Madonna = Kraftwerk?

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LOST YOUR MADGEIC, MADONNA?
UK Mirror
Jan 15 2003

Bosses tell her to have another pop at album

It's a brave man who tells Madonna what to do but someone must have drawn the short straw.

Record bosses at Warner Brothers have asked Madge to re-record a number of tracks on her new album.

And it looks as if, on this occasion, she has been forced to obey orders.

She has already flown her whizz-kid French producer Mirwais over from Paris and is currently preparing to go back into her Los Angeles studio for two more weeks of hard slog.

We're told the main problem is that her new sound is electro-pop and bosses feel it's too over-the-top.

Our source says: "Madonna feels like she delivered her best album yet last week but the record label have insisted that the material needs to be changed."

"They really liked what they heard and it's another example of Madonna reinventing herself. But the problem is that it's too avant garde to be a commercial success.

"She had used far too many electronic synthesisers on her voice and had morphed a lot of her vocals to sound like a robot. There was even a 12-minute long track.

"Warner want an album which will primarily make money, not an album which flops on the market but gains respect from the industry.

"She was reluctant, but in the end has no choice but to go back to square one."

This is said to be one of the first times Madge, 44, has had to obey orders from the record company, where she has been since beginning her career in 1984.

Bosses are keen for her to finish her 10th studio album in time for the planned release date of April 15.

We revealed last week how she has already shot the artwork for the album - rumoured to have the Hebrew title Ein Sof (Endlessness) - with celebrity photographer Craig McDean at a cost of £250,000.

In the coming weeks the star will shoot the video with director Jonas Ackerland, who worked with her on the Music and Ray of Light videos.

So could this latest album - featuring songs titled American Life, Hollywood, Easy Ride and Nothing Fails - send the Material Girl on yet another downward spiral?

Let's face it, she already started the ball rolling with Swept Away last year.

There's still time yet, Madge!

― gygax!, Thursday, 16 January 2003 00:57 (twenty-three years ago)

the de-avant-garded version will come out first, then later on the director's cut (i hope) (both versions will be great, seeing as everything she does is great)

(nico indeed!!)

"She had used far too many electronic synthesisers on her voice": like there's that well-known cut-off point, after you use the sixth "electronic" synthesiser and everything just turns to shit

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:07 (twenty-three years ago)

i'm not too sure what could be avant-garde about a Madonna album that uses synthesizers and vocoders. hasn't she already been doing this for the past 3 albums. and isn't the vocoder just an over-used one trick pony that current artists (cher) use to cover up the fact that they can't really sing anymore??

― JasonD (JasonD), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:19 (twenty-three years ago)

i love vocoders: more singers shd use them (especially van morrison, he should never not have used one)

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:25 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm pretty down with vocoders too, they do some strange things (and I *loves* me some Zapp and Roger).

But who the fuck calls her "Madge"? That's a new one on me.

I'm hoping Madonna pulls a George Michael and gets all uppity...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Hmm. Sounds like a job for the bootleg patrol!

On the Cher/vocoder tip, i don't think that "Do You Believe" features a vocoder, but rather digital pitch shifting/warping on the fly. It's getting a lot more common, it seems, and damn if it just doesn't jump right up and say "I plum ran out of ideas as to how to make this sound good, so i'm resorting to gimmickry!"

-Matt, who acknowledges that words are useless, especially sentences

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:31 (twenty-three years ago)

"I'm hoping Madonna pulls a George Michael and gets all uppity..."

-- like, huh, gets arrested in a public loo for starters?

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:37 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, that'd be GREAT!

But I was thinking more along the lines of painting "SLAVE" on her face and refusing to release new material oh wait...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:43 (twenty-three years ago)

'her new sound is electro-pop'
when hasn't it been ?

now a leccy clash take on 'i'm goin bananas' i'd like to hear.

― piscesboy, Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:45 (twenty-three years ago)

everyone calls her madge in england shakey, esp.the tabs

it has become v.boring, and was never that funny in the first place

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:50 (twenty-three years ago)

(if you're from the USA it's kinda funny)

"you're soaking in it!"

― gygax!, Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:52 (twenty-three years ago)

if this is all about whether or not Madonna used a vocoder too often, and her record company didn't like it, should this thread's title be "Madonna = Neil Young"?

― Tad (llamasfur), Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:56 (twenty-three years ago)

i will remain human for another day

i will sing a song with all my breath and brain
i will remain human for another day
my mouth will form a word that i will cease to say
i saw i see your sex is sectioning
your head grows long and becomes serpentine
i bow my head and shed my brow instead
you flash your spheres so i lay down and pray
that i will remain human for another day
we're hand in hand at the horizon
we gird our loins for teleharmonizing
we follow faithful we meander and stray
i will remain human for another day
i will sing a song with all my breath and brain.
-daniel higgs via the pupils

sung ... over some sort of harsh microphone... or perhaps through a crappy PA....

i think madonna's next album should be nothing but sounds which originated from her mouth. why not just distort the hell of that shit and get some beats, get some melodies, and drop some audible lyrics over the whole thing. i mean, hello subliminals. one long XXX erotic tune over every radio from a-merica to new z-ealand.

