A little quickie one this time, just because I have some thoughts to get down about this. I just saw this trailer pop up on my Twitter and there are more than a few things that caught my attention. The first being at 33 seconds in...
I'm very, very excited to see FlyLo's approach to a soundtrack, from the brief bits heard in this teaser it sounds like he isn't straying too far from his usual sound, but he does occasionally do some beautiful ambient style pieces too so here's hoping there's some of that too.
FlyLo is no stranger to appearing on soundtracks at this point - he's even appeared in an Anime series before with Shinichirō Watanabe's Carole & Tuesday, among other western artists. It's almost coming full circle for FlyLo too, his early work that you can find on the 'net from the mid 2000's was all geared towards that very specific kind of hip hop beat that would appear on Adult Swim commercial 'bumps' - Adult Swim and Toonami being one of the easier places to watch Anime in the 2000's.
Hip Hop and Samurais is a tried and tested formula too, if you've ever seen Samurai Champloo (Also by Shinichirō Watanabe!) you'll know that it's a combo that can work amazingly well, no doubt FlyLo is already very acquainted with that soundtrack too. I do like it when things get shaken up like that - technically anachronistic though it may be, the OST for Champloo is one of the major highlights about it. I've said before how I love when a soundtrack strays from your traditional 'cinematic' score, and I can only hope that this inspires more to try something like that out.
Netflix original memes aside, I'm tentatively excited for it - it looks fairly decent and the soundtrack is obviously a big draw too - maybe off the back of this we'll see more artists collaborate in a similar way, there are plenty of series out there that I think a lot of artists could do interesting things with. Arguments about quality of the series themselves aside, the Netflix original Anime series have been good for that, their addition to the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex series had similarly good soundtrack choices - perhaps not as iconic as Yoko Kanno's work but still befitting of the GITS universe.
That'll do it for this one, apologies for it being a little thin on the ground with actual music content. With any luck they'll put out an OST teaser or something soon too so I can report back with that. But until then: as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
Where do I begin here? Well, it hurts a bit that's for sure. I'm probably really underselling it there: I owe Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo a hell of a lot, for if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have followed a link on a Daft Punk fansite years ago that led to this very page you are reading now. And that's just this blog - not to mention the thousands of hours I've gotten out of their discography both as Daft Punk and in their respective solo efforts.
I wish they'd have left it till 22/2/22 to keep it cyclical with their adoption of the robot personas on 9/9/99 actually! The re-use of the imagery from Electroma where Bangalter's persona is destroyed and Guy-Manuel continues to walk off into the sunset, while fitting, makes me feel like there's going to be a million and one conspiracies about the two splitting on uneven terms or something. Not that we'll probably know, the two were very secretive and who can blame them after all? Besides, the Robot personas were just so cool to boot.
I'm kind of jumping all over the place here so apologies, but I have a lot of feelings to work through. I appreciate each of their albums in it's own unique way, would I have liked another album from the two? Sure, but Random Access Memories is also a great bookend to their career, it was a real labour of love as evidenced by the inclusion of Giorgio Moroder and all the tales about little touches that the two would do, like choosing a certain microphone to record an individual element that only goes to show how true that is.
As varied as their discography, the various collaborations also make their output unique to boot, with no fewer than 3 films to their name in the forms of D.A.F.T, a full on original anime feature film in Interstella 5555 to the art house cinema of Electroma that is the source of this video. Discovery may be one of my favourite albums of all time for sure, but it being essentially one giant music video when twinned with Interstella takes it beyond just music - it's one of my favourite experiences of all time.
This is the fourth time I've seen one of my all time favourites disband. First with DJ Mehdi, gone before his time. Second with Broadcast, cut short by the untimely death of Trish Keenan. And third in The Knife, that one hit me something fierce as they too are responsible for one of my favourite albums of all time in Silent Shout. Does it get easier? Not really, but at least this way there's still the prospect of solo work from the two of them. If you've yet to check out Roulé or Crydamoure I highly recommend it - they are quite different from the output of their combined works, but there are some real golden tracks on both of them.
So while there won't be any more 'Daft Punk' records for the time being, there's still more than enough to get stuck into if you go looking - beyond just the main albums there's a world of bootlegs, remixes, rarities and live sets to keep you going. They might not be around anymore but their music lives on, and music is forever.
I leave you now with one of my favourite bits of Daft Punk video - I was going to chuck the Encore from Alive 2007 here because that absolutely blew me away the first time I saw it (and it too, is an almost perfect retrospective of their discography both solo and together up until that point) but I suddenly had a memory trigger in my head as I was about to go looking, and I figured I'd mix it up since everyone's going to be talking about their robot personas today. So instead here is a then relatively unknown Daft Punk playing their first ever live show in the USA at Even Further in Wisconsin. I just love the raw energy of it, these rough as hell live versions of tracks from Homework, the squealing 303s, and the fact you can see Bangalter get so into it even in the first 30 seconds is just brilliantly infectious.
It's a stark contrast from their funkier output later on, but I personally love all sides of Daft Punk. Discovery is certainly the more accessible album, but Homework has its moments like Da Funk and Around The World that made a big splash on their release and almost heralded what Daft Punk would become. So, I thought I'd shine some light on it to close out on. This piece of video is a great piece of electronic music history and I'm so happy it's been preserved all these years later.
