Simon Reynolds is a gobshite

The parts about women in popular music are supposed to be enlightened but actually try to box women into Reynolds/Press defined notions of what kinds of music women should make.

Not through any real chance, I've actually never read _The Sex Revolts_, and the thing is I can't say I've ever felt a loss over that. Saying being anti-domestic is equal to being anti-woman sounds like a very suspect stretch, to be sure, but saying that a lot of lyrics are very anti-domestic in and of themselves doesn't -- but then again, I've not read the full explanation. ;-)

On the anti-domesticity thing: I think that any look at gender in culture has to take elements of radical feminist theory into account. If I had been a radical feminist reading The Sex Revolts I would probably think that Reynolds and Press were probably too tame in their analysis of mysogny in born-to-run style rock.

BUT

He really is a twat. Did you all read Generation Ecstasy? You want to talk about "tossers", Simon, you should really turn that magnifying glass on yourself. Talk about your third-rate, half-baked quasi- theory about human relations that ends up sounding like the kind of thing a loved-up candy raver with an MBV jones *would* say at the end of the night. How he could dare to mention Lester Bangs in his last little HTML-a-tribe (and for christ's sake, Simon, learn to format some text) when he himself is about as engaging a writer as a privet hedge. The fucker has the nerve to sumamrily dismiss music not 'ardkore, ie. made for dancing? What do you think My Bloody Valentine were meant for, a jig? The charleston? And the best cutting of a musician he can muster is to exclaim "Tosser!". I mean, ripping on Johnny Thunders, for christ's sake, and then bringing up John fucking Lydon from the Sex Pistols? While we're on the Sex Pistols, let's talk about really slimy characters. If Reynolds wants to hold up Johnny Thunders as an example of rock badass impotence, then Sid Vicious and his phantom bass playing must be invoked. Now who's fake and/or useless? And the last straw is when he goes on about The Ramones being retro, and saying the UK punks were more progressive. I'm sorry, but if the New York punks were about retro, why did it take a Ramones tour to get the UK punks going? Or were they more or less satisfied with Led Zeppelin at the time? For that matter, why didn't the Ramones play the blues if they wanted to be retro? The concept of claiming that only the UK were progressives in the punk movement is so insulting to the memory of groups like the Voidoids and Talking Heads that Reynolds should be made to pay them reparations. And Legs MacNeil may have been a jackass, but I'd like to watch him and Malcolm Mclaren go toe to toe any day in a useless punk hangers on contest. Simon Reynolds is the kind of music critic who gives music critics a bad name, and my only comfort is that I didn't buy Generation Ecstasy because if I had, I would have been forced to come find him and torture him in the worst way I can imagine with it: I would read it to him.

The way that his 'pronouncements' are raked over for hidden meanings and clues about what the future will hold is what really drives me nuts.

Personally, I think he's one of the three great music writers of all time along with Penman and Eshun. Changed my way of thinking on music in too numerous ways.

Of course there are things I disagree with: the afformentioned class- thing, Patti Smith, that reggae-article in The Wire, Big Beat. This actually makes it more fun.

THe drugs need to stay, I love that stuff he writes about them. As for 'Sex Revolts', I like the argument of the book, never came to a definite conclusion on the overall succes of the book *but* it contains some of his/their best writing: esp the chapters on Cosmic Mother Boys (but that's because I'm one myself ;)

I'm just going to say I have no opinion on Simon Reynolds. I find the long articles of his that Tom links to all the time damn near unreadable because there's just too much thrown in randomly at times, but the ideas themselves seem sound, as in he backs them up. I've never read anything by him besides those things though. I'm not big on music critics.

now re _sex revolts_: relies too heavily on pop psychology. the "oceanic mother's boy" bit is utter bollocks. also, they play a little fast and loose with the truth re the artists they discuss. e.g. they're quick to dismiss public enemy's "channel zero" as patriarchal based on a total misreading. they claim the song chides a black mother for watching tv rather than rearing strong black warriors w/o discussing the responsibility of fathers. this is nonsense. the song is, first of all, about a young "clueless vixen" stereotype who is never mentioned to be a mother. second, flavor flav's interjection "turn that shit off! i want to watch the game!" humorously divides the blame between men & women. they criticize riot grrrls for not "interrogating the phallocentric forms of rock itself." then, when they discuss kim gordon (who, one would presume, does do this) all they have to talk about is her lyrics.

as well, the basic premise that anything aggressive and driving is inherently patriarchal as opposed to anything soft and ethereal which is somehow "feminine" and oppositional is problematic and might even suggest a reliance on old-fashioned stereotypes.

all that said, i did find the first section about types of patriarchal strategies in rock convention and archetype to be quite helpful. the debasement of "women's work" *has* been a misogynist strategy. as well, the discussion of demystification and "mystique" postpunk oppositional strategies was also useful.

Sometimes I marvel at how small this intellectual world we inhabit on the internet is. I was interested in the above, as it sounded like it might chime in with some things I was thinking about indie kids last night (especially why it is they often like old soul and old mainstream chart records but not the modern equivalent in those genres). Something about romanticism.

So I did a search for "Against Health & Efficiency" on Google and it came up with three things, two of which were the pinefox and stevie t on the Belle & Sebastian Sinister list archives.

The section pf quoted:

[Indiepop's] return to romance is oppositional. Chartpop has grown ever more 'adult' in its treatment of relationships - either more explicit and suggestive or mature and 'progressive'. The idea of a redemptive / devastating love has come to seem a superstition in this age of yuppie self-management and self-sufficiency.... The indie scene is interested in precisely the jeopardising or loss of self through terror or awe, precisely the absolute investment of the self that is forbidden in this secular economy of self.... By a strange process we've reached the point where 'purity' seems more radical than libertinism, more transgressive than sin. The indie scene is obsessed by a dream of purity - of 'pure love', of a 'pure' or 'perfect pop' that evades the taint of the Eighties.... And where all these ideas converge is in two (very much linked) periods - childhood and the Sixties. The Sixties are like pop's childhood, when the idea of youth was still young.

, seems very to the point. Can I borrow a copy?

Sundar - You've stopped listening to rock music ? I don't get that impression from most of what you've been posting here.

well, obviously not altogether. (last album listened to: cinderella - _long cold winter_). i have pretty much stopped trying to like or listen to any current rock music, though. the only current pop-related stuff that interests me now is hip-hop and electronic. i'm sure it's just temporary though -- once rock starts treating me better, i'll speak to it again.

no, actually, "against health and efficiency" never gets i-get-more-pussy-than-you at all. sr was quite sympathetic to indie culture at that point. it does still have problematic qualities. the idea that romanticism is oppositional is somewhat dubious. like ilm, he never really defines what he means by "indie," leaving it to include everything from pop will eat itself to new york guitar noise to the smiths to all the british 80s bands i've never heard of that get c-o-d'd here. but nobody's perfect and it's an important work all the same. like _the sex revolts_.

It's a fabulous article of its time. Stevie T used to herald it to me on a regular basis, discussing its arguments and virtues, long before I actually dug up the book. When I did, I was so excited that I made about 10 copies for people I knew. If you still want one, Nick, I've probably still got one.

So if you type in, say, 'Alasdair Cook' on google, what happens?

who the fuck is this limey simon reynolds anyway? never has he spoke of sam the sham or kiss, as far as I can tell. never has he wrestled with another human being in the dirt. never has he listened to both Dust albums. never has he said ONE THING THAT IS FUNNY. he is a jerk, like most limey critics. every CREEM writer worth his salt knows that music writers from ENGLAND ARE THE ABSOLUTE WORST.... and they are the very reason we have all had to endure the likes of Oasis and Radiohead and, heaven help us, RAVES!! Simon Reynolds is nothing, I mean nothing: think of this--once i interviewed Sky Saxon who was undergoing a blood transfusion in Hawaii and he was so feeble he could barely talk on the phone and he talked about how shriveled his cock was and how he hoped one day that shriveled cock would become hard again so that he could once again perform "Mr. Farmer" with the fervor in which it was intended: well, Mr. Simon Reynolds IS NOT EVEN WORTH THAT SHRIVELED COCK OF SKY SAXON... he knows nothing of music but pretends he knows nothing of rock 'n' roll ranting, just that awful throbbing rave ecstasy crapola... & what's more, he's a limey who thinks he's smart (the worst kind)... THERE WAS A GOOD SIMON ONCE: SIMON FRITH (smart guy, good writer)--whatever happened to him, how come he's not on this website? PLEASE PLEASE do not waste our time by having to read anymore snotty SIMON REYNOLDS idiotic spouting...he has committed the ultimate offense: HE IS NOT FUNNY AND HE DOES NOT ROCK!

