pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i haven't read the review yet but will tomorrow and am excited. without knowing anything, i'm surprised to see pc music getting a 7.3

I really enjoyed it as a review - it's obviously a bit intense and OTT but I think if you're listening to the compilation in question you're going to be approaching it knowing the baggage and connotations it brings. When PC Music is at its best it's challenging music, I think a challenging read is called for when reviewing such an album.

more early eighties workout photos please

if you're listening to the compilation in question you're going to be approaching it knowing the baggage and connotations it brings

I kinda feel like this is too bad; like it would be more interesting, and more in the spirit of the project, for people to come at it cold, without the baggage of their (the listeners') theoretical presuppositions. How does this stuff work as pop music? If it doesn't, if it only works as a knowing art project, then isn't that a failure?

http://d3hj244ay8zo5a.cloudfront.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/z10937103O.jpg " class="noborder">

That's probably my biggest complaint about PC Music and the way we approach PC Music as ~critical thinkers - for all "Hey QT" may or may not be an ironic satire on brand infiltration in pop music and how we enjoy it, I can't help but feel it would work better (or, inspire a stronger reaction, at least) if it was a better song. I like the compilation the more it resembles great pop music and the less it seems like conceptualist experiments.

As someone who kept hearing the name PC Music but wasn't much aware of any of the convo happening around them, I encountered the songs and the Hey QT video and mostly came away thinking "oh, so this is like the high-pitched voiced glitchy dance-pop that Kylie, Britney, and the like have been doing for years but with added ironic distance."

"more early eighties workout photos please"

man, when i found that victoria principal picture there was a photo of a t.v. guide spread online of her doing exercises you could do while watching t.v. so that you never missed your favorite shows, but now i can't find it. that makes her some sort of post-physical pioneer.

but yeah i also agree that clowning on young writers for not having a fuller sense of history is nagl.

i'm not really in favor of anyone getting "clowned," but it's not wrong to demand that writers — even young ones — be willing to broaden their knowledge of history, especially when they seek to explain things in a historical context. i'm not a real music critic like some of y'all, but i love to learn things & i can't see why someone who is interested in writing about music & its place in culture wouldn't be delighted to learn more. although the '90s sucked entirely from start to finish so i can understand why people wouldn't want to delve deeper.

http://www.fitforfun.de/files/images/201110/0/jane-fonda-1981,35218_m_n.jpg

thank you. posting lolz is apparently too much for my feeble brain today.

can someone point me to some britney, kylie, jpop or kpop that resembles the lipgloss twins?

I don't know about the lipgloss twins specifically, but most of the rest of the stuff on Vol. 1 and especially everything by Hannah Diamond and A.G. Cook sounds like Britney or Kylie with the vocals slightly sped up and pitch-shifted to chipmunk levels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNTztyRDl70

See also: Kylie's Carried Away and Too Much, pretty much anything else from Britney's Femme Fatale. Don't know enough jpop/kpop to speak on that.

No it doesn't sound like that at all. For a start, Hannah Diamond doesn't use sped up vocals.

Hannah Diamond sped up is QT.

There's a long line of hyper-precious pop that PC Music falls into, from Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep to Hey QT. While AG Cook may not have heard of Joey Levine, the blurring of lines between product and song for each of them is delightfully subversive.

No it doesn't sound like that at all. For a start, Hannah Diamond doesn't use sped up vocals.

― everything, Monday, May 4, 2015 4:32 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A lot of this stuff feels like bright euro dance-pop, the sorta thing you could find on Aphrodite or any of the last 3 or 4 Britney albums, just with one or two elements rendered "off" to produce this deliberate alienating effect, like how the stilted singing on Everything is the only thing that stands between it being a typical pop track you might have heard on the radio in say 2012. Keri Baby specifically reminds me of like a mid-2000s girl group song.

