Arctic Monkeys #76 - Zal 9-9-13 zonder full leak gehaald worden?

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Op woensdag 31 juli 2013 01:55 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:
'AM' duurt 42 minuten, wat het de langste plaat van ze tot nu toe maakt (scheelt geloof ik paar seconden met het debuut). Kortste nummer is 'High' met bijna 3 minuten, langste nummer is 'Do I Wanna Know?' met 4,5 minuut.

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"You get to a point where you’ve been round the block enough times to know that it’s kind of alright, and it’s not all meant to be about you anyway"

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Op woensdag 31 juli 2013 15:15 schreef febster het volgende:
Ik twitterde 36 dagen geleden: 'En er staat een nummer op AM van de Monkeys getiteld 'No1 Party Anthem'. Zal dus vast wel een ballad zijn, Turner kennende.'

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Toegegeven: zoveel hoop hadden we niet meer gevestigd op Arctic Monkeys na laatste album Suck It and See uit 2011. Maar eerste songs Do I Wanna Know en Mad Sounds van volgend album AM deed alvast gunstig stemmen, een ijzersterke show op Best Kept Secret deed ons 'game, set and match' roepen en ook het volgende Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? dat nu online verschijnt mag er weer zijn: catchy as hell, met licht soulvolle zang en uitstekende dynamiek tussen het relatief kale coupletje en het uitbundiger gearrangeerde refrein.

SPOILER: nog een

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The full story of Arctic Monkeys new album 'AM' - and this week's NME cover

It started for NME (and me) at Glastonbury a few weeks ago, where I spent a day shadowing and interviewing Arctic Monkeys as they prepared to headline Worthy Farm.

What I think is particularly brilliant about this band - from a journo's point of view, you understand - is the level of access they allow people like me. As a group they seem keen to tell their story in the best possible way, which they know isn't by ramming it down people's throats and doing hundreds of soundbite interviews over a few days in some faceless hotel. This is undeniably great and undoubtedly rare in 2013. Long gone are the days where a journo gets to spend weeks on end on the road with a huge band, sadly.

But crucially, what Arctic Monkeys and the team of people around them seem to really understand, is that in order to get the best from these kind of situations it really is worthwhile letting people into their inner circle. Which is, I think I'm right in saying, exactly what they've done with NME this time around.

From sitting in Domino Records' HQ with label head Laurence Bell playing me the album just before Glastonbury (the excitement on his face was infectious), to speaking to the band mere seconds before and after that great Worthy Farm set (nerves? They were palpable beforehand to the point where I even started to feel my stomach churn for them), they really have tried to take us – and hopefully you, readers – every step of the way.

So, the new album then. We chatted for a good couple of hours about it on the day of Glasto. By this point I'd only heard it once – with Lawrence – where I'd frantically written loads of notes down on the back of an envelope. At one point in our Glasto chats Alex whipped his phone out as he'd written his own notes on that, which was quite funny. I'm always sceptical about judging albums after one listen, but it's often the name of the game in this business, and in any case I must have heard 'AM' about 50 times since then. And I really, really do think it's something very special indeed.

It bugs me that fans still have to wait so long to hear it though – senseless bragging about being first on something is never nice – so I thought it might be cool to do a blog listing all the influences I can hear on the album, in order to give you an idea of what to expect from it. It's compiled from stuff the band told me in the interviews, to lyrics (loads of Alex's lines namecheck other songs), to songs I reckon they were listening to a lot when making it in sunny Los Angeles; a place that looms very, very large over the record indeed...

Some notes about those songs:

Amazing riffs are all over AM, with the electric-shock bit (52 seconds in) of Sabbath's 'War Pigs' nabbed wholesale on 'Arabella', which is my favourite song on the record. Funnily enough, Captain Beyond also used the same riff on 'Raging River Of Fear' too. Wonder if the Monkeys were listening? That band were kind of like a 70s version of Monkeys, in a way – a Brit band who ensconced themselves in LA for a few years and totally absorbed the culture there.

'2000 Light Years From Home' makes the cut not because of the sound of any AM tracks, but a lyric on the album. "Ain't it just like you to kiss me and then hit the road / leave me listening to the Stones / 2000 Light Years From Home" sings Alex on the brilliant, T-Rex infused 'I Want It All'. It's a proper moment.

Babe Ruth are probably the most unfashionable band I could possibly reference here – proper prog dinosaurs – but the bass in 'The Mexican' sounds uncannily like Nick's work on 'Fireside'.

The two Lou Reed tracks are included because of 'Mad Sounds'. It's one of the best things Arctic Monkeys have ever done, in my opinion, and perfectly encapsulates the woozy, fucked up atmosphere of '…Wild Side' and 'Pale Blue Eyes'. Side note: Alex told me he wanted the record to have a dirty feeling overall, like Lou Reed's 'Transformer'.

As for the rap stuff – it's more about the rhythms than anything. The new album isn't G-funk. Or full of keyboards Or rapping. But the drums and bass are massively, massively influenced from the stuff Dre, Outkast et al were doing at the turn of the century.