I just like the word "gobshite." Gotta think of a way to include it in my vocabulary somehow.

from a limey.

All that and Sky Saxon's shrivelled cock.

What I've read of "Against Health and Efficiency" is quite fascinating re: the childlike (not childish) air of indie-pop, the ethereality, the focus on memories and childhood and innocence lost... I do agree with SR that a drive for an "Edenic state of purity" (his words? it's a cliche anyway) is the real motive behind indie-pop... hence the phenomenon of kindercore and, if you look at mainstream emo music as being heavily influenced by indie-pop (and I do, there's cross-fertilization all over the place) you see it in things like chris carabba singing about "making out" at 30+ years old. This is not to say that such things are bad; it's just interesting to see an unofficial hypothesis of mine in print as an academic article, and done back in the mid-80s no less. Sort of reinforces my current opinions, gives me a wee bit of confidence.

What do you all think about that article?

Funny... had a conversation with a friend of mine over the interweb about this very subject... my eventual resolution as to the asexuality/coy adolescent sexual perspective is just kinda germane to this style of music, surmised in my idea that it just wouldn't sound right if pasty emo-rockers began to sing about "getting their freak on"...

justin s, I have an unproven theory that the accuracy with which one may define a genre has an inverse proportion to its relevancy. It sounds like the rap slang jess talks about in Dismemberment Plan songs serves to strengthen the genre boundaries in place rather than complicate them, at least the way he describes it. Not really an "Olé" as Frank might say. Which is why, at least on this front, I like Limp Bizkit more; when they drop slang it's not "realer" but it doesn't throw up a wall either, or ironically call attention to itself, it does something else.

it's not about keeping people down, it's just fucking obvious - it would be ridiculous for morrissey to start making cars and girls records like ludacris, and it's not out of order to say that he should stick to repression and bicycles... people have their own metiers and it's ok to push the boundaries, but completely overstepping them is never rarely too clever also the way in which sex is discussed usually corresponds to the overall aesthetic of the music in question, that's all i was saying... i mean for crying out loud how crapulent would it sound if chan marshall started to spit lil kim-style lyrics? both are pretty good when being themselves, but this kind of fusion would be pointless, unconvincing and daft...

Article Response: Indie Kids

Snrub, are you being funny. Google is your friend--you'll find Simon's latest book and his blog and maybe some articles for magazines.

"I also had to wonder again about where all these reactionaries actually are. Maybe I live in a rarified world, but I don't know anyone who thinks albums are intrinsically superior to singles. I'm not sure I've ever met a person who espouses that much-pilloried view about singers not having written the songs they sing being inauthentic and thereby lesser."

Yes Simon, you do in fact live in a rarified world. The attitudes you describe are still in full effect and believed by most consumers in a knee-jerk way. The reason people priviledge those things (or variations of those things) and treat those beliefs as natural is because they form the very basis of western values - i.e. rockism doesn't just come from the rise and study of popular music, it is a symptom of a larger cultural tendency. To think that rockism no longer exists in one form or another is a fantasy.

All I would add is that anti-rockism is exactly like deconstruction (or maybe simply is deconstruction?), useful in its historical moment, or as a stage in an individual's personal history, as an anti-schlerotic of thought... but very much about the elimination of reasons to value, care, feel passionate, get worked up, etc. Its logic is one of discrediting ie. eroding the basis of beliefs, and indeed of belief itself, in favour of a pleasure-principled agnosticism. The net effect tends to be a kind of negative egalitarianism: not that all things become equally valued/valid, but that all things become equally trivial. (And that logic dovetails with aspects of late capitalism, digital culture, mp3/ipod/etc etc).

I don't know about anyone else, but reading that take I think not only is there nothing per se negative about what he outlines to me -- as much as there are implications otherwise, obv. -- but that the idea of 'a pleasure-principled agnosticism' is kinda my idea of a dream!

-- Tim (tfinne...) (webmail), May 3rd, 2001 1:00 AM. (link)

Jeez, years later, but if you still think so, I would ask why you feel that radical feminist theory has to be taken into account. Or: How does radical feminist theory (if that is indeed what is being employed in this book) result in anything resembling fairness or truth in The Sex Revolts?

Much of the book seemed to me to be a ploy, framing male behavior as one of two possibilities: 1) PHALLOCENTRIC or 2) the womb-fixated baby. This is not feminism aimed at empowering women, but rather to merely disempower men.

I think you're right that the book (quite explicitly) splits male-performed music into those two ostensibly dichotomous positions, and in doing so it doesn't make any attempt to give a well-rounded assessment of the music in question, instead skewing it towards the notions expresed in the banner it has been grouped under.

...but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it "disempowers men". The message I got from the book was "gender fucks us up (men and women) and this can result in good, interesting music."

The idea that the book involves an underlying "ploy" of attempting to "disempower men" comes mainly from this branch of their dichotomy - painting males with a broad swath as "mother's boys," closet babies, "castrated," "sublimated," etc.

I don't think they argue that though. Their schematics are just one way to characterise the music covered. I don't think they're pretending that their readings in this book are anything other than highly specific, partial and explicitly not comprehensive.

That is what I got out of that book, which I like a lot in spite of its obvious flaws.

Or how about this:

"The leading edge in rock has been those bands that have intensified semiotic elements (chromaticism, noise) at the expense of structure (verse/chorus/middle eight narrative, the 'proper' ranking of instruments in the mix, which usually favors the voice and the lyrics). In fact, the emotionally regressive (that's to say, womb-fixated) seems to go hand in hand with formal progression: both share an impulse to transgress and transcend established limits."

I hardly see this as a partial reading. They are trying to suggest that ALL formal progression in rock is an act of emotional regression and code for womb-fixation.

Any melancholic music made by men (who have "castrated themselves" - taken "the soft option") falls in this category also: "For Kristeva, melancholy is 'the most archaic expression of a non-symbolisable, unnameable narcissistic wound'--in other words, the loss of mother." Again, I see this as a part of this book's ploy: painting men as closet babies.

All energetic music made by MEN, on the other hand, is, of course, "hormonal."

Trying to cram everything into their paradigm, they make very objectionable personal statements about artists also. To strengthen the womb-fixation paradigm, for example, they state that Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Syd Barrett and Sid Vicious were part of "a lineage of rock heroes who allegedly had an unusually charged relationship with their mothers."

"Allegedly"

"Unusually charged"

I think he lives in a rarified world.

expoused

dated for more

Alan Jones

Say what you like about Reynolds, but at least he can spell.

Otherwise I miss the point of your post, be there any. Seems to me that "nostalgic meandering" is right up your street.

"An approach that treats "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Chime", "One In A Million", "Who Am I?", "___", as equally exceptional--flashes of form that may or may not carry content in the traditionally valorized sense as part of their arsenal of impact, but that always create content through the audio-social ripples and cultural shockwaves they trigger.

I need to come up with a snappy name for this approach, this sensibility..."

... and I think, "yes, it's called anti-rockism!!!!"

(I know CoM is the elephant in Blissblog's living room, but even so...)

who does he think his target market is ffs? his whole steez is aimed at students of all ages -- that's fine, but who is he trying to kid here?

Marcello, I pretty much agree - Church of Me is an excellent example of how a music critic can be fiercely judgmental about music without having to limit yrself as a listener.

Haha, Marcello, I think there are so many elephants in Blissblog's living room right now there's hardly room to move...

UPDATE

* Hay Festival Saturday May 26; location-- the British Legion:
---6pm: 'To Hell with Mike Read' rock quiz with me (supplying postpunk questions), Nick Kent, John Harris.
---8pm: 'To Hell with Music Journalists', same as above discussing on British rockwrite/music press.
---9pm: 'In the Pines' some sort of folk-ish club: live bands of folk-ish persuasion interspersed with deejaying from the three crits (postpunk in my case)

* Borders with Don Letts Thursday May 31--event starts at
6.30pm. Free admission, tickets available from the store or telephone (t) 0207 379 8877 (not honestly sure why tickets are required if it's free but that's what it says in the mail-out)

Posted by simon reynolds at 11:37 AM

btw does anyone know where i can get hold of a copy of Reynolds' "Against Health and Efficiency: Independent Music in the 1980s" essay? Preferably online?

