I have never met you, James Murphy. And I won‰’t ever be lucky enough to cross paths with you. I‰’m not reviewing or analyzing or criticizing anything in this ‰ÛÒ I‰’m just sharing. Since you‰’re not ever going to read this piece (THAT would be embarrassing), let this serve as a silent tribute to what your music has meant to me.

You could have just let LCD Soundsystem fizzle out, and finish with your tour and quietly transition onto whatever new endeavor that‰’s next for you. But instead, you‰’re throwing a giant farewell party in April; open to anyone who‰’s ever gotten some sort of feeling from your work. You could in theory keep releasing new tracks through an elaborate paid subscription program Jack White-style, in order to drag out LCD Soundsystem‰’s run and dig into fans‰’ pockets for as long as possible. But you‰’ve made it clear that cashing in one last time on the popularity of LCD Soundsystem isn‰’t your plan, nor has it ever been. You once said in an interview that your goal was simple: To give us really good dance music, music so awesome that we would never want to stop. You said that when bands play live, they worry about recreation rather than creation, with attaining perfection and not making mistakes instead of producing a physical, organic experience. You also said that you‰’re not a big fan of computers, that if you don‰’t own the record you don‰’t feel like the music is yours. And it makes perfect sense, because you can‰’t listen to an mp3 and hear it crackle, and have to get up and adjust the needle when the record starts to skip in the same place that it always skips every other time. Sure, someone else will buy that same record, but it won‰’t be the same listening experience. Their record will skip in a different place, and crackle a little differently. It‰’s organic, isn‰’t it?

I can sit and try to examine specific aspects of your music, but it‰’s a waste of time. If I really wanted to, I guess I could dissect “All My Friends‰” into its individual parts, into its drum patter and pounding keys and all the other aspects of the song that contributes to its feeling. Plenty of people have done that already. If I wanted that, I could just pull up the Sound of Silver review on Pitchfork and let those folks tell me their formula for how the album makes me feel. But will a 9.2 rating ever really explain why “All My Friends‰” has its own powerful heartbeat, or why every time I hear it I want to cry? Pitchfork isn‰’t organic, and neither are subscription clubs or iPods or this article, even. But your music is.

If I manage to snag a ticket to your massive going-away bash, I‰’ll finally be able to bear witness to your elusive skill of taking a song that I‰’ve heard scores of times before and, rather than recreating the experience of the album, transforming it into a brand new sound. As with any good farewell party, I‰’ll probably cry, but I doubt that‰’s what you want from your fans. You‰’ll just want us to dance.