Emily: I listened to this album without any context, meaning I was completely unfamiliar with the album beforehand and as I listened I had no Wikipedia or other source to inform me. Sometimes this is the best way to hear an unfamiliar album, at least for me, because I go in with no judgment or preconcieved notions of the era, artist, or genre. For the better part of two train rides, my ears were filled with Mylo's DJ-produced electronica. I speculated as to its origins: '80s spoken-word samples of rock and pop albums to be eliminated from the Bible Belt in the title track seemed to age it, but the repetitive beats seemed like a recent predecessor to the current EDM and dubstep craze (minus that genre's heavily dropped bass lines). Was Mylo a peer of Daft Punk, or Aphex Twin, or some random Swedish DJs I've never even heard of? Turns out he's pretty modern - Destroy Rock & Roll is a British product from 2004. While listening, my questions and speculations kept me engaged even when the repetition inherent in this style of music bored or irritated me. A a few tracks used unique samples and looping techniques that had me listening closely and (discreetly) bobbing my head, but 5 minutes of the same 3 beats over and over and over again was just too much for me on a few tracks. It was simply too long - cut this album in half, and I would perhaps have been a bigger fan.
Favorite Tracks: Destroy Rock & Roll; Drop The Pressure; Valley of the Dolls
Zack: I haven’t shied away on this blog from
discussing my affinity for the Foo Fighters and pretty much all things Dave
Grohl (Probots included). That love extends to their last album – Wasting Light
– which just so happens to have been recorded in Mr. Grohl’s garage using only
analog, and therefore features absolutely zero digital enhancement. It’s a
great album, and won the Grammy for Best Rock Album. I remember (it happened
two years ago, I’m not exactly stretching far back here) when they went to
accept that award, and Dave Grohl talked about how proud of it he was because
he inferred that a moral victory for natural rock music accompanied that weird
little figurine or whatever the hell it is. The group of friends fucking around
in a garage, making music that sounded exactly like them and not some
computer-enhanced super-band iteration had won. Chock it up for the good guys.
That same night the Foos did a live mashup with Deadmau5 and Lil' Wayne, but
Atmosphere told me I “have to let people be hypocrites,” so I’m letting it
slide. With that context in mind, I found this album pretty interesting.
Obviously you have the title, and it’s an electronic/chillout album through and
through. It’s completely synthesized, and so I guess should be an affront to
real rockers everywhere. But I don’t think that’s the case. If anything, it
seemed to me to be a love letter to rock music. The most obvious example is the
album’s namesake track, which samples the “Invocation for Judgement Against and
Destruction of Rock Music” by Church Universal and Triumph. That’s an actual
church, mind you, not a Lupe Fiasco side project. And the dialogue usurped for
this purpose is an unabashed condemnation of rock, used in these circumstances
as something to be mocked. Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to
mispronounce David Bowie’s name? He’s hardly Krist Novoselic. The point of the
song is clear: Listen to these fucking morons not understanding the value to
all these musicians that we grew up listening to. But it’s sort of a theme
build upon throughout the album. Even if Mylo is producing music a different
way, using different techniques, he’s still appealing to a shared cultural
context that we all share, one forged by the audial storytelling done by plenty
of the names listed on that song. Mylo can’t exist without all those rockers
that predate him, and he knows it. So he never sat out to destroy rock &
roll, just to celebrate it.
Favorite Tracks: Destroy Rock & Roll; Sunworshipper;
Emotion 98.6
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