Did anybody here go to any of those events (Reynolds is plugging his latest book)

YAWN!!!

The odd nifty catchphrase and deft rhyme, but c'mon, this man was a pig---Notorious P.I.G. more like; Piggy Smalls, heheheheh-and with a little help from his buddy Sean he almost singlehandedly set rap down its current path of spiritual bankruptcy. And he had the most unappetising vocal timbre in all of rap- asthmatic and adenoidal and mucus-bunged-up and fat-fuck wheezy all at once.

The original Paul Kix, and still the best.

Casting *RESURRECT THREAD*
-- Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, March 14, 2003 8:03 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

The odd nifty catchphrase and deft rhyme, but c'mon, this man was a pig---Notorious P.I.G. more like; Piggy Smalls, heheheheh-and with a little help from his buddy Sean he almost singlehandedly set rap down its current path of spiritual bankruptcy. And he had the most unappetising vocal timbre in all of rap- asthmatic and adenoidal and mucus-bunged-up and fat-fuck wheezy all at once.

-- Dom Passantino, Wednesday, May 14, 2008 2:34 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this sounds like latter-day martin amis.

WHAT IS REYNOLS VIEW ON THE SCOOTER ISSUE

"The odd nifty catchphrase and deft rhyme, but c'mon, this man was a pig---Notorious P.I.G. more like; Piggy Smalls, heheheheh-and with a little help from his buddy Sean he almost singlehandedly set rap down its current path of spiritual bankruptcy. And he had the most unappetising vocal timbre in all of rap- asthmatic and adenoidal and mucus-bunged-up and fat-fuck wheezy all at once.

-- Dom Passantino"

reynolds said this? regardless of who said it, what fucking nonsense.

Good call on spiritual bankruptcy in the middle of a paragraph of "LOL FATTEY" gags

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=__Php680jxM

http://image.blingee.com/images15/content/output/000/000/000/3ad/185270713_639848.gif

throw ya rollies in the sky

http://image.blingee.com/images15/content/output/000/000/000/3ad/185401720_456895.gif

Rub your titties if you love 2 girls 1 cup

I think the new shaved head/goatee/gaining two stone is a good look for him.

Goody to enter Indian Big Brother
Day 71, 11:21 BST

By Simon Reynolds, Entertainment Reporter

Rex Features
Jade Goody will enter the Indian Big Brother house, reports The Sun.

The reality TV star, who was accused of bullying and making racist remarks to Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in last year's Celebrity Big Brother, has flown out to Mumbai to prepare for a stint on Big Boss.

A source revealed: "Jade wasn't sure when she was first approached because she was worried about how the Indian housemates and public might react.

"She was really upset about everything that happened after the scandal last year. People in India were burning effigies of her in the street.

"But she really wants to clear her name and prove to everyone that she's not a racist."

Goody will allegedly earn £100,000 for taking part in Big Boss.

"But she really wants to earn £100,000" morelike.

Wonder what her take is on Funky House?

The finest music journalist ever. Everybody secretly acknowledges this.

http://warriorbeat.honadvblogs.com/files/2008/06/slater8ii6.jpg

He isn't really though, is he? Even the Blissed Out-era stuff makes pretty embarrassing reading now and the current contents of Blissblog seem to indicate that he's lost the plot.

'Gobshite' is such a mild insult, I'm really surprised so many people got in such a tizzy about it upthread.

Them was funny days, the *golden age* of ILM.

I always forget how shockingly hot Simon Reynolds is.

Thread, you may go on.

"And if '01 in garage = '96 in jungle, there's at least one or two more years of *generally* good music."

That was prescient.

Unless he meant UK garage, which I never really listened to and then it was gone.

Simey on "The Roxy Music Story" on BBC4. Billed as a 'Cultural Commentator'

"Roxy Music what was that all about eh eh couldn't tell man or woman was it the fifties or the noughties it was like Blake's Seven only with flares"

I tried to watch it but really it was such a lovefest i gave up.

And Mr Reynold's cultural commentary was hardly groundbreaking.

Paul Thompson! Hero!

"Ah cannat wear these Bryan, I divven't want me mam'll thinking I'm some kind of heemasexual, man"

Was the show deliberately timed to coincide with Otis Ferry's arrest for threatening a key witness in his theft and assault of women trial?

Quipped cultural commentator Bobby Gillespie: "Ah gie'd ma old Rolo wrappers tae Brian Eno in exchange fir some Barrett's sweet cigarettes an' next thing ah know thur he is oan TOTP wi' yon Roxy Music wearin' thum and the oscillator he nicked oot our O Grade Physics class. Mind you it sounded a wee bit better than ma suggestion thut he should play the recorder."

xxp
Yeah, Thompson should have have been in it more, deflating the pretentiousness. More him, less Eno. More music would have been good as well. Just as a song was kicking in bloody Bono pops up to tell us something wholly unoriginal about it.

What was the point of Roxy Music if not pretentiousness?

Mind you, yes; the "you're too stupid to sit still and listen to/watch a piece of music for three minutes" policy of these programmes is very tiresome.

Bob: "Next ah tried to get yon Andy Mackay tae play the recorder, but the cunt wahnts to play a fuckin' oboe! That's no' very fuckin' rock n' roll is it?"

What was the point of Roxy Music if not pretentiousness?

The toons, man, the toons!

No, I was right.

Quipped Andy Mackay: "That doss cunt Gillespie couldnae blow a single note oan the oboe whin the music teacher passed it roond the class. He might've hud a better chance if his goab hadnae been stuffed wi' the Bazooka Joe chewin' gum he nicked aff wee Lydon in second year."

Unless you mean "toons" in the Terrytoons sense.

Bob: "An' ah said, listen Mackay, jist 'cos yer da' is in "Porridge" ye think ye're gallus... well ye're no'! Ye're bogus, man!"

And thus was Mackay replaced early on in Roxy Music by saxman Rikki Fulton, whose acclaimed 1974 solo outing Can Ah No Park Ma Bike Oan Evan Parker? has been known to reach prices on ebay in excess of 80p.

Genuine lol^

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/mar/05/wonky-ketamine-dubstep-zomby

if the grau had any sack it'd pay reynolds hard cash to, idk, try some drugs and listen to dance music in way that doesn't involve firing up youtubes.

lol he quotes an "expert" on ketamine, who turns out to be an anonymous bbc online news reporter

These Bobby G skits turn up in the unlikeliest of threads (xxxp)

He could have asked me. It did make me feel wonky tbh, like Morph.

No mention of the 'chopped and screwed' scene of Hosuton. Their drug of choice is 'lean' and has very similar effects. This is the obvious source of the UK's K scene. Not aware of it Simon?

these FUCKING people

funny that when i've been out to see Rustie most people were just drunk, or on pills, or cocaine. i suppose you couldn't make a crap piece for the Guardian out of that though.

and that most people i know who've been to/live in Berlin say that speed is extremely popular, more so than K.

but again, Simey couldn't make a crap connection between minimal and wonky if he stuck to the truth.

hate this whole idea of 'synergy' between drug and music tbqh. lurking behind it is some really dubious deleuzian 'man machine' ish. no idea what the appeal of it is as a meme.

I hate it not because of the dubious ideas that might be lurking behind it but because it's just complete bullshit make it up as you go along filler for crap articles like that.

Don't get the obsession with having some sort of theory to account for all new trends in music.

Wonky as a style of music is surely not defined enough at this stage to start boxing it up w/ this drug or that drug shurely... I mean when its proponents are playing out it's almost always going to be on bills primarily dedicated to more established styles amirite

Wonky just seems to be a catch-all term for 'music we can't categorise elsewhere' afaik.

I think there's value in charting musical trends and scenes and i guess whatever drugs were popular or what might have influenced, it just needs to be done much later. that kind of thing doesn't lend itself to up-to-the-minute blogging.

