The photos that capture the rise of LCD Soundsystem
The writer Kurt Vonnegut once coined a handy phrase that crops up so often in life it can leave even the most stubborn rationalist scratching their sceptic head.
The phrase is ‘karass’, which Vonnegut defined as thus: “We Bokononists believe that humanity is organised into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon … ‘If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons,’ writes Bokonon, ‘that person may be a member of your karass’.”
In other words, your karass is made up of the people you keep bumping into or seeing time and time again without any empirical explanation. That seems to have been what happened with LCD Soundsystem and their long-term frequent photographer, Ruvan Wijesooriya.
Their initial meeting, as is often the case, was fairly understandable. “I was a music journalist in my early 20s,” Wijesooriya tells Far Out ahead of the launch of the new book, LCD Soundsystem: Disco Pogo Tribute. “‘Losing My Edge’ showed up in the mail and was so excellent… and ‘Beat Connection’, and ‘Yeah’…”
So, he was hooked on the hip sound early on. But there was more to it than that. “LCD’s approach to making music stood out because it referenced music, sounded familiar and had a punkness to it. I first met James at a memorable party at the Electric Pickle during Miami Winter Music Conference in 2004 – a moment where rock and dance music were aligning.”
They seemed to be aligning a lot of things, including a milieu of artistic people. You might call it a scene, a movement, or a modernist reinvention of the whole Factory thing. But whatever it was, Wijesooriya was now one of those people. “One thing that stands out is how often I would bump into them in various places,” he recalled.
“I never went on tour with LCD – but our professional lives overlapped enough that we would literally bump into each other in different cities,” he continued. “When I was shooting for a client in London, I’d run into them at a restaurant before their show in Hyde Park… or I’d have an exhibition in Gothenburg, Sweden while they’d be playing Way Out West Festival. The same thing happened in Miami and Austin, Texas. Something unexplainable kept me in their orbit”.
LCD Soundsystem were doing a lot of this, though. And in various mystic ways. The beauty of the band was that they created a milieu even for fans half the world away. Unapologetically referential, they brought you into the disparate worlds of The Fall, French disco, The Cars, Low, krautrock, and whatever else they deemed worthy touchstones/recommendations.
In the same way that Wijesooriya kept literally bumping into them, and photographing them along the way, fans figuratively kept coming across their sound and style as well. They were the centre of a very important venn for a whole generation.
Wijesooriya says, “They were smart, deeply into music and partied similarly to how I did. Their music references had major crossover with mine, and socially they were part of art and fashion communities I also brushed shoulders with.” But it seems that a 17-year-old in Swindon could say the same thing even today. They remain a world unto themselves that you can empathise with.
So, even decades down the line, they remain era-defining. “LCD were able to speak to a range of music styles in what they made,” Wijesooriya says. “They were a rock band for the dance club with a first single that announced, ‘I’m losing my edge’. This happens at the dawn of digital media when culture was overlapping music with fashion and art… they were in the middle of a cultural explosion in NYC that echoed across the globe.”
Above all, though, they were knowable. Being knowable doesn’t sound like the greatest compliment in the world, but it implies a vital sincerity that not every ‘cool’ band can muster. There was an emotional depth woven into their work that made them relatable – it comes across in the very images that Wijesooriya snapped.
They embodied a ‘loft party’ lifestyle, but they never seemed elitist. They were the vanguard of a whole scene, but you knew a quiet night in might sometimes take priority in their roster over an opening night invite to some swanky new establishment. In short, their lifestyle was tangibly close to an idealised but unsanitised version of your own. They were relatable.
For Wijesooriya, this was clearly displayed in their musical evolution, too. “I’ll speak to their Sound Of Silver album and note that it marks a departure from the funny, sarcastic dance attack of the first album. There’s some exceptional songwriting – like in ‘Someone Great’ or ‘All My Friends’ – that capture the challenges of being a young adult.”
That arc unfurls firsthand in Wijesooriya‘s photography of the band, which is now being displayed at the ‘LCD Soundsystem at The Social‘ exhibition in central London until February 4th, as well as in the book, LCD Soundsystem: Disco Pogo Tribute. You can check out an assortment of images below…
LCD Soundsystem photographed by Ruvan Wijesooriya:
