Yo. It's a Friday afternoon, so I'm trawling for opinions to while away the last few hours before hometime.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, my group will be going to record a new album. We have lots of music that we haven't recorded- so much so that, if we were to record it all, it would have to be a double CD. Before this album is even recorded, we should have released a 20 minute CD&DVD pack thingy, and a split 10" single. So, questions that I'd like answers to/opinions on:
1. would you actually buy a double album from a band you hadn't really heard of?
2. would you see it as a broad canvas for ideas that take a long time to develop, or a colossal self-indulgence? Or neither of these?
2. by extension, do you think it would be worth a band in our situation (basically unheard of, limited funds) releasing a double album?
Ta, all. Launch away...
hmm
1. If it's the same price as a single disc, I'm more likely to chell out for it.
2. Broad canvas. Or two distinct albums in their own right. If done well.
2 by extension. Brave move. If it costs too much to do, don't go for it, but if you can afford the extra outlay, I think it could work. Or just save other stuff up for a hypothetical second album.
what about if...
...it were a bit more expensive?
(Sorry, it was supposed to go "2" then "3". but I suppose that's obvious, what with it just being "counting"...)
1) not very likely
2) more the latter, it's better to filter down to the best songs. so basically stick to a single album. you could release a second album, or some ep(s) or just progress iideas from the songs which you feel are weaker.
there are some great double albums (siamese dream, drukqs, beatles, the fragile to name a few) but these were all by established artists. except perhaps LCD soundsystem, where it worked. but you might be blowing all you loads in one go. so i wouldn't.
Add
London Calling & Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me to the list (although those were double albums on vinyl.)
It's a brave move, doing this. A friend of mine did this actually. His band aren't exactly signed but they do have a following around Europe. Basically, they're a heavy, glammy type outfit and the first CD was their heavy stuff and the second was mellow in a kind of Bowie/Suede way. The first CD wasn't really my cuppa, the second one I liked, but the point is that they managed to pull off doing a double album.
release them as two seperate albums
six/eight months apart or something. double CD albums are a chore.
In the same way that...
...Kid A and Amnesiac are kind-of linked, you mean...?
exactly
you also get the benefit of being able to work on the second part a bit more. i mean this as no disrespect to your band, but double albums are rarely as good as the band releasing them seems to think they are!
It's a good point.
In general, though, isn't "music" rarely as good as the band releasing it thinks it is...? :)
^ this.
But don't make it such an explicit cash-in as System Of A Down did.
And don't release them on the same day, as Nelly did.
.
1) No
2) Neither - but would probably think there's some filler on there and it could have been a much better single CD album
2) No
^ this
I'm not a fan of double albums at all to be honest. I struggle a lot with most single ones, truth be told.
i think
a double album from an unknown band is a pretty bad idea. Only real fans would want to hear it all, and how many of them do you have? Far better to get your Quality Control Hat on, choose the best 40 minutes or so you can, and then in 6 months go back to the other stuff and if it still holds up, if you're still completely happy with it, then release it as EPs or put it towards the next album.
It would completely depend on the genre of music to me
Some styles of music just need a long time to develop (I'm thinking bands like Shalabi Effect that have very long slow pieces made up of lots of interesting segments). Another good example would be the new(ish) stars of the lid album.
But... if it's fairly trad verse/chorus/verse fare that you're peddling then I would say single album only please.
I know what this thread needs!
- Paul Hawkins! he'll see you straight!
Give me a second
I'll post below...
Ah. Should probably have mentioned that, shouldn't I?
We play long instrumentals; one of the things we play live a lot is half an hour long; Mike Diver did a very nice review of us supporting Audrey & Yndi Halda, where we just played one song. So no, they're not your verse/chorsus/verse stuff.
In which case I would say go for it
but make sure there is enough variety over the double album - tempo, instrumentation, dynamics etc. No-one wants 2 CDs of samey post rock stodge - I think variety is key.
I think we're quite keen on variety
All the non-recorded stuff is pretty varied (time signatures, instruments, tempo, blah blah blah), otherwise it really would be a terrible idea, wouldn't it? Personally, I wouldn't want something that was the same for two discs, and I can't imagine anyone else who would, either.
Actually, except The River, by William Basinksi. 2 discs of, basically, exactly the same thing. Hypnotic, though. And very good.
