The PMX Subspace Communication Station
LCD Soundsystem - Webster Hall 6/10
First night out with loud music in a while. Went to Webster Hall to see LCD Soundsystem. I don't know why, but the male LCD fans are all abnormal in size. The place was filled with stinky, short monkey men under 5"4 and skinny, sweaty tall boys 6'5" and over. Very odd to watch such an odd crowd of white men trying to dance.
What can I say about this show?
I really love LCD Soundsystem and appreciate immensely what James Murphy is putting out there. The first fifteen minutes of the set I felt transported back to the better memories I have of the mid 1980s, when I was very young and the post-punk sound wasn't tired out, prior to the 90's onslaught of big guitar bands. I was exhilirated by it, actually. I felt like I'm guessing I would have felt seeing New Order for the first time in the 80s.
It felt like being young again.
This wasn't a retro feeling or a sentimental feeling at all. It was the return of hope for the future of music. That's what I'm talking about. I felt like James Murphy had somehow really managed to keep all of the spirit and energy that musical period recalls for me with him despite the intervening years and gowing up. I'm hooked.
Watching, I was thinking about how badly I want to get back to work, and that's always a good sign. I was also thinking about how great it was for the headliner to go on at 9pm. That's hilarious.
The rest of the show? The energy in the performace was great. The playing, fine. I think Murphy is a great vocalist and frontman. I had fun. But I have to say, the sound was a disappointment. I know that's such a stupid criticism, but it really held the evening back. I was so excited about the show in the first place that I was completely willing to overlook anything. But this was big interference. We stood just in front of the soundboard, and I don't think it was a mixing issue. I can only describe it as a whole lot of distorted midrange. Everything - bass, guitar, synths, voice - competing for the same few khz. At times it was just painful.
While wearing earplugs, there was more of James Murphy, kick drum, some bass (not that much though) and no synths/guitars. Without earplugs, the synths sounded just like noise without any tone at all. If the drummer was slamming the cymbals, all was lost. There was tremendous high end in the room for those of us who can still hear high end (and after show after show working a tour, who knows how well anyone working on sound can hear high end anymore, really). Quickly, in went the ear plugs. The bass tone was very DC-punk or AM-Rep sounding - a great sound that I love a lot, but in this context it was just lost. The guitar also had a great tone, when you could hear it alone. But when all the instruments were playing together, everything was just a harsh tinny mush. I was frustrated for them.
Maybe it was the room. I've never seen a band in there before tonight. The previoius act sounded pretty bad, but I thought it was just opening band sound and didn't think much of it. I don't know, but I do know about difficulties getting everything heard live, and I just thought with the kind of music LCD Soundsystem is, this wouldn't be an issue. I thought, low boomy bass, clear synths with a lot of wavy or retro tone, prominent vocals, and sparse guitar peppered throughout. Silly me - instead it sounded like a punk rock show in a small club! Now that I write it, that's funny. With what I've read of Murphy and his musical roots, its fitting that they should sound that way.
One very bad thing. For ambience during the set Webster Hall would take their 750 different spotlights and flash them on and off strobe style (but slow) into the crowd's faces for the entire song, every other song. That completely sucks. Maybe if you're on ecstasy it's cool but I think more likely it induces seizures. Every time it happened I'd have to close my eyes, which wasn't even good enough. I could see strobing through my eyelids. I had to actually put my hand over my eyes until the song was over. After the third song, I noticed half the audience doing the same thing every time. What the fuck? That wasn't an LCD Soundsystem thing - they were doing it for the opening band too. Just thinking about it annoys me. Not the intended effect, I imagine. So much for light design.
Shit, I'm not even sure why I bother to critique it. I did enjoy myself, it's not that. I will go see them again if I get a chance because overall I thought it was worth seeing. And the first fifteen minutes of hope is worth all the rest of that. and LCD is out there doing it - which is a hell of a lot more than I can say. For now anyway.
posted by Amy Jacob
6/10/2005 11:49:00 PM Got something to say about it?Go on then.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
For the very, very pmx-curious. For everyone else, skip this post.
