Les Rythmes Digitales – Darkdancer
Every once in a while I go through my whole cd collection to find something fun from the old days. In some rare occasions you find some jewels that for some reason you haven’t listened to as much as you should’ve. Darkdancer definitely fits in with that.
This project was Stuart Price‘s one day fly, it seems. This album was released, and probably about a handful of remixes were done under this name, but it seems that after that, he got tired of it. That was quite a shame, Darkdancer is a classic, and I would’ve loved to see a follow-up on it.
So, what is Darkdancer exactly? An album full of funk, house in the style of Daft Punk’s filter house, soul. A journey into the old disco days, but in a modern jacket. Wonderfully executed, possibly better done than Daft Punk did on their legendary albums Homework and Discovery.
As such, I’d love to see an Interstella 5555-like animated movie for this album. I definitely feel that fits this album just as much as Discovery, if not more.
Back to the topic. The most popular single probably was Sometimes, a very melancholy track that is good, but definitely not the best of the album. Instead, try ‘Music makes you lose control’, ‘Hypnotise’ and ‘Jacques Your Body (Make Me Sweat)’ (where Jacques is a reference to the alias Price is using, not only for this project: Jacques Lu Cont). Those tracks kick some serious butt. But really, singling out tracks like that on an album like this is bordering on sacrilege: The whole album deserves the full attention of any listener.
This is one of those real classics, and it’s a shame it’s been the only album by Stuart Price under this name. I definitely hope that somewhere in the future he will decide to revive this project.
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Hey man, actually his debut album was ‘Liberation’, also released on Wall of Sound back in 1996, Darkdancer being originally a 1999, but got a (much deserved) rediscovery in 2005, what with the Transformer Citroen ad and that.
Liberation’s not a bad album but it’s very different in sound to Darkdancer, kind of atypical early WoS stuff, big beat/electro instrumental material. If you’re a big fan of his later LRD/Jacques Lu Cont/Madonna work, you mightn’t be as pushed about this, but there’s still a nice little gem or two on it, like the closing track Kontakte, with its big sampled strings (i think its the piece ‘Morning’ from Grieg’s Peer Gynt), deep and plunky bassline, and chunky, choppy drums.
Hey Liam,
Thanks for the additional information, I really thought this was his only album. Maybe I’ll need to check out this Liberation album as well.In ‘96 I was hugely into the whole big beat, so I might actually dig that album as well