the strokes

Started by Rudie Obias, January 16, 2003, 04:44:51 PM

0 Members and 3 Guests are viewing this topic.

Pwaybloe

Hmmm... it looks African.  I heard they shipped an African tribe into the studio to record a song with them.  They wanted kind of an African sound, but I think the tribe got out of hand when they slaughtered the calf and burned part of the studio from lighting a bonfire.  

Anyway... I heard they were trying to break into the Zimbabwe market, where they have little or no exposure.

Sleuth

I think it sounds pretty good...is that the lead guitar that sounds oh so much like a keyboard?  Cool
I like to hug dogs

Pwaybloe

Quote from: tremoloslothI think it sounds pretty good...is that the lead guitar that sounds oh so much like a keyboard?  Cool

No, no, no... like an African keyboard.  

or African keytar!


Weeoheeoeh!

Sleuth

Go back to Africa, Pawbloe :x
I like to hug dogs

modage

yeah, they didnt use any keyboards.  they just tuned the guitars all funny to sound like them.  

Strokes Album Preview: Gideon Yago Tours Their Room On Fire
Source: MTV.COM 08.26.2003  

NEW YORK — "I don't want my record to sound like a demo," Strokes singer Julian Casablancas says. "I mean, I like the demo, I like the vibe and all, but it's [been] done."

At the moment Casablancas is staring into a beer in the garden of an East Village restaurant, trying desperately hard to stay awake. He's been up for three days straight, mastering the Strokes' new record, Room on Fire, working out the kinks in tone and feel that will make it, he hopes, "move people in general."

"If you're in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it's a very special thing," he says. "It's those sorts of feelings that we kind of play with, but there's a lot of chance of failing."

Pressure on the band is heavy to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump. The bandmembers are wrangling with their label and with each other over singles, mixes and artwork, because this time expectations are even higher.

When the Strokes released their debut in 2001, they were met by a swell of critical praise and hype matched only by the disgruntled backlash that characterized them as privileged bon vivants undeserving of their opportunities and their fans. (T-shirts bearing a Strokes logo that reads "The Socialites" are popular in the same East Village that spawned the band.) Somewhere in between all that bluster — both pro- and anti-Strokes — were five fans of guitar rock still bowled over by the fact that they're getting the opportunity to make records.

"For us it's important not to f--- up what other generations have given to us," Casablancas says. "The whole point is doing something with what we've got, and I don't think we play with that lightly. We're normal people, we're not super serious artists, but we take what we do very seriously."

Based on a listen to Room on Fire, all that hard work is paying off. The exceptionally catchy disc takes the well-known Strokes sound — a retro-bang of twisting guitars, precision drum and bass and epic heartbreak vocals — and spins it in less than obvious directions. Like the Cars, Tom Petty and the Pixies before them, the Strokes play with the dynamics of guitar pop by layering track over track in a wall of braided sound only to strip it all back to the barest melodies at crucial moments.

Some songs, like "Reptilia" and "12:51," which the Strokes are shooting a video for with Roman Coppola, have an almost futuristic feel that makes it clear why they first tapped Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich for Room on Fire (the band eventually split with Godrich to reteam with Is This It producer Gordon Raphael). Guitars are toned down to mimic keyboards, and live drums hit with such clean precision they sound almost like loops — so convincingly so that I mistook them as such and was smartly corrected by Casablancas and bassist Nikolai Fraiture.

Other songs, like "You Talk Way Too Much" and "The End Has No End," are virtual throwbacks to the modish rock and roll that got the Strokes noticed in the first place. There are slow, plaintive songs, like "Under Control," and well-designed toe-tap hooks, found on tracks like "What Ever Happened?"

In short, it is a record that is as exciting to listen to as the Strokes' first EP and holds the same promise. Now someone just needs to convince the Strokes of that. "One of the big songwriting things for me has always been: always think what you do sucks," says Casablancas. "Because the second you stop believing that, you suck. And that's a fact."
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Dirk

Quote from: tremoloslothI think it sounds pretty good...is that the lead guitar that sounds oh so much like a keyboard?  Cool

According to singer Julian Casablancas, Nick Valensi "blew up two guitar amps getting that sound" for the solo in 'Supernova'"*

*Supernova is now 12:51
At wave level, everything exists as a contradiction. Everything is existing in more than one stage/place at any given moment. Everything must move/vibrate and constantly change to exist. Everything, including buildings, mountains, oceans and thoughts.

modage

can now download a much clearer sounding version of 12:51 on www.thestrokes.com in MP3 format.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

modage

album pushed back a week to October 28th.  anyone planning on seeing them on tour before then, if you cant wait the new album has now been leaked online.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Dirk

Quote from: themodernage02if you cant wait the new album has now been leaked online.

