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Did you buy one? I think it’s very likely I’ll get a VC16, but they’re not in stock anywhere I purchase from yet.
Yes. Still in stock on eBay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/335903639694
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Thomas Bangalter's father was a French disco producer and songwriter who helped them a lot in their early career. Sure helps.
They used the VSM-201 for "Random Access Memories", their last Studio Album. At that time they didn't need such help anymore, they famously rented a huge amount of equipment and large studio-floors (i.e. they recorded simultaneously with microphones from different decades because Thomas heard a difference and wanted this reflected on the record). Above all, the biggest help from his father was probably to insist that…
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I think it's a just a more experimental record. The lack of songwriting is kind of the thesis of the entire album, right? (technology, repetition, etc) It's aims are not to be Digital Love or their more conventional song-based stuff. If anything, it's almost a return to their origins like some of the more techno-orientated tracks on Homework. That's what I meant with what it has in common with garage and psych. Not t…
What you’re describing is an album that’s more fun to think about than it is to listen to! It definitely has a theme, but unfortunately as executed it’s basically “what if we defied convention by using live instruments and making a shitty album?” When you bring up psychedelic, experimental post-rock, I want to mention that one of my favorite bands is Battles. They’re a good example of what you can do when you defy co…
I guess we like different artists for different reasons, and you like Daft Punk in boogie mode. Which I definitely get, as it is their strong suit. But I just think this is album is a bit of an anomaly in their catalogue and might require having to unlearn them a bit to dig it.
Their live album Alive 1997 would have to be my favourite of theirs btw. But I don't hate Human After All as many other fans do.
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Imagine inventing pumping sidechain compression and finding it unsatisfying.
A YouTube video (that the algorithm loved) about all this and is super interesting: https://youtu.be/wyYAiU4DKUY?si=CpcOuhzAvXs7fqWF
Obligatory post of the legendary Bode Vocoder demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kc-bhOOLxE
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The composer who assisted them also worked with M83 for the Oblivion soundtrack, which I think is also pretty spectacular.
The Oblivion soundtrack is amazing! Love it. I’ve listened to it so many times. I haven’t seen the movie yet. I should do that.
Yes, both soundtracks are amazing. But I wonder how amazing they'd have been without his input.
Ah, the Sennheiser VSM201. Just a $30K vocoder. Seems like it was $25K when it released in 1977, but also didn't get to sell even 50 units, so quite rare. I guess you can get similar results with cheaper hardware, but if you have money and you have it around... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Never had the pleasure of a Sennheiser but when working in radio I got my hands on a lot of rack vocoders for doing branding, stings and idents. Funny how the number 9000 comes up a lot, like Roland VP9000 and Eventide H9000. 80 and 90s vintage ones like Korg VC-10 or Elektronik EM-26 had unique sounds, but tbh the modern digital recreations are amazing models. There's not a world of difference between vocoding, auto…
The shape of the filters, the smoothing between the filters and the synthesis section, and (on some models) the patchability all create a very different result.
The reason the best analog vocoders are so expensive is because the filter for each band is much more complex than a plain old bandpass filter, with a much higher component count. Typically there's a flatter passband and a steeper slope than you'd expect.
You can do digital convolution with thousands of bins and it sounds nothing like analog vocoding. It's much cleaner, doesn't have those lovely harmonically spaced filter resonances, and creates sounds that can feel more acoustic than electronic.
It is unreal to me the amount of impact Daft Punk had with only four studio albums.
(They also did the Soundtrack for Tron:Legacy, basically their fifth studio album) Anyway, I keep remembering how panned 'Human After All' was, and how bad the reviews were because the album was too "mechanical" and was "missing the warmth of House", while this is EXACTLY how the genre evolved in the years to come and none of those music experts saw this. Many journalists did a retrospective of it a few years later a…
R.A.M. is more that they'd decided to finish and made one last album that was as much fun as possible. It's a bit like "Accelerate" by REM in that respect.
I love, no luuuurrve, this article. Just fantastic research and fantastically useful for a music project I'm workin' on.