jacques lu cont: can do no wrong....defend/refute

the vocal version is fucking awful, on first listen. the dub must be the one erol and co are playing.

(2 mins later, after toast)the vocal version is actually absolutely dire, it's still playing here, the missy vocal just sounds so so wrong. so I'll see what the dub is like in a few minutes.

(i typed this bit earlier) on a more general level jacques dj sets are really a travesty by now, the guy hasn't bought or even listened to a new record since making the fabric mix.

-- kevin says relax (surl... ), February 13th, 2005.

er right, so some hipsters now like it so what *was* yawnsome and decadent is now a-ok. his horrible jeans are still horribly 80s.

honestly "decadent"! jacques lu cont and his cronies are making the streets of Great Britain a far more dangerous place. Why just last week I saw a gang of tracksuited youths making fun of war veterans while playing Avenue D.

I have been loving the JLC mixes I've heard, including the Missy one, it's not as if the vocal line on "Lose Control" was particularly stunning anyway.

I like the dub alot better than the vocal version, the music is very similar to some of the other mixes but it's still good.

I am not sure he is amazing, but I think he is good.

"decadence" still applies maybe, but it's a different kind of decadence, the decadence of "One More Time" and "Digital Love" - ie. the sonic decisions (and, in the case of retro-isms, sonic quotations) are partially determined and wholly transformed by the emotional content of the music. What decadence there is is a certain emotional over-investment. Of course not all his work is emotional in the specific, soppy sense of the "Mr. Brightside" or "What Ya Waitin' For" remixes, but even stuff like the Juliet or Fischerspooner remixes feel somehow larger than life, unsustainable in their monolithic grandeur.

Whereas the decadence you attribute to LRD would be, if I'm on the same page as you, something rather opposite: an investment in structure and form over and against emotional content - which wouldn't be an issue (this is dance music) if the music wasn't so retro. "Now" sonics in dance music tend to be their own justification, but revivalism seems to make most people (myself included) want to impose the burden of proof on the artist in demonstrating that there was a suffienciently good reason for it.

I like how, to the extent that JLC still does feel 80s-ish (and this is reduced too; his remix of Juliet's "Avalon" is like a weird combination of electro-house production and mid-90s salsa-house), the stylistic quotations in his recent work can be really counter-intuitive and confusing. When I wrote about the "Mr. Brightside" remix on Skykicking I was really struggling to pin-down what his assortment of sighing and twinkling synthesisers were intentionally or unintentionally referencing, if anything: New Order yeah, but also the kind of uses of synthesisers you would expect from exactly the srt of rock bands who fall outside the parameters of electroclash 80s revival - The Cure circa Disintegration, The Chameleons, Tears for Fears, mid-to-late 80s U2, Big Country, Marillion... Actually I'd love to see what Glenn from The War Against Sound would think of it!

the decadence line takes me into autobiog. basically i see LRD as big beat: i liked big beat, but by 1998 was a bit bored with it, mainly because of the preponderance of 'comedy' in, eg, bentley rhythm ace, midfield general, etc. and LRD, who was on wall of sound, ur-big beat label, fitted this pattern. his clothes, his fake-frenchness, his 80sness, were all about the roffles. people laughed because he wanted them to laugh. and electro refs, iirc, were staples of big beat but not generally in dahnce at that point in time.

following daft punk (who i loved), he was kicking off an 80s revival, and 1998 was in some ways the height of the 70s revival (boogie nights, lots of disco-house). so i guess it was refreshing for some people.

but anyway, 'now' sonics don't justify themselves -- it has to rock -- but yeah revivalists really have to bring some serious game. and i suppose back then LRD was like the dahnce jurassic five for me. and, lo, missy has now boosted both -- it's funny cos back then i had J5 and LRD down as 'indie'.

but how do you mean that being dance music exempts you from having to provide "emotional content" -- how, in fact, do you discern this from the actual physical means by which emotional content is produced (ie 'form')?

nb -- somebody somewhere asked where the 'music make you lose control' sample comes from. it's on the tip of my tongue, *and* i think it was on a big beat record, but i'm not so keen on listening to my old big beat records (except for 'not another drugstore' which is awesome).

"Jacques Your Body" and "From Disco To Disco" are house!

Also I don't think Jacques Lu Cont wanted people to laugh at him or was being ironic, this is a guy who actually wasn't allowed to watch the news or listen to the radio until after a nervous breakdown his parents changed their minds, when he was 16 or something.

And Tim didn't say being dance music doesn't mean you have to have emotional content, how can a record not have emotional content anyhow, he did say it doesn't have to be artistic intention number 1, if I'm reading the distinction correctly.

And surely the nature of the artists being remixed is important in each case, as regards context etc.

i didn't know that about him, though i guess it's again about how he was placed, by WoS and the dahnce media; it was received as ironic kitsch, anyway, cos the 80s revival didn't really start till 2000 i suppose.

tim said 'investment in structure and form over and against emotional content' was something dance often did. what i'm saying is that you can only get to the content thru the form (and also that i don't know who maid down that rule abt dance). music *is* form. the content is what 'happens' to you/inside you while you are listening to it.

xp -- again, i don't know any of his post-darkdancer stuff, so dunno. his *refs* (ie sleeve design, 'image, ect) were as 80s as, say, ocean colour scene's were 60s, although his *sounds* may have advanced more than theirs.

I think JLC himself is about as serious a producer as they come, I think at least he's proven as much as anyone that he's doing the style he does out of genuine interest in it, I mean when he ploughs a furrow he really really ploughs it, also he's not fame hungry or, I suspect, image conscious. He is kind of reclusive I think, doesn't drink etc.

In any case, regardless of how he first appeared, this argument that something has elements of irony in it and is therefore null and void has been wheeled out on ILM so many times, mostly re Discovery. I don't believe artists make records for a laugh, not least when the records are very well recieved.

As regards form/content, surely the absence of lyrics in most dance music leaves the content far more open than in other genres? "what happens to you/inside you while you are listening to it" is not dictated on an emotional level so much as a physical one, at least that's the by the book synopses anyway. But loosely accurate.

i never dance to dance music, so for me it has different meanings, which are physical even if i'm not moving -- bear in mind most 60s rock music was devised as dance music. fucking can be emotional; feeling good, emotinally, makes you feel good.