14/08/2005

Ladytron - Witching Hour (early preview)

entry posted by Inquisitor at 24:22 (permalink).
categories: Music

Let's play a game: you are a huge Big Four record label; let's call you "Universal Island". You sign up an excellent British electro band, which we'll call "Ladytron", and pay for the recording of their new album with DJ Shadow's engineer (Kasabian's too, but we won't mention that); then you release their single, "Sugar", with absolutely zero promotion, without iTunes Music Store and so despite being "Single Of The Week" all over the place the band fails to get in the Top 40. Now you're coming up to release a new single, "Destroy Everything You Touch", which was fantastic as a cut-off speeded-up demo MP3 capped off a mix show on Radio 1 and is even better in the flesh, and... there's no out-and-out promotion for that, either, right now, no Radio 1 C-listings or anything. Then you move the date of the album so that not even the band's webmaster knows when it's coming out; currently, they're saying "October", and it was originally set for later this month.

And then you send out promos of the album before the tracklist's even been announced on the official website, without even the slightest attempt to keep them secure, and thus the album thus turns up at the "usual places" in luscious VBR quality. On one torrent site, it's got over a hundred seeders, which indicates somewhat demand for the material... Does Universal want to kill the band or what?

You can, of course, save them by simply buying the album when it comes out, because it's really very good; at least on second listening. It's a more varied album stylistically than Light & Magic, and I think that helps it; it's different, and yet it's still recognisably the same band. It's slower, which I'm not entirely sure is a good thing; but on the other hand it is wide ranging and keeps the very commendable aspects-of-dark seen on the previous albums. Also, you'll be able to buy this album, whereas 604 and Light & Magic are missing in action (courtesy of both their previous British and American record labels going under).

Or maybe, just maybe, the only reason the album is everywhere right now is clever peer-to-peer promotion; it's unlikely, but practically my entire CD collection has been built up from previewing albums on P2P services, liking them and buying them, and I'm sure there's others like me out there. What say you, Universal? More thoughts on this and other matters as I listen to the album more.

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