The two have certainly earned their place in the history of electronic music and their legacy will continue for years to come. As I said way back at the top, I wouldn't be here writing this had I not fallen into a Daft Punk Superfan™ phase all those years ago, so perhaps I owe them more than some. So play them out One More Time, and as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.
Hello. It is me again. Thought I'd swing by with yet another update on what exactly is happening. The site is still live (barely), I haven't been updating as much as I should have for a variety of reasons, IRL reasons like being promoted at work (good!), taking a trip to Portugal (good!) and having to deal with house moving headaches (not so good!) but regardless I'm trying to make more time for y'all once more. And with that in mind let's dive into what I have today.
Hot off the heels of a live radio event and Aphex Twin's latest live set on September 14th, warp comes through once again with the announcement of the "WXAXRXP Sessions" just in time for the 30th anniversary. This will be a huge box set of a bunch of sessions both new and old from the backcatalogue, most interestingly being the above. For the first proper time you can have the Complete Boards Of Canada Peel Session from 1998, featuring the until now bootleg only "XYZ". Which is a good thing because it's one of their finest tracks, though I will admit it is a little strange listening to it without the radio hiss and John Peel's dulcet tones introducing it as I'm used to from the bootleg.
The new schedule means I've missed the exact date slightly but 2018 is the year that ilictronix has been surfing the digital waves for a decade and if you're into synchronicity, me and the blog actually share the same birthday!. A lot's changed in that time: trends have come and gone, my list of things to add to my collection has grown ever bigger, as has the collection itself. I'm not sure if I ever expected to reach this milestone, I can count few websites that I've frequented for 10 years or more so it's pretty mind-blowing to have my own site hit that.
A special shout out to all the staff we've had over the years, without them ilitronix wouldn't have grown like it did, and I always enjoyed a peek into other people's music collections and to hear their opinions on various releases. An extra special thanks goes out to Jordan too; original site owner for both his continued behind-the-scenes support after I took over, and of course for taking me on as a writer all those years ago, if it weren't for him I'd not be typing this right now.
What's in store for the future of ilictronix? Well I think I've had a nice groove the past few years so more of the same, with some occasional experimentation with formats and the like as you've come to expect.
There have been hard times and I may not always have been the most consistent at posting for a while but I'll always keep coming back to have a natter about my latest additions or old favourites. I'd like to thank all who've read over the years, I'll keep writing and I hope you'll keep visiting. Here's to another 10!
I leave you now with a cross-section track dump of my past favourites from last 10 years of ilictronix. This is actually the severely cut down version too, otherwise I could be here all day. Regardless, It's been far too long since I've done one of these!
More chats with Adam RE: our lil' project. Got some neat ideas going and it's shaping up to be pretty nice, I wish we could show something off for what we have so far but we're still workin' on it and I wish we were able to get it out to you a little faster and all but you know how life is. Instead have some more delicious instrumental hip hop to start off your week and I'll update you as and when with any new info!
I just got the word from Adam that our not so secret project is pretty much ready to go, so look forward to hearing from us (literally) more often in future! In the meantime Iforgot to get somethign prepared so I'm going to leave y'all for the weekend with some delicious instrumental goodness. Stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks!
We've been hit with a wave of DCMA's recently, most notably on some of the Warped History posts focusing on Aphex Twin. I was actually considering making them stream-only a while back because I'm proud of 'em and want em to be read forever, and now I will!. As of right now, I have put the entire Warped History series in stasis. But once I edit all the posts to be stream only they'll come back, it's just gonna take some mind numbing HTML edits to do so. But for now, here is a jumbo sized selection from Warp themselves, because I still love 'em to bits.
Tough times ahead friends, site founder and ilictronix veteran Prez Jordan wants to transfer ownership of the site. If all goes well, I'll be taking over the site and hosting, and as such it may be a long time before I can post anything more. Luckily I was prepared and have this hour and a quarter long mix celebrating the ups, downs, and inbetweens of everything I love electronic. I'd like to thank everyone in the community for an amazing time over the years and their continued support, and Prez himself for picking a 15 year old me to write for ilictronix. Stay tuned for updates when they happen but until then, as always stay safe and enjoy the music.
Tracklist:
The Knife - The Bridge (Hannah Med H Soundtrack, 2003)
Rex The Dog - Frequency (The Rex The Dog Show, 2008)
Surkin - White Knight Two (Next Of Kin EP, 2008)
Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Electronic City (Two, 2009)
Boys Noize - Frau (PUZIQUE Remix) (Oi Oi Oi Remixed, 2008)
Boys Noize - Shine Shine (Apparat Remix) (Oi Oi Oi Remixed, 2008)
The Prodigy - Omen (Reprise) (Invaders Must Die, 2010)
Teenage Bad Girl - Vacuum (Cocotte, 2007)
Danger - 13H12
F.U.S.E - Nitedrive (Dimension Intrusion, 1993)
Blade Runner - Tears In Rain (Vocal Sample)
Orbital - Halcyon + On + On (Orbital 2 (Brown Album), 1993)
Goldie - Timeless (Inner City Life) (Timeless, 1995)
Omni Trio - Sanctuary (Skeleton Keys, 1997)
Commix - Fallen (Fallen (Single), 2013)
Current Value - Into The Light (Into The Light / Deep Digger, 2005)
Venetian Snares - Szamár Madár (Rossz Csillag Alatt Született, 2005)
Sigur Rós - Takk... (Takk..., 2005)