I don't really agree with that, since any look at this in hindsight will only intensify the inaccurate, wishful thinking, wild conjecturing nature of these kind of observations.

haha

Presumably Reynolds actually went to raves back in the day, clearly he doesn't go out to clubs playing wonky now, but that doesn't make his contention about hardcore that "pills got speedy, this made the music darker and weirder" any less than just syllogism.

seems the prime source for that article was a year old thread on dissensus. Noone but crust punk injectors do k in berlin and the only dubstep fans that do it are smelly hoodied d&b refugees. This is even less informed than the sunday times style mag piece on dinner party k use nad thats saying something

wonky? donk? funky?

it seems like british people add one noise or rhythm to something and then give it a whole new name every week.

i can't keep up any more, guys

is "bass line" a style of music too?

(didn't read the article, but i generally like simon's writing btw)

I buy maybe an argument that certain drugs appeal more in certain places and times, and maybe coincide nicely with certain musical trends in those places. But this "X drug makes depressing sounding music because X makes you depressed," stuff is nonsense. People don't immediately start loving reggae the moment they smoke a joint. Let alone start writing it.

lolneurofunk.jpg

I am pretty sure I have never heard any wonky but it has been given attention so disproportionate to amount of actually existing music that it's bound to be hated by many before anyone ever hears any of it.

it's more like prelash these days, not backlash

I buy maybe an argument that certain drugs appeal more in certain places and times, and maybe coincide nicely with certain musical trends in those places. But this "X drug makes depressing sounding music because X makes you depressed," stuff is nonsense. People don't immediately start loving reggae the moment they smoke a joint. Let alone start writing it.

― Mordy, Thursday, 5 March 2009 16:12 (8 minutes ago)

i think the connection in some cases is a lot stronger than that, but i agree with this k piece it's way spurious. people on k are always going to be in the minority in any crowd (and that's a good ting)

lash-foward

i dont know, go on a night out in manchester and leeds and the place is literally dripping with the stuff

this has nothing to do with what hes on about though

wonky= post hyperdub dubstep/idm hiphop crossover

k is really popular now, definitely. no doubt on this, it's prob as popular as ecstasy amongst people in their go out every week all weekend phase.

well at least amongst my friends

wow i had no idea. can you dance much on it?

depends how much you do, theres quite a run in. once you do its a great way to kind of 'lose yourself' on the dancefloor ie trying to ignore the shoreditch funsters around you while prosumer is on

that 'tuck in' quote is almost too good to be true.

Later, of course, many of these young intellectuals would literally destroy their minds by trying to write about the then popular form of disco music known as "rave". Sadly, despite (or perhaps because of) their cleverness, they never grasped that there really is nothing clever to say about music that is designed to be twitched to by people who've taken a drug that makes them want to twitch to music that's been designed to be twitched to by people on that drug.

full article : here

swells having a dig at simon here i wonder ?

He said "young"

no way am i reading anything with that url

"leaving them unfit for anything except working as feature writers for Mojo and Word."

lawl

too wells; didn't read

I think Simon Reynolds may have written the world blurb I have ever read, from the back cover of Owen Hatherley's book on modernist housing estates:

With svelte prose, agile wit, and alarming erudition, Owen Hatherley pries open the prematurely closed case of early 20th Century modernism. This slim and shapely, ideas-packed and intensely-felt book is neither a misty-eyed memorial nor a dour inquest, but a verging-on-erotic mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Rediscovering the enchantment of demystification and the sexiness of severity, Hatherley harks forward to modernism's utopian spirit: critical, radically democratic, dedicated to the conscious transformation of everyday life, determined to build a better world. --Simon Reynolds, Author of Rip It Up and Start Again - Postpunk 1978-84

"Alarming erudition"? "Verging-on-erotic mouth-to-mouth resuscitation"?

i'm so glad you typed up the full thing, i could only remember a couple of phrases here and there! it all makes me wonder whether he knows what any words actually mean

but yeah as i said at the time: only an idiot is ever alarmed by erudition. use another word!

I actually really want to read this book but that's by the bye.

One of the ways ILX has ruined me is that I will always associate the word "svelte" with Jordan Sargent.

ha, why? it's a good word to be associated with, as words go.

"Verging-on-erotic mouth-to-mouth resuscitation" - I actually think this is quite a funny image, but it does make Owen H sound like a borderline necro.

xp: Because he described Lil Wayne as such when he was new and ended up on the recieving end of one of the greatest zings in ILX history.

dylannn wrote this on thread MTV News' "Top 10 Hottest MCs in the Game" on board I Love Music on Aug 1, 2007

dudes with gay porn names talkin about lil wayne being "svelte" on a fucking mixtape track are schooling me on the genius of bun b.

the book does sound kind of interesting

i wonder if he was thinking of that one silver jews song

why because it look intersting

"the prematurely closed case of early 20th Century modernism."

riiiiight. suffering from real neglect, that 20th-century modernism.

when he says "prematurely closed case" he doesn't mean suffering from neglect but that everyone's already made up their mind on what 20th century modernism means, what it was for, and how we're going to treat it in the future.

Oddly enough the book is hampered by its aesthetics - it looks so cheaply made, the photographs are horribly rendered, and it has that terrible The Wire habit of capitalising things that don't need capitalising, which is so disruptive to the eye. You do not get the sense that anyone other than Hatherley took the time to proof-read or sub-edit it, which is really weird given how interesting it is and how much a labour of love the whole Zero enterprise seems to be. Also I'd really appreciate an index, which is another thing that I know takes time and effort and galley proofs (i have done one, it was an utter pain) but, um, I really want to know if Hatherley talks about the failures of Fourierist socialism to deal with Fourier's attitudes to sex because I totally think they would be a relevant precedent in chapter three, "revolutionary orgasm problems", and I feel an index would help w/ this given the density of the man's prose.

i mean, here is a funny thing: there is a certain crapness about Zero books which I guess is a sort of ideological shorthand - "this is shoddily made because it stems from the purest motives, you can tell it stems from the purest motives because it's shoddily made". Like fanzines and anarchist pamphlets having to be cut-and-paste even long after the widespread adoption of the laser printer. Unfortunately this is exactly the worst kind of book for this reverse-aesthetic nonsense - or maybe the best! - because it makes you think about, e.g., the "shoddy, prole-stacking Ronan Point tower block" (p12!) and a whole history of people blaming the failure of an idea on the idea itself, rather than looking to the half-hearted execution of that idea.

You'll be pleased to know that "brutalist continuum" is a Googlewhack.

when he says "prematurely closed case" he doesn't mean suffering from neglect but that everyone's already made up their mind on what 20th century modernism means, what it was for, and how we're going to treat it in the future.

well, yes. with the proviso that there was no such thing as a unitary capitalized Modernism: everyone these days seems to be agreed that it was politically progressive, 'radically democratic', A Good Thing, etc. some of it was dedicated to changing the world. but to making it a better place? reynolds is welcome to a world envisaged by wyndham lewis, but include me out.

obviously part of modernism (constructivism) sort of scans as 'left' or utopian. but only in a very 1920s, top-down way. but brecht is a fairly shining example of why one should really back the fuck away from the idea that pre-war modernism, even when left-wing, is something whose passing we should regret.

(i'm mildly creeped out by the way 'utopian' has come to be seen as a A Good Thing in itself. most utopias, free-market or bolshevik (which is hatherley's) are awful.)

er anyway that Reynolds quote is still pretty wack - it makes his whole avuncular patronage of Hatherley et al seem super creepy, I recognise that there is sexual content in the book but the appropriate response to that is not thigh-rubbing "slim and shapely"-style conventional lasciviisms, and by the way "rediscovering... the sexiness of severity" is such a tediously conventional thing, i mean if the visibility of porn aesthetics have taught us anything it is that people find severity sexy, it is possibly the worst way to represent what is quite a clear discussion of the problems of socialism and sexuality.

(xpost)

i love how the word 'continuum' has just ceased to have any meaning for me.

E of C is right - the book is really self-defeatingly sub-Lulu-self-publishing production-wise. Ironically, some of the prose, especially in the conclusion, feels like rambling first draft blog entry too - could have done with a bit more refinement.

Funnily enought, the company behind Zero Books is a wacky new-age crystals'n'meditation outfit. But I do think the imprint is a Good Thing (despite having a few issues with the whole k-Punk archipelago). I'm looking forward to N Power's One-Dimensional Woman.

Owen has a great piece about austerity chic in the new RadPhil mag, incidentally:
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187&editorial_id=28469

all utopias are awful! that is why we can be reassured by the fact that they do not exist, it is in the name, q.e.d..
(also OH is pretty clear on the existence of Right modernism - i think there's a bit where he talks about Wyndham Lewis being superbly snotty about the italian futurists as technological arrivistes but i can't check it cos - oh! - no index!)

