Published
Wed, Oct 18, 2006, 16:22
- Jane Fonda watch out – there’s a new fitness guru in town. The latest LCD Soundsystem release is purpose built for jogging.
Jane Fonda watch out – there’s a new fitness guru in town. The latest LCD Soundsystem release is purpose built for jogging. The 45-minute track is available for download from iTunes from today.
James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem was commissioned by a certain shoe company to write a track to accompany a workout. The result, titled ’45:33’, is the second in the series (Crystal Method were first off the mark last year).
Murphy explains why he took on the project. “It was so anathematic to what you're typically asked to do as an artist: make easily digestible lumps of music for albums, or the radio, or whatever. I'd been thinking of the records I love in which people made one 'song' that took up the entire LP, and realizing that releasing something like this would otherwise be a virtual impossibility for me.”
Murphy might have been thinking of Manuel Gottsching’s album-length proto-techno classic ‘E2-E4’, which the ’45:33’ chessboard cover art pays homage to, albeit this time with the corporate swoosh of the project sponsor at the top of it.
But the track is not upbeat, driving rhythms like you would expect it to be. "In testing, I found that 'hard, fast, propulsive' music was not the best running music for me,” says Murphy. “Sometimes the best way to keep running is to find that parts of the run are actually rests. While you're still running, you're viewing some of the run as soothing and recuperative, rather than constantly feeling like you're running for your life."
’45:33’ is available to download from iTunes from today. The price tag is US$9.99.