I'm so happy to hear from those of you out there who still get curious about what we're up to. Keep emails coming to me at amy at prosolarmechanics dot com. This post is for you.
Now and then.
The infamous mystery album that I recorded with Pieter K oh, let's just say a while ago now, has an actual release, uhmm, timeframe. That's September 2005. The name of said project is Four Level. BreakBeat Science of NYC has a new label called BBS, and they will be releasing the album on that label. So all that is great news. I'm sure there will be more info on that to come both here and over at Pieter's blog, so if you're interested check back as we get closer to the fall.
In the meantime, Alex and I have been writing quite a bit, which is what I've mostly been posting about here. It seems we've entered a new phase - one where some of the song writing process has gone a bit back to our musical roots. Back when we were just starting out, Alex and I would sit around and play guitar for hours until we would get song ideas we both liked. That was how many of the songs were written in our pre-pmx endeavor, ExVegas.
We got away from that over the years in Prosolar Mechanics, where Mike and our drummer, whether Dave Reynolds or Tommy Bendel, were all a much more integrated part of the early songwriting process. In most ways that helped us write much better music. But, in some ways it also had a crippling effect. It's tough to negotiate so early on with three or more very opinionated musicians. As a result our songs often took months to finish. And while the music, meaning the sound - tones, rhythms, melodies, etc. - often sounded great live and felt good in the room, the songs themselves suffered. Sort being lost in the woods, forest for the trees, that sort of thing.
After working with Pieter so hard on Four Level material, some things about Prosolar Mechanics became painfully evident to me, personally. I can't speak for Alex or Mike but they're probably going to agree with most of this.
First, we (and by this point I mean me, Alex and Mike) had been far too focused on each other's playing and simply too critical of one another's ideas. So critical, it was killing off our creativity. I noticed with Pieter that I needed his approval for every little idea I had before I felt I could pursue it. He must have thought I was mental.
Next, we - Prosolar Mechanics - were great at writing these elaborate song parts but we couldn't structure simple songs. Everything we wrote morphed into long, bloated, overly complicated epics where there was often little or no inherent logic to each piece. Trying to negotiate changes song structure could often be explosive.
I remember one of our more memorable band arguments where someone (who shall remain nameless) threatened to quit the band because we were attempting to chop a minute and a half out of a seven minute song that we were trying to target for radio play. To be fair, nobody did quit the band over that, the incident happened a long time ago, and I can safely say that was the worst argument we've ever had as a band. The response was simply "we don't work like that here" and we don't and never have. But this example does illustrate how strongly connected our various members have felt to their musical output over the years. I believe this is what gave us the high level of intensity we were known for onstage and is largely why we ever had any success as a live act. But it also shows how much we had to struggle just to write each piece of music.
As this sort of demonstrates, prosolar songs were often crafted by a political or interpersonal process of negotiation that was ultimately about making everyone in the band happy. The process was altruistic and admirable, but ultimately it wasn't musical. That's what killed some of our better songs, such as the song I was just talking about. It came in at around 6 minutes - 3 minutes too long for what it was.
Then, the third and final painful observation about prosolar's internal process, is that we have not written songs around what should be our most obvious focal point - my vocals. This was entirely my fault, too. Seriously now, how ridiculous do I feel admitting this?
I have to hand it to Mike Kabok. Early on he would gently nudge me to write vocal ideas so we could craft songs around them, but I just wouldn't do it. I'd never, ever written like that in my life. In every band I was ever in, I'd write vocals for nearly finished songs. I can do that fairly well, and there is at least one song on the Four Level that was written in its entirety before I wrote or sang a word. But if the song is like many prosolar songs, it's so dense that it's quite difficult to find room for the vocals if they weren't written early in the process. Much musical compromising drove the writing of my vocal parts in this band, given the above example of trying to alter songs once they've been worked out.