OH pulls out a quote from Ruskin to start with, a quote I did not know but absolutely love:

practical people have a way of saying 'that has been tried, and failed.' Why, of course it failed. Do you suppose everybody ever played off a piece of Right on the eternal piano without striking false notes at first? Failed! - yes, and it will fail fifty times over, depend on it, as long as your fingers are baby's fingers; your business is not to mind your fingers, but to look at the written notes...

For me, I think, this is the thing.

Yes yes austerity chic: I'm worried that being against "austerity chic", being against the way people in the 00s present Modernism graphic-designed into retro acceptability, translates into a sort of against-graphic-design snobbishness, which leads to ugliness, which leads to no-one reading who isn't already of the right sort of tendency. And this is a technique as offputting as the mangled sentences that dear old theory leads itself into, where after a while you suspect that the ruling aesthetic is "this has to be hard to read so you know it's worthwhile."

found that hard to get a grip on. nostalgia for 'benevolent statism' is exactly what i associate his own ish with. am i wrong in that?

i don't know. those posters are creepy. but again, if you self-identify as a bolshevik you don't really get to talk about state brutality/the surveillance society/etc, do you? perhaps the double-standard calls for a little explanation, anyway.

(the tone of rad-phil is always a delight: 'the public execution of jean charles de menezes' is particularly choice.)

xpost

and didn't OH write something recently on the gorgeousness of the new Verso radical thinkers series (they are super gorgeous, if very very similar to penguin great ideas - maybe that's a good thing, they'll blend in, people won't realise they're reading althusser until it's too late, ahahaha)? I suspect I may be inadvertently repeating him by this point.

but i can be rude about zero books where a person published by them cannot - and anyway, realistically, are they any more ugly than routledge? (ans: yes)

xpooosts

do they genuinely self-identify as bolsheviks? good heavens.

fairly sure i've seen OH identify as a bolshevik, yeah. and that is not such a good thing!

OH pulls out a quote from Ruskin to start with, a quote I did not know but absolutely love:

"practical people have a way of saying 'that has been tried, and failed.' Why, of course it failed. Do you suppose everybody ever played off a piece of Right on the eternal piano without striking false notes at first? Failed! - yes, and it will fail fifty times over, depend on it, as long as your fingers are baby's fingers; your business is not to mind your fingers, but to look at the written notes..."

For me, I think, this is the thing.

that's a pretty terrible quote, if we are talking about political utopias. for one thing it reads like social darwinism. i suppose if it's only *your* fingers that are getting bashed then OK.

where are the 'written notes'?

I think I realised my distance from this whole discourse when I really enjoyed John Gray's Black Mass.

(but anyway ruskin's quote could just as easily justify neoliberal revanchism. so laissez-faire didn't work this time and we had a few 'false notes'. well rome wasn't built in a day...)

xpost

lol. i would upset myself if i agreed with john gray.

but probably do sometimes :(

that terrible The Wire habit of capitalising things that don't need capitalising

I really want to start a petition against this or something.

He might have claimed bolshevism in exaggeration though - I sometimes feel like I hold left-wing people to unreasonable standards in such a way that they are not allowed to be facetious about matters political?

arrrgh i have to leave the house but I genuinely don't get why you think that's social darwinism? i don't think it's being used about political utopias exactly, i think it's about ideas, and yes it's too romantic and dramatic but the idea that a single failure means that an idea is dead and useless is quite common, i think, and leads to a general crushing hopelessness.

Ruskin then goes on to talk about people learning to use alpine poles, i hope you will not also ask "but what is the mountain, in this analogy?"

darwinism in that it has no ethical content; we go on according to who has the toughest thumbs...

if we're just talking about ideas then yeah fine, go nuts, do the phd, get published, get tenure, it doesn't matter, no-one's getting hurt, and verso's getting paid.

but althusser (for example!) isn't just talking about ideas. he was a high-ranking member of the french communist party when the PCF had a large share of the vote. for example. and yes that's after 1956 and after 1968. it's well after kronstadt.

so to my mind the, er, bruised thumbs of hungary and czechoslovakia (etc, etc) do slightly put the project in question because when your end becomes 'utopia' then the means start to become trivial.

(the exact same thing goes for the neoliberal experiment in chile before anyone jumps down my throat.)

well i for one am glad that someone has had the courage to speak out against the sinister authoritarian 5-a-day campaign. fruit and vegetables! what's next, gas chambers?

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Althusser heavily involved in the PCF's turn against Stalinism?

like, wasn't that his thing? an intellectual marxism that was focused on the means of production but rejected teleology, a practical marxism that focused on the worker and rejected the brutality of stalinism?

no, quite the opposite.

that was to your first post not the second one.

ehhh... 'turn against' is overdoing it, by a long way. i think it probably had to say that stalin had sounded various wrong notes, but the PCF was still a very, very reactionary and authoritarian entity. not for nothing did the likes of christopher hill leave the party after '56. it was still aligned with moscow.

part of the lol of althusser's mystifying continued acceptance by young cultural studies students is that the PCF was strongly against may 1968 and all that is taken to represent. i have no idea why he's still in print - not because of all this stuff, just on grounds that he's... useless.

xpost

like, wasn't that his thing? an intellectual marxism that was focused on the means of production but rejected teleology, a practical marxism that focused on the worker and rejected the brutality of stalinism?

― elephants of style (c sharp major), Monday, September 7, 2009 3:04 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't really know what "a practical marxism that focused on the worker" means.

It doesn't mean althusser though. He's the opposite of that surely. An abstract marxism that focused on the structure?

idk im just trying to get paid you know?

lol i am getting schooled i thought he had more to do with eurocomminusm than he did. I did get the impression from 'for marx' that he was anti-stalin, but I haven't properly looked at it for ages.

i think he was 'philosophically anti-stalinist' in some respects... but, you know, the same SU that invaded czechoslovakia had been 'de-stalinized' too. it's window-dressing. we all make mistakes, but i sort of feel he's been discredited enough times already – on the philosophical level - not to stay in print.

"we all make mistakes" - tell that to mrs althusser!

http://www.loopsjournal.com/article.php?id=1&aid=22

subtitled 'or, if this is the future, how come the music sounds so lame?'

because it ISN'T SET IN THE FUTURE YOU CUNT.

i <3 the meco version of that track, i ahve the 12" of a re-edit

ye gods. maybe he turns it around but this is so fucking retarded. even the film weren't set in the future it wouldn't make any sense.

when will heads get over the idea that the synthesizer sounds like "the future"?

Probably misremembering, but wasn't that music like the Residents or something?

i would enjoy reading history mayne and everyone else discuss althusser and the pcf on a thread with a more fortunate title!

Reynolds will look even more of a tit when trad space-jazz supersedes UK funky in the continuum.

Hey, Space isn't the future either!

Last person went to the moon in the seventies!

i actually mean that by the way, someone should start it

"we all make mistakes" - tell that to mrs althusser!

LOL

By the way, "radically democratic" always sounds like a pleasant oxymoron.

the whole 'future/past' thing is irrelevant re Star Wars

the real question remains 'why is music by aliens ALWAYS so shit?'

wonder if grimey deals with the cylon origins of 'all along the watchtower'. again, not from the future.

OK, this time I'm angry. Reynold's metaphorically "beards" Joanna Newsome to try and say something (at least 5 years too late) about the beardo revival:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/nov/11/simon-reynolds-notes-noughties-beards

This is the Guardian. It's mainstream journalism written for a lay audience. It doesn't have to be bang up to date. In fact, it shouldn't be.

And at least he can spell Newsom.

i think it was for a serious that looks back at the decade

serious? i meant series

I think the fact that it's looking over the last decade renders it a moot point really, not that that makes it any less pointless and waffly

xxp

Anyway yeah, is he trying to say that Newsom is like a bearded lady in that she is so crazy she could be a circus act (which is retarded), or that she's a woman playing men's music (which is really obviously not the case)? Or something else?

