Laurie Anderson x Dan the Automator: From The Air
Remastered for its 25th anniversary, the enhanced edition of Laurie Anderson's Big Science was released earlier this summer. Her music, aural soundscape testaments to the rising tide of insecurities, make a fitting contemporary soundtrack. While we're fans of the groundbreaking album as is for its soothing sound and clever lyrics, Dan the Automator's version of her sit single is a rare case of a remix adding renewed cultural relevance to the song's near-perfect, eerie hook, "This is the time. And this is the record of the time." You can check out the mp3 here.
The rest of the album is worth checking out as well. From her 1981 hit "O Superman," conceptual artist and musician Laurie Anderson burst out upon an avant-garde music scene as divisive between genres—punk, disco, acid rock and new wave—as it was political cultures as the rise of the New Right presided over the ashes of the cultural revolution of the decade before.
Based in Lower Manhattan and collaborating with the likes of David Byrne and Philip Glass, in 1982, NME encapsulated Laurie Anderson's sound in its review of Big Science, her full-length debut. "There's a dream-like, subconscious quality about her song which helps them work at deeper, secret levels of the psyche," the magazine wrote. The album proved to be seminal in more ways than one with its sample-based rhythms setting the groundwork for the surging electronic dance music revolution that was sprouting up in Detroit and Chicago. You can pick up the album from Amazon or Insound.
Still recording and performing, Anderson's next studio album, Homeland is scheduled for next year along with a tour of North America.
