Real Scenes: Detroit from Resident Advisor on Vimeo.

There’s no denying that Detroit has played a major role in the world of electronic music. Which is why in the second edition of Real Scenes, RA and Bench went to the city which birthed the genre we now call techno.
Detroit has always had a creative streak, due in large part to the boom and subsequent bust of the auto industry. These extreme economic high’s and lo’s have always been reflected by the music that emerges from the Motor City.
“These days, Detroit’s importance in the global electronic music scene is often referred to in the past tense. When we visited the city, though, we found a number of artists with their eyes (and ears) firmly set towards the future. After our time in the Motor City, it’s clear to us that Detroit will endure and innovate for years to come.” RA and Bench

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The group released a few singles on Tellé, then signed up to the big beat label Wall of Sound. The Röyksopp debut was 2001’s Eple single; both “Eple” and another track (“Poor Leno”) earned slots on over a dozen chillout compilations that year or the next. Their first full-length, Melody A.M., appeared in late 2001. After spending a few years performing live and remixing artists including Beck and Annie, Röyksopp returned with new material in 2005; the single Only This Moment heralded the summer release of the duo’s second album, The Understanding, which featured more traditionally structured songs than their earlier work. The live EP Röyksopp’s Night Out appeared a year later, and the third album — Junior, their most upbeat set — came in March 2009.

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After graduating, MGMT released an electro-rock EP, 2005’s Time to Pretend, on the tiny indie label Cantora Records. Good reviews (particularly for the title track, which would later crack the U.K. Top 40) and extensive touring brought the duo to the attention of British producer Steve Lillywhite in his role as an A&R executive for Columbia Records, which signed the band to a major long-term deal in 2006. Regrouping in Brooklyn, the duo partnered with another producer, Dave Fridmann, and recorded Oracular Spectacular, a far more musically expansive album that was released digitally in late 2007. A traditional CD release followed in January 2008, andOracular Spectacular ultimately enjoyed both critically approval and commercially success, with the album selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. and going platinum in Australia, the U.K., and Ireland.

MGMT served as Of Montreal‘s opening act for their extensive 2007 tour, during which Van Wyngarden and Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes began sketching out ideas for a side project called Blikk Fang. Although Blikk Fang planned on releasing an album in 2009, touring commitments kept the members of MGMT busy, and all side projects were temporarily shelved as the band spent the better part of two years on the road. In 2009, MGMT began working with producer Sonic Boom on their second album, Congratulations, which was released in the spring of 2010.

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Years of obscurity and the occasional poor decision preceded this. Just before Murphy began to cut his teeth throughout the ’90s, first as a member of Pony (an average post-hardcore band with heavy debts to their inspirations) and then with Speedking (a much stronger, more unique band), he passed up the opportunity to write for the popular sitcom Seinfeld. All the time spent toiling in indie rock took a toll on Murphy, but he built his own studio and became increasingly adept at engineering and producing other bands.

While working on David Holmes‘ Bow Down to the Exit Sign, he struck up a relationship with programmer/producer Tim Goldsworthythat developed into a partnership. By the end of 2002, there were several releases on Murphy and Goldsworthy‘s DFA label, most of which involved the duo in some capacity. LCD’s “Losing My Edge,” backed with an excellent neo-post-punk dance track called “Beat Connection,” was one of them. Murphy scattered three other LCD singles through the end of 2004 and released a self-titled full-length in January 2005. At the time of its release, the DFA label was more popular than ever; Murphy and Goldsworthy had remixes for Metro Area, N.E.R.D., Le Tigre, and Junior Senior behind them, as well as failed sessions with Britney Spears that might’ve benefitted from an interpreter. Janet Jackson was another unlikely admirer seeking the duo’s assistance, but Murphy didn’t bother to follow up on her request.

Murphy did respond to Nike, who commissioned him to record a lengthy piece of music as part of a promotion. 45:33, initially sold as an iTunes exclusive in October 2006, was aimed at joggers, butMurphy later confessed that he didn’t jog himself — mixed martial arts were more his thing, he claimed — and was driven by the opportunity to make something in the vein of Manuel Göttsching‘s early-’80s electronic landmark E2-E4. (DFA would later issue 45:33 on CD, breaking the track into six parts and adding three additional cuts.) The second proper LCD Soundsystem album, Sound of Silver, was released in March 2007. It contained Murphy‘s most affecting songwriting and peaked within the Top 50 of the Billboard 200. Led by the single “Drunk Girls” and an accompanying Spike Jonze-directed video, LCD Soundsystem’s third studio album, This Is Happening, was released three years later.

www.lcdsoundsystem.com