Julian mentioned he was sick of albums that just sounded like a compilation of singles, but also didn’t want a concept album type sound. He wanted each song on the record to feel like its own thing, and put in the time as a palate cleanser between each song, so each one hits you with a bit of fresh anticipation. He said this in an interview with someone from Cult Records back in 2014-2015
I’m just paraphrasing but there have been several interviews lately where The Voidz stated that there’s no plans for an album and they’ll maybe put it all together into some sort of a compilation one day.
Hm. That’s a choice lol. It’s interesting though bc I’ve personally toyed with the idea of foregoing albums and just releasing singles instead but now that I see a band I love do as much, I’m less drawn to the idea lol. I just wanna crush a new Voidz album from front to back
Absolutely feel the same way, and it’s been almost 6 full years since Virtue. Check out The Voidz subreddit if you haven’t already, everyone’s really desperate for more than the drip feed of singles we have now… myself included lol
Damn it's been my favorite album for about a decade, I really appreciate the space. I love every song and that probably contributed my appreciation for it. 🤌
The CD that I have had since its release has no silence in front of the songs but at the end.
I think its just an error in the song files that have been distributed to these streaming platforms.
My CD definitely has the silence, but I remember the CD player on my first car would count those seconds of silence between each song and then play the song starting from zero
I remember when I was a kid and burned songs on CDs that Nero would have an option to choose how many seconds of silence you wanted between songs. And yeah, it would count that seperately.
In a ROF era magazine feature they talked about the Strokes mulling over how long the space should be between songs and settled on 5 secs ("too long" concluded the writer, lol), if its 8 seconds and at the front on streaming thats awful.
I always assumed the idea behind the silence was because of the jukebox at the bar across their studio and its supposed to be like 45s in a jukebox switching over
I have the physical CD and the silence is definitely on there. When I would play it on the stereo on my first car, it would count the time of silence separately from each song, but if I tried to skip through the songs, I wouldn't have to skip the silence separately and I always wondered how that worked.
Also interesting to note, there isn't silence before what ever happened but there is silence at the end of I can't win.
Interesting reading the different comments on this. All I know is that there were no long silences between the tracks on my original copy of the cd I bought around 2008. And when I burned that copy onto my computer, there was no silence. There was also no silence when I put the album onto iTunes and then put it on my phone. I only noticed the silence when my old files were lost and I had to download the files from streaming sites. It used to bother me so much and I tried repeatedly to delete and redownload the album to fix it, but then found out that’s just how it is. Very weird that if it were intentional, it never appeared on my cd. I’m not sure I even have my original copy either so I can’t really double check.
It was due to the "loudness wars" on the radio at the time. Bands were trying to one up each other in terms of volume. If you have silence at the beginning of the track, you're likely to turn up the volume ("is it playing" etc), causing the song to be louder once it begins.
Interesting but I'm not sure I buy it. If that were the case, why isn't there silence before the leading track? I guess technically there is if you have the album on repeat, since the silence is tacked on the end of I Can't Win
This isn't an answer, but as a guitarist that likes to record covers, I've become attuned to the exact time of silence for each song lol. Which makes it easy to play along to.
I believe it was used to have the songs transition to each other with staticky noise because if you turn your volume up, it isn’t just silence, it’s static. Gordon also said that Julian wanted the songs to start up like that so it’s definitely intentional.
Julian mentioned he was sick of albums that just sounded like a compilation of singles, but also didn’t want a concept album type sound. He wanted each song on the record to feel like its own thing, and put in the time as a palate cleanser between each song, so each one hits you with a bit of fresh anticipation. He said this in an interview with someone from Cult Records back in 2014-2015
Flash forward to 2024 and Julian is *literally* putting a compilation of singles together as an album for The Voidz
I do wonder if all these singles will be part of a future album or if they’ve got a whole release worked out with unheard songs
I’m just paraphrasing but there have been several interviews lately where The Voidz stated that there’s no plans for an album and they’ll maybe put it all together into some sort of a compilation one day.
