P2K: The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s: 20-1

haha no, it was the "Rapey Nanobot shit" comment

xxp: Damn Dan, you just brought back hurt from the old times. rIP

oh dear, I've spent the past 6 months trying to come up with a way to get some sexual innuendo out of Erol and "rapey nanorobots" and so far failed, unfortunately, I don't have your dirty mind, Dan. (thank GOD)

Depends on the scene - as a general rule though the more faceless the music the more female DJs there are.

― Matt DC

Maybe that's the operating rule of thumb across the board. Certainly seems to be true in classical music, as Masonic suggested above. There most of the focus is placed on pure ability, to the point of blind auditions, and women (unsurprisingly) do very well.

Classical also makes a good object lesson in that to the extent that celebrities do emerge, they tend to fall into familiar patterns: hott young boys and girls, and serious men making "important" art.

Having had the experience at an Erol Alkan gig, of asking a string of people "do you know what's playing?" and having them smile and nod and say with complete confidence "it's Erol Alkan!" (It was in fact Spacemen 3, which is why I was so shocked) - I think that you're absolutely right in saying that it's based on well known DJs.

― Masonic Boom

Well, in defense of Spacemen-3-igorant Alkan fans, the point in a DJ set is the mix more than the individual tracks. Dancing is more important than knowing about.

hard to put this well but it can be difficult imagining a lot of different band types existing (let alone being successful critically and/or commercially) with gender switched e.g. an all-female Radiohead, AC, Daft Punk and other 'pfork-friendly'/'ILM-friendly' models...

i like to think they should for reasons i hope are obvious, working on the basis that anybody can and should be able to make the kinds of music i like (i don't like this hard/cold/technical=masculine / soft/sensual/organic=feminine rule thing at all in terms of what genders are supposed to be better at/suited to - keen to play that down tho it's perpetuated by many who don't see anything wrong with it - it may not be 'wrong' as such, but surely many of us find it needlessly restrictive). part of this is just getting bored with the formulae in the genres i've been more into traditionally e.g. another year another hotly-tipped male dance duo...

the number of bands ft male and female members together may be increasing or may just be fairly constant - it would just be pleasing/re-assuring to see, in addition to that, more all-female acts in these areas. just 'ordinary' women not those who become better known for their looks. probably some issues prevent this beyond industry caution. and maybe this would be seen too much as 'women becoming more like men' as opposed to actual equality (with the gender term no longer relevant) but that seems wrong to me.

from what i gather, there are more barriers to entry for women in dance music - the initial stages of getting gigs, being taken seriously as a producer - but few people have a problem with praising the women at the very top of the game (cassy, ellen allien) as geniuses - though having said that, they still get a fair bit of "oh did her boyfriend produce that?" comments too. and one thing that those women have in common is that they're excellent, ambitious businesswomen - a disproportionate amount of whom run their own labels etc - so maybe you need to be *that type* of woman to bust through and gain recognition.

(or whatever other genre of metal save for like Nightwish type bands and such)

Kerrang has a majority female readership for the past 5 years or so now.
Those Nightwish type bands are HUGE in mainland Europe. Proper mainstream stuff. And there's loads of them.

Though Kerrang is a mainly "emo" mag now.

x-post it wasn't the not knowing that got to me, it was the way they blissfully insisted that it was "Erol Alkan" rather than just saying they didn't know the track.

Is "where is the all female Radiohead" going to be the "what about Shakespeare's sister" (not Shakespeare's Sister, not that there was anything wrong with them) of the 21st century?

In terms of personal tastes, I have always PREFERRED mixed groups to all-anything bands. I mean, I'd rather listen to MBV or classic era Stereolab than Radiohead *or* a theoretical all-female Radiohead. But in the UK at least, mixed bands seem to be declining in number - not so, fortunately, in other countries - hence we get things like The Knife and School of Seven Bells (again, this is just MY personal tastes)

being "funky" instead of funky

can we start a thread on this--not sure i know the "difference" between these two "terms"

would "discuss"

it seems kinda obvious to me - signifiers of funkiness rather than actual funkiness. cf "soul", "fun" etc.

"funky" meaning quirky or psuedo-unique as opposed to imbued with the essence of popping basslines and syncopated hi hat work.

I think a critic's job is to place a particular album/artist in its social/political/economic/gender context for the reader, or speculate about what such a context might be. If that context is that all emo bands (before Paramore, I guess) were male, then maybe that should be noted in the write-ups (which Jessica Hopper -- lol naming your band -- did).