Thanks! I'm on it.
At wave level, everything exists as a contradiction. Everything is existing in more than one stage/place at any given moment. Everything must move/vibrate and constantly change to exist. Everything, including buildings, mountains, oceans and thoughts.

godardian

I really like the new single and am fairly into the Strokes as a good, solid band to have around. Not the second coming of anything or really that genuinely exciting, but they certainly have the musical and cultural skills to outlast their trendiness and hype.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

cine

Got the new album yesterday. It's really great. 11 tracks totaling up about 35 minutes. Easily recommended.. maybe I'll actually see a show of their's in 2004 as I've missed the last two that have come here. I can't get enough of the Strokes.

modage



The NEW Album is (finally) OUT NOW in America, and its pretty fucking good, so let me extend my recommendation to pick it up if you are so inclined.  

Rolling Stone gave Room On Fire 4 STARS

Change is good. It can be important, even historic. It is not always necessary. One of the best things about Room on Fire, the Strokes' second album, is that, in most of the ways that matter, it is exactly like their first. Nick Valensi's and Albert Hammond Jr.'s dirty-treble guitars cut 'n' thrust over the hard-rubber bounce of bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. Singer-songwriter Julian Casablancas delivers his put-up-or-fuck-off telegrams in a brusque, corrosive drawl, and producer Gordon Raphael wraps up the whole package with airtight austerity. On first impact, Room on Fire is to 2001's Is This It as the Ramones' second album, Leave Home, was to their knuckle-sandwich debut -- a perfect twin.
But the Strokes who made Room on Fire are not the cocky overnight sensations of two years ago. In the album's opening damage report, "What Ever Happened?," Casablancas' voice is so disfigured by fuzz in the first verse ("I wanna be forgotten/And I don't wanna be reminded"), it's as if he's singing over a broken speakerphone from a burning building. Like any good New Yorker, Casablancas is suspicious and impatient by nature. But the distance and distrust in his songwriting and ashen monotone on Is This It were nothing like this. Casablancas sings the title chorus of "You Talk Way Too Much" with cold, dry calm -- the high, mocking whine of the lead-guitar break provides extra cruelty -- and wraps up the brittle reggae of "Automatic Stop" with even less gallantry: "I'm not your friend/I never was."

The music is just as terse and unforgiving. In "Reptila," instruments blitz in and out of your face with the abrupt precision of a Lee Perry dub mix: a single, grinding guitar; Fraiture's pumping, one-note bass; the whole band in full, flailing rave-up. At times, the near-mono severity of Raphael's production seems designed to keep the Strokes off the radio. There is so much boxy compression on the high-speed bass, guitars and drums in "The Way It Is" that it sounds like the band cut it in the locked trunk of a '56 Chevy doing 110 miles an hour.

There are also jolts of color and dropped guard -- hints of what the Strokes must have hoped for in their aborted sessions for this record with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich -- in the whistling-synthesizer guitar lick in "12:51," a cheerful shot of '78 Cars; and the pneumatic, sighing strum of "Meet Me in the Bathroom." But another of the best things about Room on Fire is that, in the face of hysterical expectation, the Strokes have resisted the temptation to hit the brakes, grow up and screw around with a sound that doesn't need fixing -- yet. "Please don't slow me down, if I'm going too fast," Casablancas sings with heavily distorted irritation in "Reptila." If you want comfort and clarity, you're definitely in the wrong room. This record was built for thrills and speed.

DAVID FRICKE


you know, so basically, for fans of Britney and boy bands and other meaningless drivel.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Sleuth

I agree with the review mostly, except that I wanted at least a little bit more change.  It's been 2 years.  Maybe I bought into the whole hype of it, but if Al broke 2 amps trying to make his guitar sound like a keyboard, then my question is

Al, be a dear and buy a keyboard

I downloaded it a while back and have since deleted it.  I don't feel the urge to buy it.

3/5
I like to hug dogs

modage

well i think you should give it another listen.  one, i've had it for over a month now and the cd sounds much better than the downloaded versions, (noticeably so on a few songs).  and two, i think once you start listening to it you'll see that it really does have a completely different vibe from their first record.   the only song that would really 'fit' on their first record from this is Meet Me In The Bathroom, probably because it was the first of the new songs to be written.  and as a band you can tell they are getting better, and expanding their boundaries.  as far as something different, Under Control is a huge departure for them as well as setting them even further apart from any of the other "garage rock" bands.  who would have imagined a Bob Marley-esque ballad?
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

NEON MERCURY

..i am prob. in the minority ..but it's better than the first one IMO......