I would buy a double album if I thought the quality was sustained
I guess thats the question you need to ask yourself honestly, is everthing up to the quality you want? If so go for a double album.
I think its normal for bands to have more material than a single album and I think the wise tendency is to keep some material back for the 2nd album if needed.
But if you think your material is all up to standard then I think you should go for it.
^ This
I agree that it could sometimes be easy to get out there all the stuff that your band has come up with for a single album as you want everyone to know what you're capable of. However, and this is not meant to offend, you could run the risk of boring the listener with the sheer volume of tracks.
I'd say that you could do a staggered album release, and in doing so, the combined impact of two albums and the attention surrounding them would be bigger than a single release...
If I really like a band...
I want them to release an album every Monday.
We've been having the precise same discussion in my band recently.
The new album we think we're putting out in September is gonna probably be a single disc 11-track 50-minute album but we did think about going the double album route as we've got about 25/30 songs we could feasibily release and the people in the band, the label and other people we've asked about the songs seem to think the quality control's pretty high throughout and different ideas about what should or shouldn't go on there.
My main worry I've got is that, whilst we're set on the one disc 11-track album, we've decided on the tracklisting and feel confident we've got a tight, concise, well-structured and cohesive album, part of me thinks a tight, concise well-structured and cohesive album doesn't really reflect who we are as a band and whilst a sprawling 25 track double-album would undoubtedly be more messy, more unweildly, lack cohesion and bascially be very flawed it'd probably be a much better indication of who we are and what kind of thing we're doing...
Plus
Although I know other people feel differently, I'm personally very against holding songs back to be released later. I mean sometimes we'll come back to songs we never thought we would but I'm very much of the school of thought that it's better to get all your ideas out there in some form or other as then you have no safety net to fall back on and have to continually come up with new ideas...
Ah. That's a tricky one.
So why did you opt for the single disc? Out voted?
As a side note, I'm sure that lots of people's first introduction to The Magnetic Fields would have been through 69 Love Songs. Obviously, they'd been honing their craft for a while, so quality control wasn't an issue, but interesting that it could be so popular and yet so sprawling...
I think it was my final decision to go for the single disc.
In the end I think I felt a cohesive single-disc'd be more useful to the band and it'd be easier to get positive reviews etc. (I imagine some reviewers'd bulk at listening to a double album from a band they've never heard of so we'd just miss out on the reviews entirely)
I'd quite like to do some kind of deal though where people who buy directly from the label's website can have a second disc thrown in for free (and then maybe put the rest of the songs online for anyone to download if they want...)
I haven't heard a double length studio album that I enjoyed
in 15 years....and that was Use Your Illusion I & II!
I probably wouldn't by any album
by a band I hadn't really heard of.
If the material is good enough, then release it.
i think
1) Yeah, if it was competitively priced with a single disc album / i really liked the little bit that i'd heard - see LCD Soundsystem Debut
2) It depends. I love the LCD Soundsystem double album, but i still kind of see it as a mainstream album, with another disc of amazing songs that didnt really fit on the album anywhere... so not a canvas as such, but still worth while, whilst not actually a big album or 2 distinct ones even.
The last double album i got was rhcp stadium arcadium, which had loadsa good songs on it, but really needed some quality control. They painted it as their opum magnus - it isnt, in my opinion. But then, they have enough good songs to release 2 seperate albums maybe, just not in the way they did it. I gather people got a similar impression with that foo fighters double disc.
3)If you have the money and heart in the project, then definitely. If youre on a budget and trying to break out - then eps rather than massive sprawling albums are probably what you need from a logistics view...
I have a real dislike for double albums.
It might be just me, but I think it's too much. I'm a huge fan of the album as a format, and I've always thought that the maximum length of a CD is also a maximum possible length for an album.
So if I saw a double album by a band I didn't know, I would not only decide not to buy it, I'd also assume that I wouldn't like it anyway. Sounds unfair, but it's also true for bands I know or like. If my favourite band announced that their next release would be a double-album, I would instantly assume it'll be rubbish.
My advice is to work your material into a single album. Arrange them into a cohesive whole. That's the way to go.
Afterwards, if you still want to, you can think about why you didn't use the songs you didn't use. Then work on them, use the best bits in new songs, or ditch them altogether, whichever seems appropriate.
My 2p.