OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

Young Thug is not boring.

it's not homophobic in criticism to point out that something is cribbing from or has taken on the qualities of gayness/gay culture

ty

and sorry for use of the g-word.

The lineup has been shit the last couple years – COME AT ME.

anybody taken him up on this offer yet?

http://www.vanyaland.com/2014/12/18/state-pop-2014-average-person-doesnt-give-shit-music-still-popular/

classic URL

A bot generated that article, yes?

Headline OTM, not reading the article tho

Don’t get me wrong, the purging of the popular music star is far from finished; but it is hard to miss that there used to be dozens of household names generated each year, whereas now entire genres of music are subsisting entirely on vapors still whiffing around from the 1980s. When recorded sound became a possibility more than a century ago, experimental genius and notable asshole Thomas Edison reckoned that those cylinders containing electrical audio would be most useful for archiving political speeches for posterity; instead, that recorded sound created gods on earth of all types of singers and music-makers, and for a good century a formidable industry was built that took a singer of songs, allowed their voice to imprint within the minds of listeners everywhere. Within decades, we let our music stars determine the attitude of our times and become the erotic politicians that taught us how to comport ourselves as we interfaced with all strata of society.

But the all-seeing eye of modern technology has destroyed the god by shattering the myths that allowed us to take a rock band or a pop singer and let them swell in our mind into a personal deity to be worshipped at our own appointed household shrines. Sure, lots of people still bought, say, the new Taylor Swift or Beyoncé album — but no one but a prepubescent child would actually think that these people mean or say anything of any significance.

love the mixed metaphors, treacly mix of serious and vulgar.

first one of '15 http://www.cvltnation.com/is-veganism-changing-the-face-of-extreme-music/

appreciate this website isn't in line for a Pulitzer but even so this is astonishingly incoherent

Yeah, he seems to be coming from a vague position of 'veganism is happy hippy stuff so it's changing the militant image of extreme music' or something, but that's fatally undermined by the first things that came to my mind: youth crew, Earth Crisis, etc etc.

'White rappers are always difficult to comprehend'

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/29/the-cultural-crimes-of-iggy-azalea.html

I like the idea that "Real hip-hop fans" are defined by their inability to let go of questionable Grammy victories.

i'm being unkind here but
http://diffuser.fm/classic-means-of-music-discovery/

Who would I be if the greasy kid in my high school music theory class hadn’t told me, with rapture in his eyes, about Neutral Milk Hotel?

http://www.avclub.com/article/fugazis-promises-bleak-honest-213040

The general concept of promises is great, but as Fugazi notes, actual “promises are shit.” That’s the basic message of “Promises,” from the group’s excellent 1989 EP Margin Walker. Singer and guitarist Ian MacKaye begins the song singing about how “Words and expressions / All these confessions / Of where we stand / How I see you / And you see me” are essentially meaningless. Promises are super and everything, but they don’t mean shit if there’s nothing but words there to back them up. Moreover, if you’re a committed significant other, friend, worker, brother, sister, etc., then you don’t need to go into absolutes to be loyal and to be there for someone. As MacKaye sings later in the song, “You will do what you do / I will do what I do / We will do what we do.”

It’s a message that could be perceived as a little bleak, especially set against MacKaye’s blunt and accented expletives, but it’s also a solid one, if you think about it. Promises might sound sweet, but they can be broken with just one word, glance, or stray thought. Stay true to yourself by doing what you want, when you want—keeping others in mind, of course—and you’ll never need to make another promise again.

smdh

http://i.imgur.com/POQp55x.jpg

Has been bugging me for ages, so: Tiny Mix Tapes on Oozing Wound's latest. Sneering tone and parade of familiar "insights" presented as damning profundities irritates me to no end.

otoh, obviously not the worst piece of music writing ever

Inherent Jest. Infinite Vice.

youtube.com

wincing so damn hard

h/t to fallen ilxor LG for that btw

if you absolutely must describe metal bands/records as being "false" I don't think tinymixtapes is the best arena in which to do it

Highlights from the TMT review:

In a musical world populated by so many fake and false genres, metal stands out as perhaps the most irredeemably fraudulent of them all. It’s said that metal is angry, indignant music, music that funnels rage into condensed explosions and shoots it at a corrupt universe. But when was the last time you observed metal’s “anger” actually causing someone to cower in fear, make amends for a wrong, provoke an imflammatory response, or incite any of the effects that serve to invest anger with its particular, everyday meaning? Probably never. Metal’s power to shock and disturb has been lost in the decades of repetition, inbreeding, and overfamiliarity, leaving it in a position where it’s no longer a disaffected rupture along an otherwise tranquil continuum, but rather one tranquil continuum among many, churning an endless simulation of itself and the “fury” that it’s reduced to so many empty signifiers.

Its four-bar exchanges may be as powerful as hell, so powerful that the band whip themselves through the gears with agitated finesse, but this is a duplicitous show of power and strength, since like all metal it’s ultimately the result not of brute muscle and physical exertion, but of the modern guitar equipment (e.g., pedals and amplifiers) that allows a few gentle strums and picks to be magnified beyond all recognition and a few nerdy dudes to hide their limitations behind torrential yet artificial walls of gain and fuzz.

Consequently, when flurries like the caustic “Bury Me With My Money” and the Darkthrone-esque “Genuine Creeper” hurtle at full speed in a blaze of tremolo picking and fried power chords, the resulting force and rancor are more expressions of the technologies that enable them — and by extension the social and economic structures that produce these technologies — than of the band’s own inherent resources and qualities. Rather than critiquing their world, they unintentionally end up affirming their dependency on it for their own being and individuation, so that the animosity of the semi-epic “When the Walls Fell” becomes another example of falseness, insofar as its biting crunch and air-raid leads make a show of attacking a system that its dependency in fact perpetuates.

tiny mix tapes is the worst

Paul Foster Anderson's "Inferrent Vest"

that irish times picture is amazing

the little snippet of the above review just adds to the glory

this guy couldn't have done it better
http://matablog.matadorrecords.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/harvey_head_big.jpg

Review of "Anthony Braxton Diamond":

http://www.365bristol.com/review/anthony-braxton-diamond/194/

"a sequence of arbitrary, terrifying sounds reminiscent of a cat being castrated or a particularly eye-watering, post-vindaloo bowel movement. "

link no work

"a sequence of arbitrary, terrifying sounds reminiscent of a cat being castrated or a particularly eye-watering, post-vindaloo bowel movement. "

things to do in bristol

it may be bad music writing, but it certainly is striking imagery

link no work

It needs a forward slash at the very end which I did c&p but for some reason doesn't show up. Trust me, it's worth it.

http://starling.rinet.ru/music/index.htm

it's the worst and the best. maybe most people have already stumbled upon it. it hails from the golden days of internet. you can scroll down to brian eno or whatever and read tens of thousands of words and opinions that are occasionally enlightening (it happens often enough that it makes you want to keep scrolling) but on the whole, make no sense at all.

I just assumed you'd dug up something from Christgau.

I remember this one. I would come across both this guy and Pierro Scaruffi by looking up certain bands.

this is kind of like christgau, but if christgau allowed himself 3000+ words per album

Not sure what's going on but I've read two very different versions of what Kim Gordon said about LDR and anyways I'm getting tired of seeing music mags try to start some beef or something. Particularly here it feels really gross.

and arguments b/w women

http://starling.rinet.ru/music/captain.htm#Replica

I mean it's cool that feminism is being discussed on P4K, but how about in terms beyond "This woman said this mean thing about this other woman not being feminist! Meow!"

xpost this is kind of amazing: http://starling.rinet.ru/music/zratings.htm

I'm sure there are more interesting parts of Kim Gordon's book than the section that deals with her husband and this.