Staff Reviews
Ratatat - LP4
Your imagination provides the film, Ratatat provide the glorious soundtrack.»
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'lp4' concludes the work that evan mast and mike stroud aka ratatat began on 'lp3', which was released to worldwide critical acclaim in july 2008. this album, their fourth for xl, was conceived during the prolific 'lp3' recording sessions. since then the band have toured relentlessly, visiting countries such as vietnam, china and cambodia on the one hand, and selling out bigger venues than ever before on the other. ratatat's us touring ended with two sold out nights at new york's terminal 5, playing to over 6,000 people. the period in between albums also saw ratatat's sideline in hip hop production develop from a hobby into mainstream commercial success, with two tracks featured on kid cudi's debut album. one of these tracks was the single 'pursuit of happiness', which the band performed live on letterman with cudi in september of 2009. the band describe 'lp4' as a weirder listen than 'lp3', with a much braver approach to the arrangements. ratatat incorporated even more sounds and instruments into the mix on this album, working for the first time with a full string section, which they recorded at glassworks studios in manhattan. the album also features a number of spoken word interludes, one taken from werner herzog's 1977 film 'stroszek', in which the lead character bruno s describes the keyboards he owns. the other samples are all courtesy of linda manz, the first taken from terence mallick's 'days of heaven'. both this and 'stroszek' made a huge impression on mast and stroud during the recording. while trying to clear the 'days of heaven' sample, evan unexpectedly ended up on the phone with linda herself. the call resulted in a trip to linda's house, where he
recorded an interview with her, excerpts from which make up the remaining vocal samples.
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