Ditto Aaliyah, but for the backing vocals rather than rhythms. You could add Destiny's Child, En Vogue and, fuck, maybe even Haim to that list too (co-producer James Ford was working on their record at the same time as he was AM). The vocal influence of tracks like 'Try Again' is all over the place. "Ex-girlfriend music," is how the band describe it.

And there's John Cooper Clarke, of course (pictured below). Alex cribs his poem for album closer 'I Wanna Be Yours', but it sounds nothing like the JCC's track in the playlist. Instead it's a sad, yearning lament that's stuffed full of lust. Bit of a tearjerker, all things told. It's the first time the band have ever used a drum machine too.

Some other tracks that could have made the playlist but either weren't on Spotify or made the whole thing sound a bit disjointed:

Ike Turner and The Family Vibes – Jumpin'. Alex was keen to talk about Ike during our chat, saying that brilliant quote about how the album sounds like a Dre beat, with an Ike haircut, galloping across the desert on a Strat guitar. I can't hear a huge amount of obvious Ike/Tina influences in the album, personally, but it's there in spirit for sure. I guess there are elements that sound like it too - like this track from Ike's much-ignored early 70s side project The Family Vibes. It's funk-rock-blues, which kind of sums 'AM' up too.

John Lennon – 'Nobody Loves You (When You're Down And Out)'. This just must have been an inspiration for 'No.1 Party Anthem'. Both tracks share than James Bond style cabaret mentality – piano-led, glitzy but with totally cool, sharp lyrics. I think this one is about a strip bar in LA all the Brit bands go to while they're there. But what do I know?

Dusty Springfield – 'The Look Of Love'. Mentioned by Alex in the lyrics to 'No.1 Party Anthem', alongside...

…Madness – 'House Of Fun'. And "A Rush Of Blood" (by Coldplay) too.

Marvin Gaye – 'Sexual Healing'. The backing vocals on 'I Want It All' echo the "get up, get up" bits from 'Sexual Healing'. Surely a knowing nod to the soul king.

Bob Crewe and Charles Fox – 'Smoke (Viper Vapor)'. This tune is from the Barbarella soundtrack, a film that's referenced outright in 'Arabella', right down to the central character's "silver swimsuit".

Speaking of films, here's some other stuff you might wanna watch to get in the mood: Mean Streets (mentioned in the lyrics to 'Knee Socks'), Louis CK's 'Hilarious' (the band are well into their comedy) and, well, anything directed by Fellini. Asked where the album would be set if it was a film, Alex said he'd want it to "seem like a Fellini dream sequence". Sounds alright to me.

http://www.nme.com/blogs/(...)this-weeks-nme-cover

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Arctic Monkeys co-producer James Ford on new album 'AM'

Aside from being one half of Simian Mobile Disco, James Ford is the guy you could – alongside Miles Kane, I guess – most realistically call the 'Fifth Arctic Monkey' on account of his studio work with the band since 2006 (not to mention The Last Shadow Puppets and Alex Turner's 'Submarine' soundtrack). Alongside Ross Orton, James co-produced the Monkeys new album 'AM' at LA's Sage & Sound Studios, something I spoke to him about for this week's magazine cover feature. He had so much great stuff to say though, and I just couldn't let the stuff we couldn't fit in the mag go to waste. So here's the full Q&A, in all its glory…

NME: Can you tell me about the very start of the 'AM' sessions. What was the first conversation you and the band had?

James Ford: When they first came to me they were like, 'We're thinking of recording it in our rehearsal room', and I thought, 'Er…alright'. I went along to Sage & Sound, which is on not a very glamorous street in Hollywood – there's pretty much a building site right outside – and I went in and was pleasantly surprised, because in terms of recording it's a really nice room. It sounds really good. It's all wooden with these slightly strange faux Greek pillars and architecture. They had been camped up in there for months, even before I'd arrived, and they'd been doing loads of demos on these pretty shitty '70s four-tracks. I know they were getting really into the four-tracks, which played quite a big part of it. We ended up using a fair bit of them on the record – bits that were usable like interesting vocals. We tried to incorporate that as much as we could. I always love that, because the first time you record something, or the first time you have an idea, sometimes there's a magic in it that it's hard to re-create. So I'm all up for using as much of that as possible. I think it really influenced the way that they put the songs together.

Alex Turner said having that studio as a band HQ was key – the first time they've been in that position since making the debut album.

I think it was really important. That studio was so important to them - to have their own space to experiment and fuck around in was just great. The general routine we tried to stick to was 11am to 8pm, or something like that. But it really depended on what was going on at the time. When we've recorded stuff in the past we'd go somewhere like a residential place, and it was all about recording and that's it. But because they all live in LA, someone would run off and pick up the dry cleaning one morning or whatever. It was actually quite laid back, which was nice. We'd go and hang out in the evenings. It wasn't a very stressful recording situation - it was quite day-to-day.

On the other hand, the band told us they never wanted to see the studio again by the end of it. Cabin fever?!

