cd This album-length single was commissioned by Nike to serve as a soundtrack to a 45-minute run, and it’s only available online as a $9.99 download from Apple’s iTunes store. Music composed for exercise has a very specific set of challenges: It’s got to push you forward without burning you out, and it has to change over the course of the experience. What sounds good in those first few steps is very different from what you want to hear when the endorphins peak.
James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem gets it. When he’s not recording dance-punk records for New York’s hippest bands as half of the production duo the DFA, he likes to unwind with a jog, so he understands the ritual arc of the workout.
First, logically, comes the warm-up.
The opening gurgle of analog synths here serves that purpose, and then 45’33” picks up speed and gives way to a funky, neo-Latin piano incorporated into a shuffling disco beat. Gradually, the piece becomes faster and more mechanized, as early vocals and song-like structures flow into a gliding sense of perpetual motion, pushed by tightly sequenced synths and relentless drums.
Allusions to funk and synthpop touchstones from the ’70s and ’80s abound—a little bit of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” here, a touch of New Order’s “Temptation” there, continued references to Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”—and lend a welcome sense of familiarity. By the half-hour mark, 45’33” is humming, approaching purely electronic techno from its more organic beginnings. It cultivates a feeling every runner can appreciate, that moment when you sense your mind and body fusing as you become a tireless robot bent on forward motion. The final seven-minute cool down of wispy New Age, cheesy in any other context, is soothing and earned.
Obvious political questions arise when a hip independent band partners with everyone’s favorite global sports giant/anti-globalism punching bag: Is LCD Soundsystem up for sale? Are they comfortable being associated with Nike? Should we care?
These may well be yesterday’s questions. The reality in this era of media saturation and diminished sales is that bands are doing whatever they can to get their music heard. And 45’33”, however it came about, should be heard. You don’t have to be running while it plays, but you will want to be moving; it’s the perfect soundtrack to your next New Year’s resolution.