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“A lot of people do talk about the demise of the album, but I still believe that if an artist tries hard to make a great album, people will buy it and listen to it as an album, rather than just a collection of random songs.”
“I was just filled with doom. I was absolutely terrified and I couldn’t believe I was going to release this thing. I was just like: “This is shit. I can’t believe this is going out into the public domain.””
This is how Chloé Raunet, a.k.a. C.A.R., describes her feelings when she listened back to her album My Friend. “Now I’ve actually come back round and I do really like the album and I’m proud of it.”
She should be. Released last autumn on Paris label Kill the DJ, it is a heady conspiracy of nu wave and electronica. From the delicious flute intro of La petite fille du 3eme to the future classic Ten Steps Up, teasing melodies dripping with hope find themselves in flux with a deeper darker sadness. For electronic music don Andrew Weatherall it was “one of the best releases of 2014” and Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, described it as "lovely melancholia”.
At times it beautifully recalls a 1960s psychedelia - not fanciful, but mysterious - which, like all good music, seems to occupy the fringe of conscious understanding. Her first solo project since the break-up of previous band Battant in tragic circumstances, it reveals an artistic confidence - a sense of arrival.
Chloé’s recollection demonstrates the difficult, sometimes contrary, act of creation. A swimming mass of thoughts and ideas coalesce and find a voice in that one moment that may never be recaptured.
Rufus Wainright saw his album Poses as “kind of a miracle”, encapsulating a feeling he said he will never be able to repeat. Damon Albarn once said: “Every album is something like a snapshot. It only shows one moment in time. It shows what we feel and think right at that point in time, nothing more and nothing less.”
Given its temporal nature, it is not surprising that an artist might feel completely different about a creation a few months later.
Further conflict is found in the artist’s need to share themselves with the world versus the terror of exposing this intimate side. You are opening up yourself to judgement, not just from the faceless masses, but from your friends, your family, the newsagent, your local pub. Compared to the single or E.P., an album is a much longer period over which to prove yourself, with more opportunities to fail.
So why do it? Why is the album important?
Because while individual tracks make up the substance, an album provides the context in which to understand them. The importance of narrative is precisely why top DJs get paid so much - at a club they are essentially doing the same thing - they give meaning to the music through what they play before and after. In this way, the futures of the DJ and the album might be more intertwined than is commonly recognised.
Following the recent release of C.A.R.'s standout single, Glock’d, we ask how does inspiration become recorded music? What is it like to perform live? And how does an artist view promotion and the media?
Illustrated by moving images and samples from My Friend we immerse you in the world of Chloé Raunet and the making of the album.