He was really looking in the wrong place if he wanted a bearded lady.

http://www.ondarock.it/images/cover/peaches_8045.jpg

That DOES NOT COMPUTE in Simeybot's universe

its just a bit of fluff

xp she's freak folk. freak folks have beards. therefore she has a beard.

load of pointless tosh, really (especially as there's no excuse for mentioning m*tt v*lentine, in any context). but nice to see the lovely folks at beard mag get a bit of publicity.

its just a bit of fluff

Looks like a full beard to me

Yeah, DJ Mencap's second post was more what I was trying to say. Like, what the FUCK is he trying to say, that Newsom (or however you spell her name) is metaphorically bearded.

I mean, yeah, I'm not denying that Beardo is definitely a *thing* of the noughties. But it is by its very definition such a masculine thing. Not to even get into the politics of hair removal for women* - it's just such a weird thing for someone to say about Newsom. Considering she's pretty much the opposite (in music and image) of everything I'd consider "beardy"**.

*I mean, what *is* the feminine equivalent of growing a beard for women? Ceasing to shave her armpits or legs? There's such a negative gender coded response to that, that I don't think that bearded men really face.

**trying to think of a female artist I would consider "beardy" in music or image. Peaches, despite the obvious joke, is clearly not. Hence the added shock value of that album cover.

She's kinda hippyish, is that what he means?

of course its what he means you bloody nutjobs

did you guys read the article or

I guess... but she's rather too *ethereal* to be properly Beardy. Beardy is far more... earthy. I think Fever Ray would probably be closer to my idea of a Beardy female artist, but she's still too spooky.

I wanted to say, Beardy is the kind of artist you could see chopping wood for their fire. But then again, I don't think many of those beardy indie boys in Brooklyn could chop wood. They just pretend to look like they can.

Wait - Sarabeth Tucek, beardy as fuck. Maybe even Lightning Dust?

x-post YES I READ THE ARTICLE, hence why I thought the description was so utterly weird and off.

do you have anything to comment on the article except as regards the Newsom reference?

Sure, I do. But your attitude seems such that you're going to criticise me no matter what I say, so I don't really feel like taking the time to type it out.

Joanna Newsom is neo-hippyish, the bearded chaps are neo-hippyish, they are both retro in a late 60s / early 70s way, and this particular type of retro is a hallmark of the noughties. Seems to make sense to me.

^^^ That plus "freak-folk", obv.

xxp not at all, I'm genuinely interested to know. My only point is that one shouldn't expect cutting-edge journalism from the Guardian, least of all its blog pages, which are (yes) lighthearted fluff designed to provoke lighthearted discussion.

my comment is that i felt like more of a pansy having grown a beard than when i was without. what masonic boom's blokishly literalist gender codification is missing is that there's often a subtext of feminine sensitivity in earthyness, just as there is an element of masculinity in distanced etheriality.

ok maybe i wasn't ethereal without a beard, but...

^ outed as a beardo

Interesting point. Only men can grow beards, therefore beard = masculine, and yet the beardo types of the noughties are in fact rather fey.

If he means "freak-folk", say "freak-folk" - if he means "hippie" then say "hippie" - "beardy" has a different resonance (and a very specifically male resonance). In Reynolds-world, nothing ever has just a surface meaning, it's always a signifier for some other point he's trying to reach for. Shoe-horning Lindstrom (and Air, WTF?) in with freak-folk or hippies also seems an odd thing to do, but because, he actually *has* a beard, that's somehow supposed to make more sense?

I know that music and sartorial (and hairstyle) fashions are all very interlinked but if he's trying to describe a "beardy" aesthetic (which seems to be more than just "hippie" or "freakfolk" from the fact he drags Lindstrom and Air in) ... ?

It's like some kind of bizarre set theory. There is the set of Beards and the set of Freakfolk. You can be in the set if you have a beard but are not FF, or you can be in the set if you make FF but do not have a beard... but it's an odd, odd set to draw. But I suppose that's just the nature of Reynolds, so I should take it as given that it will overreach and not make sense.

x-posts, no, there ISN'T a masculinist air to Ethereality. The cult of the Ethereal Girl is almost like this get-out clause for women to participate in the masculine rock arena without getting into any of those nasty, aggressive, weird, outsider/genius things that said rock involves. It's like rock with ALL the masculine stripped out. (But this is something I've been ruminating on for months)

He said "freak-folk" just before the parentheses. it was a joke.

Also Lindstrom is totally beardo, his tunes are on DJ Harvey mixes!!

Also also you're inadvertently onto something w/r/t beardo, freak folk and set theory. The aesthetic impulses that drive the two are very similar at times which is why they overlap so much.

The feyness thing is interesting, though. It's just odd trying to make it reverse.

And that's my point, Tim - Lindstrom is *totally* Beardo, but he's not Freakfolk in the SLIGHTEST.

Yes but the point of mentioning Lindstrom and Air seemed to be to align them against all the freak-folk as being more redolent of Michael McDonald and soft rock.

reynolds is just using a bit of feminine intuition, try it sometime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0pnbPobqNg

The great unifier:

http://thesebootsaremadeforstalking.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/crazy-joaquin-phoenix-beard.jpg

Perhaps there's some subterranean connection between freak-folk and the "bear" subculture

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LTbec9DQoKc/SWqtF1gE0BI/AAAAAAAABXI/NM0FNttQ0TY/s400/200px-Gay_Bear_Mechanic.jpg

"I beg to differ."

x-post

I thought that was...

http://www.pedestrian.tv/uploads/images/blogs/49adf2b1a96f3/sebastian%20tellier.jpg

...for a minute, in which case we would have our set intersector.

So did I

cp:
Most of the time you are hippie
You're a beardo

air are total hippies.

I've just realised, after going out to get lunch, I've got the wrong end of the stick on this. That it's actually quite *funny*. See, Reynolds is taking that whole "let's group together a bunch of unrelated artists on account of the presentation of their secondary sexual characteristics" that is usually applied to *female* artists and herding together beardy men, rather than addressing the actual musical connotations of Beardiness.

Because there are many kinds of Beard in music, apart from the scraggly hippie. There's also the soft rock beard - though in Lindstrom's case, it kind of crosses over with the Prog beard. Though, prog itself divides into bearded (i.e. long haired bearded bikers like Hawkwind snorting amphetamine at the edge of time) vs. unbearded (Yes and those other art school types prancing about having flute solos and the like). The metal-prog goatee. The full Satan. The jazz tag. etc. etc.

The sculpted beard can be just as much evidence of *inauthenticity" as the scraggly unkempt freakfolk hippie beard is evidence of Gilette-shunning Appalaichan authenticity.

he called alison moyet's vocals "proto-joss stone".
he didn't like bogshed.
bit of a sling enough mud approach / feel the width.
nein danke !

Let's throw race and nationality and ever more music genres into the mix...We can create even more sets and see if they interlap.

I've seen places use 'beardo' as a quasi-genre name for all yer Isis/Baroness metal-not-metal bands - I find I quite like it when two totally unrelated music scenes jump on the same genre name, so I approve basically

It treads the line between a convenient way of saying "basically, a total sausage party" and describing something (whether signifying unkempt or chin-stroking) about the aesthetic. I can see it leaping genres quite easily.

my beard, in the subset of freaky beardo beard, is an assertion of the necessity of an Irigarayan ethics of sexual difference, inasmuch as it displays the deficiencies of equality-based approaches to feminist movements. But to deflect the criticism that positions Irigaray as essentialist when it comes to gender, I am also entirely unmasculine in every other way (excl. penis). It's complicated. Joanna Newsom is honorary beardo because she inverts this assertion of gender position.

god I was hoping there would be an xpost to give me an opportunity to delete that.

^ another beardo outed, closets are being vigorously flung open on ILM today

ha ha ha ha, no I'm glad you didn't, that's hilarious.

lol but not really sure how playing a harp and wearing flower lady clothes and smiling sweetly in press photos inverts anything all that much...?

xp to Merdeyeux

erm, instrumental virtuosity and epic ambition as traditionally 'masculine' traits, playing against her own femininity, as well as their codification as masculine? YEAH.

(while playing for lols I do pretty much [kinda] believe my point here. In some sense. A bit.)

Is instrumental virtuosity a traditionally masculine trait? Harp's a pretty feminine instrument, yes?

Gender is irrelevant to this and what is all important is whether or not you sound like you're not wearing shoes.

How could Lindstrom hit his effects pedals if he wasn't wearing shoes?

