LCD Soundsystem and Sensory Deprivation
First listen album review
I’m driving along the Columbia River Gorge; the sun has just set and the repetitive beats of LCD Soundsystem flood the cabin of my Subaru. TBH it was a little much, and that has always been a pitfall for me in diving deep into their discography. SO MANY LOOPS!!!
But as I was debating turing it off or not, I decided to just embrace the repetition and see what happened…
I usually get lost in the world of a song, thinking about lyrics or how I feel about certain sounds/chord progressions. But I found myself having a hard time entering this type of engagement with this album. The lyrics are hidden behind a wall of drum machines and synth loops. Each song runs anywhere from 5–12 min which makes it hard to pay close attention to in comparison to the hyper popular 3 min song format.
As I let the album do its thing, I found myself thinking, even praying, extremely clearly. The music was creating a sensory deprivation chamber for my mind. It blocked out the noise of the world and created a soundtrack to simply live life to.
This does not mean that the lyrics and musical content of this album should be ignored. It’s actually quite fire. The loops create a sea for the subtle musical and lyrical variations to dance on. As you become accustomed to the repeated sounds, anything outside of that stands out in a unique and intentional way. The lyrics of the front man (IDEK his name. That’s how much I am a noob to this band and why you should ignore most of this review) are sometimes catchy simple hooks and other times long conversational stream of consciousness verses.
If this at all sounds like a musical adventure you would like to take, throw on the album and let the sea of loops take you where they may.
Editor’s Note:
James Murphy, the front man for LCD Soundsystem (now you know, Devin), talks about David Bowie’s role in the recent reunion of the band in an interview with BBC 6’s Lauren Laverne. You can read more about the Bowie connection from Rolling Stone.
If you would be interested in writing an On-Ramp for LCD Soundsystem or contributing some other way to Harmony, find us on Twitter: @DEVINICHOL and @mitchelldaily
