Bangalter and Falcon-Together
Bangalter and Falcon-Together
“A time has come to make a decision, are we in this thing alone? Or are we in it……together!” It’s the kind of spoken voice sample that you might associate with some massive rave anthem. But the strained and looped response, “together”, is far from convincing. There comes a time in a nightclub or on a dancefloor when the drugs begin to wear off, when the direct link between brain and music begins to split, and severe concentration is required to maintain the feeling. Together is a record for this time of night. It’s no surprise for a Bangalter and Falcon record to be extremely stripped down, but this just invites the listener to think even harder. The opening question seems to resonate through the whole track, and it never gets a satisfactory answer.
Bangalter and Falcon have been accused of mocking the listener with records like these, and maybe they are. The sampled voice at the beginning is surely aping the style of Coldcut’s Journeys by DJ or one of the mid 90s Warp compilations. But the real mockery is in that nonstop loop, “together, together, together, together”, all the way through the song. It feels like a smack in the face to rave culture, not only are we not in this together, but the very question is a crazy one. Did you really believe they were asking it? Did you actually feel that?
I end up stuck on these kind of questions any morning after I’ve been out. Most people who’ll ever dance to Together will too. I guess when you blur the line between dreams and reality chemically, it doesn’t magically reappear.