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

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.

lol i haven't thought about starostin in yeeeeaaaarssss

ahh ... mark prindle.

been a long time since i visited his site.

Starostin & Scaruffi are both auto-didact, super-systematizers with differing yet equally narrow aesthetics. (Scaruffi I can at least raid for album suggestions in the avant garde area, so he's more useful). Next to these two, Christgau seems like the most open-minded, acknowledging-his-own-subjectivity-guy in the world.

I'm really glad ILX has finally caught up to /mu/ with the Christgau vs. Scraruffi vs. Fantano debates

That's awesome happy for you Whiney :)

it's so great to see him in his element

http://only-solitaire.blogspot.com

George Starostin's taste (and writing style) has loosened up somewhat in recent years, but it's amazing that he's been keeping up his "review bands alphabetically" blog for 4.5 years and he's still only on the letter B (for Bon Jovi).

*5.5 years

starostin dude is unreadable. one paragraph oughta be enough to warn people away forever:

"That said, all of these factors are still not enough to account for the band's passing into utmost oblivion (together with other great British blooze bands, such as Ten Years After or Taste). Because, in a certain sense, these guys symbolize everything about yer basic early Seventies rock, that loud, raunchy, sloppy hippie music as opposed to, say, acid hippie music. And at least they never tried to 'fashionize' their music by carefully avoiding heavy metal and glam rock trends. Throughout all of their six studio albums, they remained what they were: a naive, drug-addled, heart-on-the-sleeve, hair-down-the-waist bunch of idealistic young men trying to find consolation in blues riffing and folkish whining amidst a sea of problems. They just weren't particularly talented, but who was particularly talented? Gary Glitter? And, for my two cents, I'd at least take Paul Rodgers' voice over Robert Plant's any day of my horrid life."

I still really like reading all those Prindle/Starostin/one-guy-with-a-website music reviews and am sad that that whole scene totally died off.

ilx's own glenn m. is the only one of them worth reading.

You are talking about this? http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log

the war against silence entries:

http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=twas&id=issues

http://diffuser.fm/box-sets-arent-meant-for-you/

Let’s jump ahead about 50 years. The current holder of the Jimmie Rodgers baton is one Bruce Springsteen, a globally popular musical storyteller coming off of the biggest album of his career. Born in the USA would eventually sell 30 million copies worldwide. (To put that in perspective, hit your thumb with a hammer. Now do that 29,999,999 more times. Thirty million is a lot; also, put some ice on that thumb.)

really puts it in perspective

And so while we in the media continue to report on the inevitable death of physical media, any artist who attracts enthusiastic fans remains a candidate for a lavish box set. As I write this, I’m staring lovingly at my Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection. I’m also shaking my head at the online auction prices for Insane Clown Posse‘s recently released The First Six which is, of course, a seven-disc set that’s fetching prices not too far below the great Miles’ 53-disc box.

I can shake my head all I want, but the simple truth is that ICP didn’t make The First Six for me any more than Victor made that very first Jimmie Rodgers album for fans of Enrico Caruso. It’s a priceless treasure to the Juggalos, and that’s why the idea of the box set remains a viable one even after 80 years.

But seriously, Led Zeppelin, enough already.

a priceless treasure to the Juggalos

This has a real nice poetic ring to it.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/fugazi-politics

Fast-forward thirteen years, and it’s all too easy to draw straight lines, not just to the increasingly unstable geopolitics of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City—both of whom were killed by police officers while unarmed. When protests erupted over the deaths, police responded with heavy-handed action that sounds awfully similar to what MacKaye described in 2002. War and police brutality seem fairly straight-forward to gentrification and the link between neighborhoods and the housing market. Last November, Dave Grohl fretted that Austin, Texas, was losing its artsy character during an interview promoting the Sonic Highways series.

Who is Jen Trification, and why do war and police brutality seem straight-forward to her?

Last November, Dave Grohl fretted that Austin, Texas, was losing its artsy character during an interview promoting the Sonic Highways series.

Surprised the writer didn't mention Nirvana's Ferguson anthem "I Swear That I Don't Have a Gun."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/09/pop-political-british-musicians-paloma-faith

taking shots at a member of ILM's favourite band, whatever next

I had a suspicion I'd see that linked.

Raccoon Tanuki writing for the Guardian now?