Aux, Vol. 1

LCD Soundsystem at Agganis Arena, December 2017

First in a series of thematic, guest-curated mixes. 

Welcome to the debut of what I hope will become a regular Noise Floor feature, wherein some pals step into the virtual DJ booth. Our first entry comes courtesy of another music writer friend of mine from college and centers on referential pairs of tunes. Check it out below.

This is the inaugural “Pairs” playlist, the theme of which is that every track is paired with
one that either clearly inspired it, or is the source of the main sample. Far from a
“Gotcha! This is where that really comes from,” listening to these pairings back to back
is meant to shed some light on what goes on in the mind of our favorite artists, and give
some concrete examples of how sonic ideas evolve in new contexts.

When Fela Kuti’s polyrhythms get sped up and spit out by a wiry David Byrne, or Iggy
Pop’s droning snare and saxophone get fed through James Murphy’s drum machine and
synthesizer, it allows us to hear the blueprint of a musical idea, and how it was
interpreted and reshaped by an artist. It’s prying open the black box of the creative
process a little bit – reverse engineering the sounds and songs we know by listening to
what inspired them. (And of course the lineage could keep going, just because Aphex Twin
inspired a newer artist doesn’t mean he invented the arpeggio).

Hearing songs with the same melodies, structures, or ideas back-to-back shows that no
sonic avenue is ever really milked dry. There’s always a new spin – whether it’s changing
the instrumentation, or the arrangement, or flipping the structure and putting some 808s
under it, music always evolves and shifts. Listening to the “before” and “after” can be
illuminating.

Hope you enjoy it.

-Jonathan Vayness