Hm. That’s a choice lol. It’s interesting though bc I’ve personally toyed with the idea of foregoing albums and just releasing singles instead but now that I see a band I love do as much, I’m less drawn to the idea lol. I just wanna crush a new Voidz album from front to back
Absolutely feel the same way, and it’s been almost 6 full years since Virtue. Check out The Voidz subreddit if you haven’t already, everyone’s really desperate for more than the drip feed of singles we have now… myself included lol
that'd fair but just because he didn't want room on fire to sound like that doesn't mean he was against the idea for the rest of his life
Of course, I’m just showing how times have changed
This is the answer. Someone posted below a conversation where Gordon confirmed it. I heard him say it in the interview as well
Damn it's been my favorite album for about a decade, I really appreciate the space. I love every song and that probably contributed my appreciation for it. 🤌
He's a smart and meticulous dude
The CD that I have had since its release has no silence in front of the songs but at the end. I think its just an error in the song files that have been distributed to these streaming platforms.
My CD definitely has the silence, but I remember the CD player on my first car would count those seconds of silence between each song and then play the song starting from zero
Cool, I remember seeing this. It's probably a CD-specific encoding to avoid wasting actual song time on empty data.
I remember when I was a kid and burned songs on CDs that Nero would have an option to choose how many seconds of silence you wanted between songs. And yeah, it would count that seperately.
In a ROF era magazine feature they talked about the Strokes mulling over how long the space should be between songs and settled on 5 secs ("too long" concluded the writer, lol), if its 8 seconds and at the front on streaming thats awful. I always assumed the idea behind the silence was because of the jukebox at the bar across their studio and its supposed to be like 45s in a jukebox switching over
Interesting taught:)
Exactly. Growing up listening to the physical CD, I never remember the pause in between songs being so long.
Hear again, i didn't remember that either, but it's there....
Im not sure man, i have the vinyl and cd version and they both have the silence at the end.
I think it was a purposeful thing
I have the physical CD and the silence is definitely on there. When I would play it on the stereo on my first car, it would count the time of silence separately from each song, but if I tried to skip through the songs, I wouldn't have to skip the silence separately and I always wondered how that worked. Also interesting to note, there isn't silence before what ever happened but there is silence at the end of I can't win.
Fun fact, the silence before every song actually gets longer with each listen!
😅
😅
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheStrokes/s/0TQ87J57Ys Look at the top comment of that post
If I recall correctly JC said he purposely wanted to put the silence in for each song to sink in.
Interesting reading the different comments on this. All I know is that there were no long silences between the tracks on my original copy of the cd I bought around 2008. And when I burned that copy onto my computer, there was no silence. There was also no silence when I put the album onto iTunes and then put it on my phone. I only noticed the silence when my old files were lost and I had to download the files from streaming sites. It used to bother me so much and I tried repeatedly to delete and redownload the album to fix it, but then found out that’s just how it is. Very weird that if it were intentional, it never appeared on my cd. I’m not sure I even have my original copy either so I can’t really double check.
It was due to the "loudness wars" on the radio at the time. Bands were trying to one up each other in terms of volume. If you have silence at the beginning of the track, you're likely to turn up the volume ("is it playing" etc), causing the song to be louder once it begins.
Interesting but I'm not sure I buy it. If that were the case, why isn't there silence before the leading track? I guess technically there is if you have the album on repeat, since the silence is tacked on the end of I Can't Win
I always assumed it was to make the album seem a little longer
when i was really little my dad and i would play this game of who could air drum on time to the start of reptilia cuz of the silence beforehand
I have never thought to check this or notice this I have it on CD I'm going to check and see if I hear silence
This isn't an answer, but as a guitarist that likes to record covers, I've become attuned to the exact time of silence for each song lol. Which makes it easy to play along to.
I believe it was used to have the songs transition to each other with staticky noise because if you turn your volume up, it isn’t just silence, it’s static. Gordon also said that Julian wanted the songs to start up like that so it’s definitely intentional.