OH WAIT

http://www.last.fm/music/Lindstr%C3%B8m+and+Christabelle/+images/36957863

FOOTFAIL

post fail

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/37619821/Lindstrm+and+Christabelle+press.png

I don't think any press shot of the 00s has disgusted and horrified me more than that picture of Fleet Foxes where one of them is wearing Crocs.

OMG, no! crocs != barefoot, we're back to our beardosignifyer

Crocs are a new gateway drug to disgusting barefooted hippydom.

But my *mum* wears crocs!

But wait... she also lives in Rural Vermont, which is also clearly a hippie signifier according to that article. We might be onto something. My mum is also a priest, which inverts traditional gender roles. Perhaps MY MUM is the secret intersection set of Joanna Newsom, Beardo, and disgusting barefoot hipsters hippies.

I envy you. to be able to blame your mum for killing the music must satisfy all sorts of subconscious needs.

If I were a man, there'd be something satisfyingly Freudian about that.

Freud's theories only apply to men? Or their mothers?

http://www.croatianworld.net/Letters/Gobshite.jpg

i feel a bit sorry for SR at the moment, he is obv not really OTM from anyones perspective these days, but does seem to be getting regular kickings from all over the place. prob overdue really, makes a change from everyone being so over deferential, just weird to see people who were prob his disciples not so long ago suddenly eagerly sticking the boot in, and SR not really bothering to defend himself.

the thing i don't get: what's lindstrom doing with my mum's old sofa?

lolololol that freeway song is fucking AMAZING. love that guy.

man i wanna high-five the whole concept of beards right now! damn!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2490/4116265866_45beba8198_b.jpg

I'm digging my beard. Could care less about "free/freak folk". I like The VU and synthesizers.

i'm a synth-folk fan.

SIMON REYNOLDS MADE ME GO BEARDO!!!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2730/4115270731_1c957e1e1d_o.jpg

I should get that on a t-shirt or something.

Ohhhhhhhhhhboy

http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8463/liv1232535046simonreyno.jpg

TractorTrailer
26 Nov 2009, 1:52PM

Speech DaBelle, Scroobious Pip, Akira The Don?

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/share/HipHopBlogAlert-473x450.png

... seriously, if you can find any more informed commentary on hip hop in the uk broadsheet press, please do let me know ... ?

that chart is great tho.

rap has been a desperately unmemorable procession of cookie-cutter ballers – Jim Jones, Gucci Mane, Yung Doc, Soulja Boy, Lil Boosie, Gummi Bares – whose lyrics trudge a hedonic treadmill of bling and booty, punctuated by the occasional inane dance-craze.

fuck this guy seriously

Barely creating a ripple in the larger pop culture, undie rap is probably pretty content with its niche, a haven of "quality" in a mercenary world

except of course when these guys end up producing for g-unit -- oh but then they're no longer undie so i guess that doesnt count as 'making a ripple'

i mean what a load of bullshit.

YOU ARE OLD. get over it, it happens to everyone

this reminds me of talking to tom ewing about celine dion's book. Tom was like (paraphrased) "he goes through all these mental gymnastics trying to understand what people are getting out of celine dion -- why not just ask them??"

part of this is just from ppl who've been waiting for rap music to 'die' for ages, & now that nothing is selling except old ppl music, they're jumping up & telling us its dead. & 'luckily' for them, there's no accurate way of measuring, u know, popularity or social interest in music right now.

The worst part is there are elements of what hes saying that are true -- i think that creatively there are aspects of hip hop that are totally dull -- but he buries it by trying to make this huge fucking statement out of it, basing his ability to dismiss huge swaths of the music on his 'credibility' as a music writer (note: NOT journalist, even with one quote he managed to pull). It's unbearably egotistical.

does he not notice all that shit he praises from the early 00s:

This seven-year-long surge was largely but not exclusively driven by the Dirty South: cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis and Houston; producers like Timbaland, Neptunes, Mannie Fresh, Lil Jon, and Mr Collipark; MCs like Ludacris, Missy Elliott, Three 6 Mafia, Clipse, Ying Yang Twins, and those Cash Money hot boys Juvenile, BG and Lil Wayne. But the rest of the US played its part, from the Ruff Ryders family (DMX, the Lox, Eve, plus producer Swizz Beatz) through Ja Rule and Nelly, to the Dre/Eminem/50 Cent axis.

almost all of that shit is the same as

And, for these last three or four years, rap has been a desperately unmemorable procession of cookie-cutter ballers – Jim Jones, Gucci Mane, Yung Doc, Soulja Boy, Lil Boosie, Gummi Bares – whose lyrics trudge a hedonic treadmill of bling and booty, punctuated by the occasional inane dance-craze.

i mean, fucking new orleans is where they coined 'bling bling'. When he started talking about how great all this shit was for using hoover rave effects or whatever, acting like the condescending lecturer to all those 'pretentious' underground rap fans who wanted to hear other shit, they were pointing out "but they're just talking abuot bling & booty ..."

it would be hilarious if all these critics werent buying into it.

& the laziest part -- what music are ppl listening to instead? If rap isnt still creative -- if im crazy for thinking that gucci is just as creative of a rapper as anyone in fucking ruff ryders -- then what music is so important right now? hypnogogic pop? for the most part that 'genre' is straight easy listening. dubstep is basically idm. where is the 'fresh ideas' from those dudes? if you take the long view like he's doing w/ hip-hop here, none of that shit is so amazingly super fresh & original either.

i remember miccio saying basically the same thing when noise like this started being made in the 1st place ... that if booty & bling is such an issue for you, why NOW instead of, you know, anytime in the last 2 decades?

otm, the answer's probably bcuz we're a month from the end of the decade, rap happens to not sound exactly like it did six years ago, and lazy writers need a boring ass narrative for everything

it reminds me of in blissout when he talks about how 'smart' 'high' art takes its ideas from popular art, the idea that populist art rarely takes its concepts from the art school artistes ... & his only example of the 'exception that proves the rule' is when he mentions the bomb squad getting ideas from 'my life in the bush of ghosts' ... because naturally, the bomb squad, being black & playing for rap fans, couldnt possibly be 'high art'

im sorry but fans of gucci & soulja boy see this stuff as being fresh in its context. i know lots of them! they exist, & they have reasons for liking it, & those reasons arent any less-justifiable than the cultural critics of the new yorker & the guardian.

musically a bunch of the rappers hes talking about are doing new & interesting creative shit but because its going in a different direction than his pet narrative about the early part of the decade hes got to shit on it for the narrowest reasons, reasons that also perfectly apply to the rap music he's celebrating -- hypocritical garbage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Carpenter

The original beardo?

Deej I agree with you about this article, but I think that it's not controversial to contrast The Bomb Squad and My Life in The Bush Of Ghosts on popular/high art terms.

I think there are a bunch of problems with this piece obv:

- the self-interested copy of any aging rap artist/producer who's aiming for crossover appeal (Timbaland, Jay-Z etc.) on the limitations/boringness of rap has zero credibility in a discussion like this, any reference to Coldplay or Radiohead only compounds this.
- SR possibly thinks that simply dismissing new rappers with a "blah blah blah... all the same..." wave of the hand strengthens the effect he's trying to create, but it's strategically misguided; I think there is an argument to say that, e.g., Southern rap production has become quite comfortable with itself by and large, but by not addressing specifics at all he's unable to establish even a more limited claim of this sort (let alone the sort of argument he's actually making). More generally, I'd say "lol u old' is such a spot-on criticism with so many instances of this kind of argument that the fact that it's not definitively correct in each case doesn't mean it's not a rebuttable presumption - this kind of argument needs to be made in a much more nuanced manner; compare/contrast when he started complaining (correctly) about drum & bass stagnating in the late nineties, where he neatly skewered the production approach of each of the main sub-sets.
- I think underneath it all he's trying to say "if rap isn't on the bleeding edge anymore, that's not such an awful or shameful thing - nothing else is on the bleeding edge anymore" but he doesn't get it across clearly enough, such that he's leaving wide open the assumption that he thinks something else is still futuristic and exciting and etc (dubstep? hypnagogic pop? I sincerely hope he doesn't think so for either, and I'd be very surprised if he did actually).

btw tim i made a more reasoned & less off the cuff argument elsewhere lol

any sort of argument is way more than this piece deserves tbh

it's just so embarrassingly attention whorey. i don't see that there's any debate to be had about it

deej: any chance you could copy that over here?