― msp, Thursday, 16 January 2003 01:58 (twenty-three years ago)

dude, doesn't she run Maverick? Does she have to take shit from people? Pull an Ani, Madonna!

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 16 January 2003 02:20 (twenty-three years ago)

All her singles come with like 12 different versions anyway, and even the album versions sound like "remixes". I'm not surprised that she was/allowed her self to be - reigned in. Come out with a pop song already Madonna!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 16 January 2003 02:28 (twenty-three years ago)

i will remain human for another day

Best goddamn Gary Numan lyric he never wrote.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 16 January 2003 03:30 (twenty-three years ago)

quantized i think is what happened to cher's voice.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 16 January 2003 07:16 (twenty-three years ago)

quantizing, as far as i know it from playing w/drum machines and samplers, is making sure the notes you hit land on specific rhythmic values (quarter or eigth notes) so that they're on beat

does it mean something else?

― JasonD (JasonD), Thursday, 16 January 2003 07:19 (twenty-three years ago)

as i understand it the same thing can be done to voices -- shifting to discrete notes instead of the range of pitches between. i think this happens via vocoders though, much as frampton made his guitar "talk" the coded voice is used to modulate a single pitch as opposed to the line of the guitar.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 16 January 2003 07:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Jasons right sbout quantizing...

But everything you wanted to know about 'that sound' on the Cher record is here...

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/feb99/articles/tracks661.htm

― Jack Battery-Pack (Jack Battery-Pack), Thursday, 16 January 2003 07:27 (twenty-three years ago)

i wish madonna would fuck off, she hasn't done anything remotely intersting since like a prayer.

― di smith (lucylurex), Thursday, 16 January 2003 07:55 (twenty-three years ago)

LP cover photographer is a work friend of mine, next time we're out I guess the drinks are on him.

― suzy (suzy), Thursday, 16 January 2003 08:52 (twenty-three years ago)

course if she hadn't been so wilfully obscure with setlist
on the last tour ('mir girl' !?) none of this would be happening
and she'd still be massive/respected and able to do wtf she liked.
i could've cried when i saw the setlist writ down for the first time.
that and the 70 quid tickets.

― piscesboy, Thursday, 16 January 2003 13:47 (twenty-three years ago)

John Lydon through a vocoder, or through a voiceprocessor that is slightly clankily transposing him to pitch-perfect stepped notes - there's something I'd like to hear.

quantising is an effect produced when any continuously variable phenomenon is converted into a set of discrete values - this can be in the time domain (the imposition of a regular timing steps onto events which can happen at any moment, like the drum hits) or in the physical/amplitude domain: like converting a smooth ramp into a staircase.
The discrepancy between the original value and the nearest stepped value is called 'quantisation error' - though 'quantisation difference' might be a better name, since in the drumbeats case it's usually regarded as correcting (timing) errors!
(Usually done in the realms of signal processing, where any deviation from perfect reproduction of the original signal is, technically if not qualitatively, an 'error')

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:25 (twenty-three years ago)

''the de-avant-garded version will come out first, then later on the director's cut (i hope) (both versions will be great, seeing as everything she does is great)''

lets not forget all the out takes. anything to make it into a five CD boxset.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:30 (twenty-three years ago)

Madonna should do a collab. album with either Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, or Wolf Eyes.

― hstencil, Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:35 (twenty-three years ago)

cheez Madge...
I soaked in it!

soaked in what?
Madge.
I soaked in it!

soaked in what?
Madge.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:36 (twenty-three years ago)

no hstencil: that's not fucking avant garde enuff. she should assume the derek bailey role on guitar and play in a trio with the ruins and the call up zorn and release it on 'avant' (not tzadik becuz tzadik isn't hip enuff (=expensive)). that'll give the critics a hard on.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:38 (twenty-three years ago)

the rec would have garden gnomes on the cover (avant garden get it).

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually quantizing something happens whenever a signal goes from analog to d - to digitize it means you have to turn it into a number, or a quantity, thus the term.

Cher's voice was recorded and then adjusted with tuning plugins for Pro Tools - Autotune, which you can hear on a ton of studio records nowadays (Linkin Park anyone?) forces notes to adhere to a pitch-perfect steady tone, which kind of makes a voice sound vocoderish, and other plugins which allow for pitch to be transposed an octave or two without losing too much of its timbre.