But I mean, if you don't hear it, that's cool too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

count me in the crowd who fucking hates PC Music but thought the review was excellent (even if I disagree with it all)

I have no idea if the review is accurate at all in regards to the cultural context of this music but I will say a) it describes a kind of music I would never want to listen to and b) the clips accompanying the review are godawful

I guess I can't escape the conclusion that a hatred of biology (being "anti-physical") is ultimately futile and pointless, biology rules us

I haven't read the review or any other 'thoughtful' pitchfork crap lately but Greer's blurb (xpp) seems like the kind of review that I could stand by. I haven't heard PC Music either but I know a good review when I see one

and pitchfork is stupid

I hope there are more pitchfork writers on ILX than Ned Ragget (or whatever his name is (and I don't know if he's still posting)) because I would love to see that smug tear in their eye when they find out they are writing for something that is stupid

:'O

lol

has pitchfork ever published a parenthetical within another parenthetical?

maybe in that guillemots review?

still easier to read than pitchfork

you tell 'em onceler

soon their media empire will be in ruins

feels like writers dust off variations of this ""anti-physical music for an anti-physical time" type trope whenever they're trying to make ____ happen

film at 11

think u mean a once

derr

las

That's a miserably overwritten piece even by Pitchfork's standards, wow. Surprised GFOTY even got a mention, given she doesn't rly fit the aesthetics Tolentino's intent on bashing into PC Music

anti-physical music should be played in a vacuum

feels like writers dust off variations of this ""anti-physical music for an anti-physical time" type trope whenever they're trying to make ____ happen

― Darin, Monday, 4 May 2015 22:03 (Yesterday) Permalink

I think you guys are reading as praise (or PR) that which is flatly descriptive

Like, this stuff is very much non-functional--love or hate it I think we can agree upon that--it's intentionally detached, distancing u from the function of its source influences

re: j-pop/k-pop question, the thy bronze track is 100% early/mid-career perfume/nakata and kero kero bonito. everything about it, really. even the hook is in faux japanese-person-singing-english inflection (specifically nakata stuff).

"it describes a kind of music I would never want to listen to" Absolutely. Even the best writing about PC Music makes it sound horrible. One thing that surprises me is the absence of any reference to other people who presented pop as product in an arch, alienating, anti-authentic way. That was a major strand of New Pop eg Heaven 17/BEF. All I hear so far with PC Music is bad pop and a basic concept.

I don't get how "minimalist" and "chaotic" are opposite (also none of the PC Music I've heard cld be described as either of those things, so), or why we "have to" "chip (our) way to the real through this pixelated thicket", or how this isn't an awful review

And the vocal on Beautiful doesn't sound like a girl, bt eh it's Pitchfork

One thing that surprises me is the absence of any reference to other people who presented pop as product in an arch, alienating, anti-authentic way

because the acknowledgement that pop has a long history of playing with these themes and that pc music's "ideas" are far from novel would make the entire argument for their importance collapse.

i don't understand why "fascinated with commercial pop" is a noteworthy artistic trait, among everything else

i don't understand why "fascinated with commercial pop" is a noteworthy artistic trait, among everything else

Because so many critics think their own fascination with commercial pop is noteworthy?

the ideas/paratext associated with pc music are whatever. i just know all the music i've heard from them has been really awful.

Considering that SOPHIE was on the last Madonna record, I don't see any subversive value whatsoever in PC Music's take on mainstream pop. Pop has assimilated much stranger (and better) underground sounds than this.

I don't get how "minimalist" and "chaotic" are opposite

She doesn't say they are opposite.

(also none of the PC Music I've heard cld be described as either of those things, so)

I dunno about minimalist, ive only heard a couple songs, although the way it's used these days tends to be relative, but the songs I heard are definitely 'chaotic' gtfo

or why we "have to" "chip (our) way to the real through this pixelated thicket"

isn't this a way or reasserting the connection between the art & the real world, a sorta poetic praxis? idk, it seems to me to complement the piece's overall argument which is that this album at once attempts to liberate you from the boundaries of IRL thru the internet while reminding you that such liberation is impossible. the thing is, again, i don't think the prose here is turned on blowing up how good this record is; it's def artful but in the name of precision and effect, rather than hyperbole

or how this isn't an awful review

because it's very well written?

can't remember if this was linked up above but ilxor of merit wrote about this stuff too on p-fork:

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/485-pc-music/

My main issue is all the "woe is digital life" isn't a novel approach in a world full of Radiohead LPs.

i don't really know this stuff at all. i did enjoy "bipp" a lot. and did feel like it was a subversion of something or other.

i'm thinking my 9 year old would love this stuff.