Like maybe P4k doesn't need to go out of their way to include more women artists, but when they're posting their write-ups or intro, it should probably be acknowledged that something is clearly going on here.

I think a critic's job is to place a particular album/artist in its social/political/economic/gender context for the reader

this makes me want to run screaming for the critic-free hills

Yeah, imho, Adorno holds up better and has contributed to my life more than reviews of albums.

(Also, secret: Album reviews that determine the quality of a particular album and whether you should buy it or not = dying craft)

I think a critic's job is to place a particular album/artist in its social/political/economic/gender context for the reader, or speculate about what such a context might be. [...]
― Mordy, Thursday, October 8, 2009 6:22 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahahaha, oh god.

should email this to frank kermode, i'm sure it'll give him pause.

I don't see where Kermode would disagree with that at all.

Dear all critics PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUK IT SOUNDS LIKE and not only by analogy with other artists, and if you cannot meet this requirement please take up knitting KTHX.

^^^^^ this is my personal manifesto

Yeah, that's a little hard to swallow, Mordy. Social/political/economic/gender context-identification is merely one thing that a piece of critical writing can (and, sure, in some cases probably should) do. But it isn't the primary function of all music criticism. Providing relevant purchasing advice for an interested audience is just as valid. Or just talkin baot bands, or whatever.

to jon lewis's letter to critics i would add "please don't try to use a crazy metaphor or conceit to accomplish this"

Aw, I dunno, metaphor/conceit can be their reward for articulate sound-description I think. Carrot/stick.

Dear all critics PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUK IT SOUNDS LIKE

It sounds like clouds made out of Starbursts.

mmmm okay how about "crazy metaphor or conceit that actually works and adds to the review but does not take away from it or distract one's mind"

For Ned:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pictures/Pictures/al-hakim-shaking-fist.jpg

As long as we're on the "notes to critic" thing: yr emotional relationship w/ the artist's work and the extent to which yr personal life situation has changed since the last album came out are not interesting to anyone but you.

not necessarily

sometimes it is! don't think there are that many hard and fast rules when it comes to criticism, difft critics have difft strengths - and some really excel at the personalised angle

xp

these demands need to be a new thread

9 times out of 10, i agree with jon lewis--a writer's emotional connection to the music is uninteresting. of course, it depends on the writer, doesn't it?

Should Brent's Kid A review be brought up again?

hahahahahahahahahahaha it should ALWAYS be brought up

for better or for worse, it is one of the most memorable reviews I've ever read and it never fails to brighten my day

i have never seen a shooting star

Yeah, a good writer can do that no prob and not have it unbalance the review.

Anyway, obv writers in a low-paying high-volume forum have to learn in public to some extent, I'm sure most come to grips with these principles at some point.

xpost please refresh my memory!

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6656-kid-a/

The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap.

some days I think this is the funniest sentence ever written

The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax

the structural problems inherent in starting a review of Kid A with three paragraphs of your orgasmic experience of a live performance of "Pyramid Song", which doesn't even appear on the album and which you actually call "Egyptian Song"... Brent D, I kiss you

Qualities which one associates with wizard's caps: 'perfect' surely must be first, no?

xpost now I am v v frightened.

The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax. It's an album of sparking paradox. It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. It will cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging inside the fold of your gray matter. The harrowing sounds hit from unseen angles and emanate with inhuman genesis. When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six men (Nigel Godrich included) created this, it's clear that Radiohead must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over.

that is fucking godawful

i for one miss the days of batshit crazy pfork reviews

i want to do a poll of the best parts of that coltrane one that is no longer in the archives

At times like this I refer everyone again to a particular Bloom County strip from 1987.

I imagine Brent reciting it with a braces induced lisp in front of his high school creative writing club.

Will happily accept Que's suggestion: 9 times out of 10, the deep emotions and personal life situation stuff has got to go. Really good writers can pull almost anything off. Framing conceits, loopy metaphors, easy comparisons to other music, life stories, whatever. And bad writers can't be saved. It's to the vast, gray midfield that I speak.

Hilarious opening line aside, "little crustaceans of worries" is the only non-horrid portion of that review Que posted.

And it oughtta be "worry".

http://twitter.com/BDicrescenzo

That review 'takes chances', I have to say that for it.