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Longtime MAGNET contributor Corey duBrowa has a e-book out tomorrow that acknowledges that often-overlooked, misunderstood, bigger-than-a-single-but-smaller-than-an-album musical format: the EP. An Splendid For Residing: A Celebration Of The E.P. (Prolonged Play) (HoZac Books) salutes the 200 finest EPs launched from the Fifties till now, and it’s the primary tome to deal with this underappreciated, music-snob-approved format. Britt Daniel wrote the foreword, which you’ll learn beneath. However first, duBrowa explains why he requested the Spoon frontman to contribute to An Splendid For Residing.
duBrowa: I first met Britt Daniel in 2002, in Portland, Ore., at a long-forgotten little venue known as Berbati’s Pan.
Spoon was touring behind a fantastic new album known as Kill The Moonlight. I had been an enormous, outspoken fan of the band’s early work and had actually fallen in love with Moonlight’s predecessor, Women Can Inform—and maybe equally as a lot with the stopgap EP that accompanied it, Love Methods (which is featured within the 2000s chapter of An Splendid For Residing).
Britt was standing at the back of the venue. It was darkish, you couldn’t see (or hear, as a result of opening act’s blare within the small room) a lot, however you couldn’t miss Britt: a tall, blonde determine retaining to himself and simply listening to the music. I went up and launched myself, and unknowingly, a friendship emerged. Britt would later transfer to Portland across the time of his band’s launch of 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. We frolicked a bit then, I profiled Spoon for MAGNET and ultimately would break down the making of Women Can Inform in some element. Britt was a straightforward grasp, and I used to be stunned at how a lot of his artistic course of he allowed me to see and doc.
So once I was writing what ultimately grew to become a tribute to the “prolonged play” recording, there was just one artist in my thoughts—his band having recorded seven EPs over the course of its time collectively—who was the correct “voice” for An Splendid For Residing’s foreword. And that was Britt.
I’m each extremely honored to incorporate his ideas in my e-book, however I’ve been terribly fortunate to name him “good friend” for greater than 20 years. His band stays a private favourite, and his ideas on the EP have been about 10 instances higher than something I may have conjured on the topic.
—Corey duBrowa
Final Evening An EP Saved My Life
The EP is a dodge. Perhaps that’s why it’s such fertile floor for creativity. The dodge ain’t a foul place to be whenever you’re making artwork. The EP is a musical candy spot the place you will be by yourself, below the radar, safe within the data that what you’re making is only for you and people who love you sufficient to comply with you anyplace.
My band has been lucky to seek out that candy spot on a couple of EPs, however my favourite is Gentle Results, which accidentally grew to become the primary launch the place Spoon really seemed like itself on report. You can say it’s the place the id of the band crystalized, and at the very least a few of that’s obtained to be as a result of it felt like there have been no guidelines and no penalties.
As Spoon’s first album got here out, we started work on a pair songs we initially thought would find yourself as b-sides to a single from that LP. However then the folks at Matador Data occurred to say that, on condition that album’s normal lack of success, there was no actual demand for a industrial single, not to mention any b-sides. Abruptly, we have been now not certain the place these new songs would find yourself. However we stored recording anyway. After which, as a result of the album was just about tanking, Matador advised that perhaps we should always shortly transfer on to one thing new—one thing to proper the ship and begin over. How about an EP?
I used to be into that concept. So a lot of my favourite bands had launched EPs I cherished that carved out their very own identities between albums. Pavement’s Watery, Home EP contained the extra basic songwriting of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, but in addition the scrappiness of Slanted And Enchanted. I’d spent an excellent chunk of highschool driving down backroads with my mates, listening to Metallica’s Storage Days Re-Revisited EP on repeat. The lone mall in my hometown had a Hastings Data, the place the forward-thinking music purchaser had turned me onto the Cocteau Twins and their Love’s Simple Tears EP, which led me to the remainder of their catalog. And I found Julian Cope by way of the music “World Shut Your Mouth” from his self-titled EP, and a few years later named my first critical band after one in all his albums. All this to say that the EP could appear small or superfluous by design, however its impression will be large.
After that, issues began transferring quick. The stakes have been low, the temper was mild, and nice stuff gave the impression to be occurring nearly accidentally. I believe the fourth music we put down was “Mountain To Sound,” and I keep in mind enjoying that again, earlier than I’d even put any vocals on it, and pondering it was the very best factor we’d ever performed. Our producer John Croslin had the concept to report that music on a cassette four-track, then laborious pan all of the devices out within the combine. These have been strikes we wouldn’t have thought of for a correct album, and so they put the music in a completely distinctive sound world. Hastily, this group of songs began to really feel like its personal factor.
We have been thrilled to get to make any form of report, however we felt particularly excited to make this one as a result of it felt prefer it could possibly be no matter it wished it to be—the one actual crucial was to get it performed quick. No matter it grew to become, it’d definitely be extra inconspicuous than an LP, and as the usual for a recording artist to show mettle, the LP may equal stress. This felt prefer it could possibly be something.
Gentle Results set Spoon on a brand new path. It took us a second to grasp the place we have been going, and there’d be struggles with the music biz to come back. However the spirit of constructing that EP caught with us without end and offered a lesson within the significance of spontaneity and the worth of completely satisfied accidents.
EPs have a means of sneaking you into that golden territory the place nice artwork occurs, the place you’ll be able to wind up making magic, unencumbered by expectation. The EP is an escape route—a duck down the alley to the place no one’s searching for you, and you’ll be really free. Generally, that’s the easiest way ahead.
—Britt Daniel
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