Working with Pieter, I had to step up and write vocal ideas that had some merit on their own, and to write them to a simple melody or a very skeletal song idea. The music was actually written to support vocal ideas. I didn't think I had it in me, but apparently it went well enough (you can be the judge this fall). Afterwards Mike and Alex were like, um, think now maybe you could do that for us?
Contrary to what many might have believed over the years, Prosolar Mechanics has no boss. Alex does almost all of the management/leg work for us, I write all of the lyrics, and Mike and Alex together handle all aspects of recording. We all write our respective parts and have the last say over what we each do musically. It has always been a collaborative effort among at least the three of us. There is no ultimate authority here, and this is no democracy. Everything we've ever done musically has been through a process of consensus building. No compromises. It is a noble process, if painful and agonizingly slow. It's probably a great way to do some things, but I'm not so sure it's the best musical process.
So we've done something drastic. We've changed.
Perhaps the biggest change is to that last point - I have been writing vocals very early in the song writing process. Okay, to many of you musicians out there this is a no brainer, but it wasn't to me. In Prosolar Mechanics I have been guilty of thinking like a guitarist who moonlights as a vocalist. But I finally get it - writing vocals early is better for songs. It also takes care of problem number two - the structure problem. It's funny how much more easily songs come together when there's a decent vocal to guide them, and how easy it is to see what the structure of a song should be. So that's big change number one.
Big change number two is that we're now writing more songs, and worrying less about the masterpiece potential of each song. I'm just trying to write many, many good songs on the way to writing the 8-12 great songs that will make an album cut. To do that we've really had to drop a lot of the inner critic and just write whatever comes out, and pursue those ideas to some completion. That's something that young bands do, since they're often so happy to just write anything marginally resembling music. In our case, it's good because we aren't writing shit like we did when we were younger, and it just feels good to be that productive.
The most difficult but probably most fruitful change is that I've stopped critiquing my band mates' ideas. I realized that in all honesty I don't always know a good idea when I hear it. Sometimes an idea sounds like garbage, a mistake, too simplistic, just because I don't understand it. I was thinking about a lot of music I love by Blonde Redhead and how if you take one piece of instrumentation out of context, it could sound like utter nonsense. So instead, I decided that anything anyone else plays has inherent value and it's up to me to make it musical by whatever I add to the idea. That's REALLY FUCKING HARD to do, but it has made the biggest difference in getting over some of the worst hurdles we've had as a band.
As far as consensus v. dictatorship or some other form of decision making in the band goes, the jury is out. We’re not that far yet. I can’t ever see us electing a leader. Maybe for a day or a week or a rehearsal. We’re all too invested to give the control to one of us. But I can see how making some of these other changes – such as writing through a lot more ideas, and being less critical of each other - will help the decisions to be made become more obvious. So we’ll see about that when we get there.
As for me, I've stopped looking at Alex and Mike as though they need to do something different, better, whatever, to make Prosolar Mechanics better. I can see what our problems have been, and I know I never admitted as much to them, but too easily I have let myself off the hook. It’s just so easy to find fault in the way others work or the ideas they contribute. But it’s all nonsense. How odd human beings are on points such as these. There’s pain in the mirror and fear in doing anything. I’m just trying to be honest now. I've just been forcing myself be different. Whatever it takes. And it works.
It is my hope, indeed, my belief, that when you hear it, you'll know what I mean.
posted by Amy Jacob
6/08/2005 11:43:00 PM Got something to say about it?Go on then.
Monday, June 06, 2005
We didn't forget
I'm so pleased that there are people out there who care. Seriously. Yes, we're writing again. A new album. Whatever it takes.
I'm happy to report that another sketch is completed. That's three song sketches since March. Anyone who knows this band and how it works knows that's victory. I think a real full on rehearsal is about to happen...
posted by Amy Jacob
6/06/2005 01:55:00 AM Got something to say about it?Go on then.