Hah! They spent so much time there. The amount of time I spent there was just putting the album together in the later stages. I popped in a few times early on to hear what was going on but they were in there for months before that, rehearsing and writing, fucking around on the four-tracks. So I'm not surprised they were glad to see the back of it! I know I was, and I was only there for about a third of the amount of time they were.

How long were you there in total?

I dunno. On and off probably about a month, or something like that. They spent a fair amount of time writing, but I don't think it was as intensive as it is when you go away to a studio. I think they were doing bits here and there. They were definitely preparing it for quite a while.

Did you have a brief before you started?

There was no brief other than to make an interesting album. Obviously I'd seen the songs as they were demos, and I think that around the time of 'R U Mine?' they struck upon this riffy, slow and heavy thing. But then with this slightly strange hip-hop, slightly R&B sense to some of the melodies and structures. There was a bit of that in there. Really, they just wanted to push it on and do something different, and keep moving forward. My job is to really to try and help bring their ideas out and distil and crystallise what they want it to be, and help them achieve that. There's a Sabbath-y thing in there too, but obviously it's all filtered through Alex's songwriting and the band's playing.

The backing vocals might shock some fans – they're overtly R&B in places.

There is quite a different take on the vocals. There's a lot of Alex in falsetto, of Alex singing in a really high register that he hasn’t really done before. Obviously Matt and Nick are both great singers as well, so Nick did a lot of really low Outkast-y, octave down vocals, while Matt did a lot of high, R Kelly-type stuff. We were interested in some of the vocal production ideas and, I think, the way that the good modern R&B records sound. They're often a very simple loop or beat, but a lot of the dynamics and the structure of the songs comes from the vocals and how they interact and build. That was definitely something they were interested in exploring. Often in the past it's been Alex's voice in the front, and obviously it’s still largely that, but we just found it interesting to play around with some of the other voices in the band.

What was your favourite moment recording the album?

It was actually when 'Do I Wanna Know?' came together, I just remember thinking, 'This sums up what we're trying to do'. It felt kind of heavy - and heavy in mood as well. It had a weight to it that I really like. I remember when that came together being really excited, and seeing the picture crystallise in front of me a little bit of where we going. It was one of the first ones we got done, and it was that thing of it coming together – I could see the end call from that point onwards.

That riff was written on Alex's 12-string Vox guitar, right?

Yeah. I remember when we bought it, I've got a picture of Alex playing it when we did the previous album ['Suck It And See']. He found it at the end of that record, and we never really used it on it. But I remember it quite distinctly, because it’s got these effects built into the guitar and I think he actually bought it as a bit of a joke. But I think it actually turned into a bit of an inspirational instrument! A lot of the riffs were written on that particular guitar.

The drum machine on 'I Wanna Be Yours' is a first for them too.

That's right, I think it is. That's the thing, on the last record we tried to do a 'band in a room' type thing, with barely any computers used. It was very much to tape. But this one was a case of 'all bets are off'. The band wanted to push things on and do something different. So to move it on and make it sound different we were very open to using bits of keyboards or drum machines, or whatever worked for the song really. Obviously it still has to link into them and feel like them, but…

…It's not like they've gone dance?

Yeah! It was probably the same one Suicide would have used. It’s not like they've gone electropop on us! It's not an 808 or anything! It's from that kind of era when drum machines were invented as an accompaniment to keyboards. Like the kind of thing old people playing in bars use. They've been used in rock bands for a long time – I think as long as you do it in the right way, it's great.

Alex's vocals on the fast bit of 'Arabella' sound different to his normal style…

I think it's doubled at that point. I don’t know if we've really done that before. He sings it really loud, but there's two of him. It kind of seemed like a good idea - in an Ozzy way.

You've been producing the band for years now, and they told me they couldn’t foresee a time when they weren’t working with you. How does that feel?

I dunno. It's quite weird, because it's gone past the point of me feeling that I'm working with them. It's like we're friends and we can hang out, and making music is something we do for fun or something. A bit like I do with Jas [Shaw, James' Simian Mobile Disco bandmate]. It's something I would do for a laugh! So, I dunno. I think they probably should work with other people and get other influences in there – I think that's really healthy. I'm always willing and eager for other people to get involved. But if they ever ask me, I'd always do it because they're such amazing people to work with, and I consider them good friends.

http://www.nme.com/blogs/(...)ford-on-new-album-am

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Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 19:16 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:
We weten nu dat de nieuwe track per abuis 2 weken van tevoren is verschenen.

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Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 19:35 schreef AMDB het volgende:

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Ook fysieke release al dan?

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Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 19:49 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:

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Nee joh, 'Do I Wanna Know?' is amper 2 weken uit. Al ging dat ook op een verrassende manier, dus wie weet. Vrees dat 'Stop The World' tegen die tijd de B-kant is...

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Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 20:19 schreef MilanILF het volgende:

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Stop the world?

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Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 20:27 schreef Pannenkoek3000 het volgende:
Klinkt als een typische naam voor een Oasis-nummer

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Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 20:29 schreef Pannenkoek3000 het volgende:
Kan de OP trouwens niet eens geupdate worden, of in iedergeval de albums/singles in een spoiler tag gegooid worden. Ik scroll me telkens suf