#microkorg

(via plaz)

That's definitely The Fucked Jam sound, right? It turns out as well that the MicroKORG had just been newly released in mid-2002, right in the middle of production for Quebec. That synth was the one the cool kids used in the 2000s - The Prodigy recorded the song 'Girls' on a MicroKORG, which I'm guessing is what gave it some street cred and legitimacy. (Even though it's really an instrument for weird nerds, but I wouldn't say that to any member of The Prodigy's face either.)

LCD Soundsystem used one in a couple of songs around the same time too. Pretty sure it was mostly used in dance music until that huge song by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in like 2009. That 'Needy Girl' song by Chromeo was recorded on one, and that song stayed around for years, if you remember. (Which you don't, because I'm irreleveant and old, and I'm talking to a bunch of young people about the songs I remember from the dancing halls where we did the fucking Charleston and the twist, Jesus Christ.)

Basically that song was a big hipster dance music hit, the kind that doesn't lose the label money, but cultured middle class art college kids are still allowed to like it. And it came out before the Prodigy song did, so Mr Chromeo might have been the first really mainstream artist to use a MicroKORG on a commercial record. (Mr Chromeo may also be two guys, I really can't remember.) According to Discogs though, the 'Needy Girl' E.P. came out in September 2003, and if that's correct, Quebec pre-dates it by a month. I can't confirm that it's the first commercial release to use the MicroKORG, but Ween were in there before it took off in dance music, and long before it reached mainstream "indie" rock.

This isn't solid enough info for the wiki, plus I realize I may well be the only person on the planet who finds this interesting, but the point is, Ween didn't just do the cool thing before it was cool. It is actually kind of significant how ubiquitous some of those songs were, and bringing the synth back into popular music absolutely changed "the sound" of the mid-late 2000s (and believe me, any improvement on the early 2000s was welcome). I mean The Fucked Jam probably didn't directly influence The Prodigy, but they probably share more influences with Ween than most of us realise. At the other end, I don't know much about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs because I never liked them that much, but they should have been influenced by Ween, put it that way. Any serious band coming up then should have paid a lot of attention to quebec (and they should fucking say so in interviews too).

The funny part is, apparently the whole track is literally just one note pressed over and over using a factory preset, basically zero effort, and it could be anyone doing it. Some people said that hearing that was a letdown, that it took away the drama to know it was that easy, but I don't agree at all. Something very dark was behind the decision to give that noise its own track on the album, and to put it where it is. It's kind of nice to know actually, if that is how it was done, that at least that part was fucking easy.

Ween Wiki - The Fucked Jam

some of my favourite synths