pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

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.

I think appreciation of the review depends on thinking that PC Music justifies that kind of analysis. If not, it reads as overblown. By taking a more sceptical approach the Guardian feature gave readers who suspect that it's bullshit more to chew on.

PC Music is just a bit of fun, let's be cool

Getting through this entire album is an unbelievable chore

This melody is like a Garth & Kat sketch.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4FFLoQUHYvKaa3aU2gE7Rz

I think appreciation of the review depends on thinking that PC Music justifies that kind of analysis.

― Continue your brooding monologue (Re-Make/Re-Model)

no it fucking doesn't, this is stan logic. (or, maybe more accurately, comments section logic.) if your criteria for whether a review is good are "do I agree with this score?" then that's your problem and you should probably deal with it.

http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.snl.com/SNL_1564_08_Update_4_Karth_Kat.png

IT'S beeeEEEYUUUN

this is pretty terrible writing sorry: "Instead of affection, they’ll give you a heart-shaped simulacrum—and maybe, as suggests PC Music, that’s what you wanted after all. When physical presence is a source of so much complication, sometimes an abstraction is the only thing a person can bear," and if you're going to ref baudrillard i think you need to do more w/ it than describe the aesthetics - there needs to be a broader reading of how PC Music a. reflects society at large, b. is even more real than the society it nominally represents.

'heart-shaped simulacrum' i don't even know i guess it sounds pretty

"simulacrum" is sufficiently well-known as a concept that writers can now use it without spending 1000 words per piece wanking about Baudrillard (who is never mentioned; if you really want to read a PC Music/Baudrillard take then that's also on you)

'You wish you didn’t live in a world that produced PC Music, but you do—and because you do, thank the god in the machine for PC Music. It’ll come whispering and screaming in an absolute vacuum; it’s a party reconstituted long after anyone’s been there to laugh. It’s empty, and yet somehow the stakes are monumental. Can you chip your way to the real through this pixelated thicket? Well, you can, and worse, you have to.' idk, maybe the review is kinda doing what it claims PC Music is doing - layered vapid signifiers as an empty artificial representation of content - which is clever, i guess. but i don't really know what much of this is trying to say. how is PC Music a 'god in the machine'? it is coming to save us from itself? why does it exist in an absolute vacuum? i thought the point was that it was an artificial representation of reality? and is it itself smashing some kind of alienated access to the real, or do you have to chip through yourself as a listener? if its the latter, why do we need PC Music at all? bc it's so gross that it serves as a wake-up call?

sorry this is probably giving it much more thought than it wants. as a review mirroring the pastiche of PC Music it is very clever and i like some of the turns of phrases in it. which is a lot like my appreciation for PC Music - some of it is catchy. not much more than that.

katherine, I wasn't actually criticising the review. I was just trying to figure out why some posters thought it was so awful and wondered if it was more to do with intense dislike of PC Music's schtick than the writing itself. But that obviously backfired.

One thing about PC Music's alleged relationship to mainstream pop - mainstream US/UK pop doesn't sound like this. This sounds more like the sort of thing Richard X was doing 10 years ago, ie already quite cute and knowing. Tweak Keri Baby or In My Dreams slightly and they could be Annie singles.

"sorry this is probably giving it much more thought than it wants"

i'd say the review was a success. made ya think - made ya think!

I'm down for hearing some PC Music, if anyone wants to post a link. I just thought the review said very little about the music itself and read more like a press release from OK Computer or something.

lots of music in the PS thing on PC that i linked to above:

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

Maybe that slightly anachronistic Eurodance style is simply their preferred aesthetic delivery agent for their brand of distilled funhouse mirror euphoria?

I also think PC Music have breathed life into *something*, although I'm not sure what. Max Tundra was roused to recruit Daphne & Celeste (awesome song btw) almost certainly as a result of their activities

I like the misuse of auto-tune in these. It seems weird that auto-tune isn't mentioned at all in any of those articles.

You auto-tune the vocals to get them perfect and then you run them through again, crank up the displacement, and the result is that cool tape-warping effect.

i liked the review

is it autotune or melodyne? i think pc music seems more melodyne

new Pitchfork Review is out. best kenny rogers review ever!

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/11136776_10153906021667137_3064343674909503890_n.jpg?oh=d175808040ff4018088110842e380ca3&oe=55DE562E

recently looked up this weirdly brutal review of a perfectly fine record, hard to believe it came from 2012 rather than the early 00's.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17136-mumps-etc/

Don't know where else to put this.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/17499-destroyer-dream-lover/

"The saxophones on "Dream Lover" are not mournful, but exuberant. They don’t wander in, like a lonesome lush looking for last call. They leap out, as does Bejar, who’s at his Falstaffian apex. He’s romantic and rakish, singing about wind-swept adventures with his dream lover in that recognizably world weary voice, while peppering in a few bashful profanities. The music ascends toward a joyous conclusion, the saxophones squalling in indefatigable glee."

Isn't one of those saxophones actually a trumpet?

http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr296/Elomere/unforgivable.jpg

fuck people writing out their daydreams to describe music
vision ain't sound motherfuckers get a real job

lol i had no idea pitchfork prints a magazine now, did everybody here bitch about it for several days

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

That was the most annoying phrase! Using the term "minimalist" just confuses things, like if that word was omitted you would have "PC Music sounds chaotic but is sneakily deliberate to the last distorted note" -- a totally clear statement.

The review has a lot of bad constructions like that. There will be several clear sentences and then things like:

if anyone’s really in drag here, it’s humans pretending to be avatars—the total elision of soul.

which is just clunky and awkward, and creates problems for itself by using terms like "drag" and "soul" which have specific connotations, like minimalism, which the writer just ignores because they like these provocative words more than communicating clearly? I dunno. I liked the phrase "chopped-up, anti-melodic spatter of brand names and robot garble" -- sounds like something i would like to listen to.

xp I'm not sure Falstaff is who that reviewer thinks he is. World weary?

http://pitchfork.com/news/59755-water-company-challenges-jay-zs-water-is-free-tidal-comments/

From The Pitch: "The Blues is, for all intents and purposes, dead. No one under the age of fifty writes about it or talks about it anywhere prominently."

don't trust anyone over fifty

http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/beer.jpg?w=720&h=480&crop=1

That Pitch quote reads a lot better within its context: a long empathetic piece about the life and legacy of B.B. King

that quote is kinda true too.

Where exactly do people under 50 "talk prominently"?

also, AU CONTRARE: http://thoughtcatalog.com/devon-hartman/2014/11/you-have-to-stop-what-youre-doing-right-now-to-watch-this-dog-sing-the-blues/

"Where exactly do people under 50 "talk prominently"?"

taco bell. urban outfitters.

aol chatrooms

at least they tell me they're under 50