Fear the Blogosphere

I used to be an album man. I would only digest music in the form of the long-player, not really focusing on individual songs, but rather holistic artistic achievement. I was into a solid record, much more than I was into individually great songs. Since I started DJing this has changed.
The reason I was so album focused was because I felt like listening to one song of a band was not an accurate representation. People put out albums for a reason, because the whole is supposed to equal more than the parts. Contextually it’s important to understand the castle being built, rather than the individual grains of sand. Great bands build fortresses, fortresses of rock.
The album was an important part of what made me buy turntables and subsequently because a DJ. I hadn’t been buying music, only downloading, and buying great big 12’ records had a new appeal. Gigantisized album art, special versions, the ability to find rare and unique albums by digging through bargain bins. But more importantly, putting on a record was a commitment. Halfway through you’ve gotta get yourself out of your seat and flip it over. There is a certain consciousness to it that is so much more purposeful than throwing an MP3 on iTunes.
As I became more interested in DJing I bought Scratch Live, DJ software than lets you interact with MP3s in the same way you would with vinyl. I was still buying records, but now I could download Madonna songs without having to throw down $7 bucks for a song I only want to own because drunk girls like to dance to it. It would save me tons of money!
Indeed, Scratch Live has more than paid for itself, especially thanks to Oink. Oink was the most ideal music downloading interface that has ever existed- a community where you could find whatever you could imagine in incredibly high quality audio. The entire discography of most artists was available on Oink, from rare singles to the most popular albums. If there was something you wanted that wasn’t there, you could make a request, and odds are some anonymous soul would have that rare record you were looking for. It was like a candy shop.
In addition to Oink, the whole music blog phenomenon made digital DJing even easier. As a new band or single hits the internet, tons of blogs report on it and make it available for download. While each blog tries to keep a unique feel, a great song ultimately gets posted and reposted until everyone is gushing over the same set of bands.
This phenomenon is nothing new, a great band is going to get press. Magazines function in the same way, regurgitating the press releases of a select few artists. However the internet adds a whole new dimension in that it makes it incredibly easy to get your music out to the public. A buzz band takes on a whole new meaning when all it takes is a few well-placed MP3s instead of press releases and PR agents.
Ideally this is a good thing, but the problem has to do with DJ culture, the art of the remix, and myself. 6 months ago I thought D.A.N.C.E. by Justice was the greatest thing since toast. It’s a fucking great song, I played it during SXSW at a barbeque place and there were 60 year olds tapping their toes. However since then there have been probably 50 remixes. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, and a few even improve on the original. But the way these remixes get shotgun blasted across the blogosphere kills the original song. Every DJ was playing D.A.N.C.E. for a few solid months before the single was even released, then everyone was playing the MSTRKRFT remix, then the Alan Braxe remix, and then the Eli & Diplo remix.
While the whole blog-remix phenomenon has made remix production a much more distributable artform, it has really hurt the album. Before M.I.A.’s album was leaked on Oink a month before its release, I had already heard about half of it. Those leaked songs were remixed until I found the versions that work best for my purposes. So when the album actually came out, I ended up being really disappointed. People talk about Kala and say they love it, and I disagree with them. I like about half the songs, coincidentally the songs that were leaked, and the remixes even more.
Now perhaps these songs were leaked and furthermore remixed because they are more DJ friendly and that’s also why they appeal to me. The online remixing community is creating these alternate versions of songs to satisfy the needs of DJs, and although it is beneficial it kills albums like Kala for me. By becoming conditioned to wade through all these remixes for the one that fits my aesthetic I find myself less interested in that second half of M.I.A.’s album- I have the impression that it isn’t going to have that killer track to play out, because if it did that track would have become part of the canon of remixed blog tracks.
Which brings me to the idea of the canon and how it reinforces the single and the remix of the single while degrading the album. I’m so busy trying to keep up with this canon and occasionally trying to add my own pieces of flair that it becomes difficult to sit back and enjoy albums as castles instead of a collection of sand that I use to build dance parties.