2nd fave after Kish Kahs tho

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol i knew yall were contrarian but this is pretty amazing

― Mohammed Butt (max), Thursday, September 25, 2008 10:41 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha i guess it was just the loud ones

The big oppositions people are setting up in this thread can get kinda ridiculous. Here's a different tack:

I think what makes Discovery so remarkable to me is that in the best songs there's a unified combination of groove/song/sound/mood into a single overwhelming monolithic concept that possesses an undeniable force or momentum. "Digital Love" most obviously: the way the central riff emerges from the EQing, interacts with the vocals, blasts off into a ridiculous keytar solo, and collapses into that astonishing breakdown... It's like, as a listener, you're being carried along on this primal, unstoppable upsurge of emotion, and that effect has some air of inevitability to it, like the blueprint for this song was set down in a cave somewhere several eons ago, and has just been waiting for the chance to emerge. And maybe this last point is key: on this record Daft Punk frequently feel like they're tapping into something much larger than themselves, like a modest science experiment that accidentally and unintentionally perfects a method for nuclear fusion - very much 'Discovery' rather than 'Creativity'. See also the central riff in 'Aerodynamic' which surely is the sound of the engine at the centre of the sun. There's almost an impersonal quality to this music, in the sense that it 'transcends' (to use tricky's term!) any specific content, quality of context - like, if you don't feel the entire content of your existence summed up in this music it's because your existence is too small, too partial, crucially flawed even.

Basement Jaxx never feel this way, but that's not at all a criticism. One thing that doesn't get talked much about the Jaxx is how personal their records sound. Perhaps because when people talk about 'personal' or 'intimate' music what they mean is that the music constructs a persona so vivid and so sympathetic that the listener feels like they're close enough to touch them. BJ don't offer a 'persona' as such (to the extent that they're there, they're multiple, and the duo give a lot of space to their singers to help define this) but the music feels so obviously, unambiguously the product of their own creative effort, every sound feels absolutely stamped with their creative personality - and it's as if there are no barriers shaping or moulding this personality, it's just streaming forth in what ever form it wishes to take (which is partly why critics deride them for being wilfully perverse). This effect is heightened on Rooty which is neither checked by an allegiance to the house form as Remedy was, nor devoted to song-structure as Kish Kash was. So there are house anthems and songs, but these choices don't feel conscious at all, it's just a snapshot of the inner workings of the minds of the music makers. My last comment is a bit telling actually: BJ's music is music I can feel quite rockist about, it prompts me to marvel at the ingenuity and scope and tirelessness of its creators. But maybe this is the kind of area where rockist principles stand convicted of being underutilised rather than overutilised: it rarely occurs to us ask whether music such as this can offer some sort of charismatic personality (as opposed to persona) - and it's precisely here where the duo excel. Unlike Daft Punk, the Jaxx never let me forget this is their world I've stepped into, but at the same time they make me want to forget. I want to reorder the universe such that "Romeo" and "All I Know" become my songs, not theirs, my logic not theirs.

The competing feelings these records offer are hard to choose between. Discovery has that grand romantic feel of the world spirit of history tugging you forward: forget yourself and your puny existence, become unified within something much bigger than you are. Rooty is a spirited defence of the notion that it is difference (from ourselves) that makes beauty and enjoyment possible. In this particular case, most of the time I side with the former, not because it's better, but because on some muso-philosophical level I already agree with Basement Jaxx, and simply don't expect a strategy such as Discovery to work on me. The fact that it defeats me so easily imbues it with an evil genius quality that gives the record a slight edge for me.

has there ever even been a nice big post on ILM that explains why Discovery deserves this level of love?

was gonna post a link to Tim's old Skykicking review but don't think that's necessary now. brillant stuff right there.

I guess the reason why I disagree with that take on Discovery is that I've never felt that the mood of the album was in any sense an undeniable force. It just felt like a vaguely-cheesy house album to me when I first heard it, particularly when compared to Homework, and I never have understood why it affects others so much and doesn't touch me at all.

Basically, I equate it with that Avalanches album that is loved by everyone in the tiny world I inhabit except for me. I think it's grossly, massively overrated but I've given up hope that I'll find anyone who agrees with me.

fwiw, I too dislike the Avalanches album.

discovery is the bomb diggity

i like the avalanches album but agree its way overrated.

also: hi cameron.

overrated by whom? that record has more haters on here than bjaxx or daft punk

"overrated" in ILM speak can mean pretty much anything, as long as it at least means "there is someone somewhere in the world who likes this record more than me."

put me in the avalanche hater column

put me in the shady 'SITL>Rooty>Discovery' nook

posts very much in character

I guess the reason why I disagree with that take on Discovery is that I've never felt that the mood of the album was in any sense an undeniable force. It just felt like a vaguely-cheesy house album to me when I first heard it, particularly when compared to Homework, and I never have understood why it affects others so much and doesn't touch me at all.

Basically, I equate it with that Avalanches album that is loved by everyone in the tiny world I inhabit except for me. I think it's grossly, massively overrated but I've given up hope that I'll find anyone who agrees with me.

all this otm, i also hate that avalanches album - like not just "this is blah and doesn't move me", like discovery, but active "this is fucking annoying bullshit apart from 'frontier psychiatrist'" hatred

hey lex

it's great how we all get on despite being so fucking different

I can't believe that the one Avalanches track Lex likes is "Frontier Psychiatrist" - Lex, that's like the one big slide into indie-approved sniggering amidst almost an entire album of pop-approved wide-eyed sincerity!

do people who like Discovery but not SITL like 'Live At Dominoes'?

I don't really like Live At Dominoes - it reminds me of one of the dozens of vague imitators Daft Punk spawned, who have the mistaken belief that sounding a bit like Discovery means they'll automatically be as good.

funny that seeing as it was released before (altho not very long before) Discovery.

Yeah I'm not really saying that's what the Avalanches were trying to achieve, it's more that that one track reminds me of a load of subsequent bad corny-indie-fuck Daft Punk bandwagon jumping nonsense.

SITL = SILY??

yes. don't know where i'm getting SITL from. i need to start eating before 1pm.

xpost such as? (i'm genuinely curious)

'Live At Dominoes' is a trippier or blurrier (but in no way weaker) take on what something like 'Crescendolls' was tapping into

Haha this thread is a revelation!

I never knew that so many people didn't like The Avalanches; I think I took Tim's view of it, mixed it in with the praise from an IRL friend, and blindly superimposed it on everyone else who mentioned it.

Avalanches beat either of these

See? I bet that actually says "The Avalanches are super-overrated, you're right."

maybe part of the problem there is they only have the one album and it gets eulogised as a one-off instant classic - as time goes by it's cult status grows on that basis (a bit like Endtroducing until The Private Press - i always think of SILY as the FUN Endtroducing). i wouldn't be that bothered if they never do release a second LP. with Discovery i did like it overall but was really keen for them to put something else out sooner rather than later (but figured they'd need another 4 years as they had before), and after Human After All this just intensified. at the other end of the scale Basement Jaxx kept knocking out albums every 2 years (like the Chems) until after Kish Kash which was just re-assuring and fwiw i can look at them as providing the best first three albums out of any artist i care about in my lifetime (altho maybe Portishead can finally rival them now).

But ILM is the only place where anyone remembers Since I Left You!

so much tl;dr here

ts;dc

blaow

Not sure I'd be able to choose between Since I Left You and Discovery... Love Rooty too but not nearly as much.

too SMUG; didn't care

I voted for Rooty, incidentally

^ this