The DFA have aurally focused fluid, multi-planar movement and composed what could be the paradigmatic "soundtracks" of excessive postmodern and specifically post-industrial urban pleasure. They have discovered and proliferated the metropolis of suburbanity and/or suburb of metropolitanism. The club and the office have gone underground while becoming more apparent than ever: welcome to information/internet/I culture.
It heavily relies upon intense hierarchical synchronization, which in turn facilitates mesmerizing variation and divergence constrained by resolutely unwavering architecture. Among the layers of the thick, charismatic bass, the budding, enthusiastic synths and electronics, and the tightly-produced drums and percussion, the active listener can trace the thresholds of the complementary elements where they interlock. You can dance, drive, strut, and/or hallucinate within the gaps (which some call "the groove") according to your preferences, but you are in it. And although the order at hand may be captivatingly perceptible, the listening is thus both the most provocative and satiating.
The DFA have harnessed user-centered habitus, and with it, they have channeled schizophrenic phantasmic pleasure, engaging the listener's pure ideology/identity. This is mind-meets-body music. The invented dual barrier does not have to hold with its double pincers. This is the success of interaction: order on the border of chaos and vice versa. The experience is of finely manipulated/manipulating (abstract) power and person: immanence.
Each song posits a basic multi-layered and synchronized body of ordered sound and then tweaks the constants of the variables in the equation. The recent, albeit historical, constructions of normality/stability/self then pass through filters, delays, reverb, envelopes, and pre-amps. This is the construction of pure ideology/identity. The basic shape or aural perception graph remains referenced throughout the track, but the chronological dynamism, the traffic, the encoding, really the order presumes and requires a multiplicity of collisions. In the hyper-aesthetic, however, they occur without any wreckage in the traditional sense. Since there is no monogamy, there is also no promiscuity. It is all pure body/mind interaction. There is only faith to whole embodiment.
We now reach more distantly than ever while we become ever more distant. The DFA, however, demonstrate that the original is no longer relevant when mobility and therefore encryption are the determining factors. The previously territorialized archive is deterritorialized, and it can now be used for spare parts by engineers, engineers producing constructions of space that blur the traditional notions of singularity/multiplicity, mind/body. We can now ignore the target in favor of the code and the object in favor of the approach, and so we realize that we may never hit our target with an arrow, but we can catch ourselves with a net.
In other words, this rocks, brah.
Chapter 1:
1. Le Tigre - Deceptacon
2. Blues Explosion - Mars, Arizona
3. The Chemical Brothers - The Boxer
4. Soulwax - Another Excuse
5. Radio 4 - Dance to the Underground
6. Fischerspooner - Emerge
7. Gorillaz - Dare
8. Metro Area - Orange Alert
9. Hot Chip - (Just Like We) Breakdown
Chapter 2:
1. Tiga - Far From Home
2. Junior Senior - Shake Your Coconuts
3. N.E.R.D. - She Wants to Move
4. Hot Chip - Colours
5. Nine Inch Nails - Hand That Feeds
6. Goldfrapp - Slide In
7. Chromeo - Destination Overdrive
8. UNKLE - In A State
More about: The DFA