Matt Maxwell is right about the method except I'm not so sure about the 'on-the-fly' part.

I hate Pro Tools plugins.

― Tom Millar (Millar), Friday, 17 January 2003 04:08 (twenty-three years ago)

As Anthony said above, isn't Maverick her label? I know it's distributed by Warners, but what's the point of setting up a custom label if you can't call the shots on your own records?

Is the Mirror a legitimate publication or more of a scandal-sheet? Maybe the whole thing is made up. Although I'm sure there are plenty of synthesizers on her new album regardless.

― Sean (Sean), Friday, 17 January 2003 18:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Uh, tom, if you read the article jack linked it makes clear the team used a vocoder. & I still hold that "quantizing" is as good a description as any for what was done with the vocoder, but eh.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 17 January 2003 21:27 (twenty-three years ago)

wasn't there talk a while ago about her wanting akufen or someone similarly uberhip to produce this album?
did that actually happen?

― robin (robin), Sunday, 19 January 2003 01:38 (twenty-three years ago)

The term is still quantization; in this case it's pitch-quanitzation.

― Curtis Stephens, Sunday, 19 January 2003 01:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah but but ehh I don't like reading fooey

― Tom Millar (Millar), Sunday, 19 January 2003 03:24 (twenty-three years ago)

She had used far too many electronic synthesisers on her voice

As opposed to the organic ones? I can't read any of this thread past that line, it made me laugh TOO MUCH. It's TOO FUNNY. Also, Nyquil is fogging my brain.

― Ally (mlescaut), Sunday, 19 January 2003 06:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark S - do you really like the 'Die Another Day' song - 'analyse this'? isn't it a bit - awful?

― maryann (maryann), Sunday, 19 January 2003 08:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it is easy to analize what we as the consuming public think our icons should or should not be doing .
i think the bottom line is she is an artist and she should be able to reflect that any way she thinks she should. No I am not a fan of Maddonna at all -

― Paul Brewer, Sunday, 19 January 2003 09:15 (twenty-three years ago)

four weeks pass...

I’m digging on the isotopes
This metaphysics shit is dope
And if all this can give me hope
You know I’m satisfied
I got a lawyer and a manager
An agent and a chef
Three nannies, an assistant
And a driver and a jet
A trainer and a butler
And a bodyguard or five
A gardener and a stylist
Do you think I’m satisfied?
I’d like to express my extreme point of view
I’m not Christian and I’m not a Jew
I’m just living out the American dream
And I just realized that nothing
Is what it seems...

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 23:50 (twenty-three years ago)

isotopes?????/

― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 06:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Best. Madonna Song. Ever.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 February 2003 06:42 (twenty-three years ago)

three weeks pass...

multibabel:

In isotopes this excrement of meta physics is to gardner of ways it work of the painting and of if everything that can give these to it, of the hope, that you know me to the morning, it finishing to receive a lawyer and a director and nannies from duct three, a sustentation and a driver and an car the spurt and a matrix of the hotel and bodyguard average or of the rat of elasticity five and planner to think of me excavating to them the morning, this you to finish? I would want to express my test of the extreme verification that is not christian and not one hebrew, this that is skillful of the life of the dream the American and I have the straight-line state the fact that nothing is which seems it...

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 01:12 (twenty-three years ago)

Akufen's too busy doing the new Craig David record.

I wish I were joking.

― Brindle, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 01:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't see the problem here. Some people claim that Madonna is alienating her fans. But the truth is that her fans did actually largely grow up in the 80s, and what else is the Electroclash craze than a rehash of 80s styles.

Why should those who grew up listening to synthpop suddenly feel alienated when hearing a synthpop album in 2003 now that synthpop in its 1982 form has finally become fashionable again?

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 11:21 (twenty-three years ago)

Not everyone who grew up in the 80's liked synthpop.

― man, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 12:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, some people hated fun.

― Ally (mlescaut), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 14:58 (twenty-three years ago)

As Anthony said above, isn't Maverick her label? I know it's distributed by Warners, but what's the point of setting up a custom label if you can't call the shots on your own records?

Last I heard, Maverick was being folded back into the Reprise branch of Warner.

― teeny (teeny), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 15:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Apparently Maverick's laid off loads of its staff and is in financial ruin.

I blame Alanis Morrisette.

For everything, actually.

― russ t, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes Geir what else is music but music, and certainly music fans like music so what are they complaining about?!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Not everyone who grew up in the 80's liked synthpop.

True. But those who didn't would probably rather listen to U2, R.E.M. or Big Country than to Madonna.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 20:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Or Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim, Chaka Khan, Herbie Hancock and Prince

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 19 March 2003 00:08 (twenty-three years ago)

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