LCD Soundsystem - 45:33

One of the great creative sleights of hand in the LCD Soundsystem story. In 2006, Nike commissioned James Murphy to create a 45-minute piece of music for their Nike+ Original Run series, a workout soundtrack tailored to the demands of a standard run: seven-minute warm-up, peaks throughout, seven-minute cool-down. Murphy accepted, went to the studio, and made exactly the record he had always wanted to make. As he later freely admitted, he lied about developing it on a treadmill, he does not jog, and he specifically wanted to create something in the spirit of Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, the pioneering 1981 electronic epic that unfolds as a single continuous 58-minute composition.

The exercise people hated it, Murphy recalled with obvious delight. It is too slow at the start and too fast at the end for a conventional workout, and it makes no concessions whatsoever to the anonymous, frictionless music that serious runners tend to want. What it is, is a six-part, 45-minute journey through progressive electronic music, funk, disco, synth-pop, ambient, soul, and gospel, seamlessly sequenced and compulsively listenable from start to finish. Murphy demanded that Nike's rights to the music would only last six months, after which they would revert to him, and once they did the piece was released properly on CD and then on this 2x12", split across four sides in a way that, as listeners who own the vinyl edition have noted, turns each transition into its own small event and makes the whole thing feel like a genuinely new experience.

The piece also contains the instrumental version of what would become "Someone Great," one of the emotional peaks of Sound Of Silver, and Murphy has credited the discipline of the Nike commission with unblocking the creative paralysis he had been experiencing while working on that album. A curio that turned out to be essential, on 2 big, thick slabs of black vinyl.