I still haven't figured out wtf hypnagogic pop is

brian eno and david byrne are pretty dim.

Has anyone outside of ILM even used the phrase hypnagogic pop?

i think simon has some good points in there buried in his need to write something 'important' about rap music. Its kind of gratingly egotistical, in my opinion -- i guess he thinks this is the way he prefers his writing, that ppl take brave stands instead of worrying about nuance or whatever. I mean, there's no doubt Simon R has been a pretty big influence on the way I think about music (& related egotism). & I know this piece is designed to inspire, you know, actual passionate argument or whatever. & in that case its doing its job, because I find it pretty unbearable. Not that I've ever really enjoyed his meditations on rap music, pretty much ever --

but i think ultimately these piece is a huge failure in some ways, particularly his unwillingness to engage with current music -- and no, i dont think current rap requires any more engagement than it did a decade ago, in terms of how it sounds (that said theres an argument to be made about it working in less wide-ranging ways certainly), although in terms of channels & access -- the lack of TRL, or a monoculture, the increasing niche-ification of music listening, but also the increasing awareness we have of lots of boring rap music, the huge amount of chaff out there w/out the charts to at least give us some wheat to orient around -- it probably does require a little research. maybe a journalist concerned with these issues could ask people what they think, to rely on multiple sources instead of his own instincts about music & his need to be first on the block to declare the beginnings & ends of musical movements ....

The biggest thing is his inability to damn current rap in a meaningful way. Accusing its stars of rapping about "bling and booty" while talking about hip-hop's peak being three-six mafia, ruff ryders & cash money?? Does he lack that much self-awareness? Back when he saw himself enlightening people who were dismissing mainstream rap in favor of backpack shit -- self included here -- we were like "but ... this stuff is all about bling & booty." Hes one of the people who made me question that, albeit indirectly (scottpl was another! as were ... high school & college parties, haha). & I realized there was a lot more going on.

but now he's doing the same thing ... how is soulja boy so much worse than j-kwon?? "tipsy" is a great song, but "turn my swag on" was just as fresh & novel & different (although it didnt reference the rave songs of his post-youth so...). Gucci Mane is certainly as good/better a rapper than most of the dudes on ruff ryders or hypnotized minds ... and those are classic groups who've recorded some of my favorite music.

the problem as i see it is he's never really engaged with rap music AS RAP MUSIC. the idea that how people rap actually matters -- what personas they inhabit, how they use their lyrics, why millions of rap fans out there bother memorizing what rappers are saying, not just what they're saying but how they say it ... i've never once seen him write about that stuff. its always, "showing the influences of rave" & big picture shit. I've always found that 'forest for the trees' argument shortsighted when people's understanding of the forest is at tree-level. sometimes understanding music involves acknowledging that maybe your perspective just might be more of an issue than you realize.

i think at some level what pisses me off most about this is that i feel like i spent a lot of time defending ppl like SR's interpretations of rap music to rap fans i knew -- not literally like "you should check this guy Simon Reynolds" but in the sense that, like, I think outsider perspectives -- as in perspectives from ppl who dont consider themselves 'heads' -- can be hugely insightful & certainly powerfully impacted the way i listen to rap. & while i didnt read much simon wrote on rap himself -- like i said above, ive never really dug his actual writing on the form -- his ideas filtered down to me in other ways -- paying attention to ground level to signal a scene's movement, looking at the internal dynamics of a scene to understand whats going on, the dynamics of genres interacting w/ each other broadly, & through writers like tim & scott pl who obviously learned a lot from simon. its not so much that im annoyed by sr not giving a shit about rap any more -- im more annoyed by it being a signpost for a broader trend, signals to all the alt weekly editors & etc. that we can go back to just caring about wu tang & occasional cool kids type shit -- that i find kind of frustrating. maybe im being ridic cuz lots of that writing on rap was pretty awful anyway??

i dunno i still feel like this 'matters' but also like im wasting my time

btw lol @ this
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/share/HipHopBlogAlert-473x450.png

o some1 already posted

hey you've got it easy. a couple of years ago simon started listening to metal.

i mean if you want to talk "outsider" outlook and critique from above.

i think the reason simon can get my goat is the same reason xgau can get my goat. cuz he's smart and a good writer. the most dangerous combo of all! and i guess i can say the same thing for sasha. cuz i end up shouting "bbbbut you should know better!".

The level of debat is pitiful though. You just knew before the first comment went up that you'd get a mix of: (1) ho ho, don't you mean (c)rap music?, (2) De La Soul were great but then it was all about bitches and ho's and (3) It's still amazing, you just have to look for the good stuff (proceeds to recommend shit like Sage Francis and Aesop Rock). The third argument probably annoys me the most. Doom has become the MC equivalent to The Wire - I know he's good, but smug bores go on about him so much, as if he's the answer to everything, that it makes me hate him just a little bit.

Good comment by Greg Tate near the end of the list though, which suggests a positive cultural reason why hip hop as a radical force is dead. And Sage Francis ain't going to change that.

x-post

im more annoyed by it being a signpost for a broader trend, signals to all the alt weekly editors & etc. that we can go back to just caring about wu tang & occasional cool kids type shit -- that i find kind of frustrating. maybe im being ridic cuz lots of that writing on rap was pretty awful anyway??

I am afraid this and Sasha's piece works as a signpost to some alt -weekly editors I've dealt with, and to NPR All indie considered, to just go cover only indie rock.

hey! it's like the decade is starting all over again.

I think, if anything, hip-hop is in the place that indie was in c. 1998-2001 and dance music was right at the start of the 00s - lots of good records being made but a lack of a definable narrative and perceived sense of it being vital.

It happens to all types of music once in a while and is much of a lack of anything for journalists to latch onto as it is on the quality of the records. It's more likely we're in the period of relative coasting just before the massive paradigm shift comes in.

I think, if anything, hip-hop is in the place that indie was in c. 1998-2001 and dance music was right at the start of the 00s - lots of good records being made but a lack of a definable narrative and perceived sense of it being vital.

I think this is OTM

Let's just hope 2010's hip hop paradigm shift is better than the Strokes/Libertines eh.

isn't the end of the 00s all about there being no big paradigm shifts anymore, though? Only little shifts.

Simon you little shift.

Though in Simon's defense, 2009 maybe have been one of the worst years in hip-hop since the dawn of time.

isn't the end of the 00s all about there being no big paradigm shifts anymore, though? Only little shifts.

Exactly, it is THE END of the 00s.

I'm pitching a similar think piece to the V1ll4g3 V01c3 that works as a rebuttal, that awesome rap records still exist it's just the industry lacks a way to market them and rock critics refuse to cover them unless there's a news peg

Simon's such a big-narrative guy, though, that for him no narrative = nothing happening. Main problem with this piece is that sub-editors LOVE "the death of…" headlines, which are always inaccurate because no genre dies, it just becomes less relevant and exciting, and tends to inflame the faithful to no useful end. Most responses to the article have this blinkered, ground-level, defensive attitude. Instead of dealing with the main issue they just list a smattering of low-level releases they like. Well, great, I like Doom too, but it doesn't mean that hip hop isn't in the doldrums. There's still people going on about drum'n'bass, and I'm sure there are good tunes out there and if you're deep into the scene it probably feels like the most important music in the world, but nobody can claim that it's still important in the big scheme of things, so in that broader cultural sense it is "dead". I don't think hip hop's there yet because it's so much more versatile than d'n'b. I would like to see a hip hop equivalent to the Strokes in 2001 - someone who can trigger a new narrative.

a hip hop equivalent to the Strokes in 2001

Be careful what you wish for.

Heh. I'm aware that out of context it sounds like a horrible prospect.

It sounds like The Beastie Boys.

Just to clarify - they don't have to be white guys from the Upper East Side.

Good!

so they could be white guys from anywhere in NYC, right?

I'm sure there are good tunes out there and if you're deep into the scene it probably feels like the most important music in the world, but nobody can claim that it's still important in the big scheme of things, so in that broader cultural sense it is "dead".

There is no "big scheme of things." There is no "broader culture" to have a "sense" about. Start over.

My take on the article, btw: I don't think hip-hop is "dead" because I never thought it was "alive" in some sort of huge society-defining way. I don't believe in mass popcult consensus, only in a zillion simultaneous microscenes that occasionally fire mortar shells into each other's trenches. These days I only hear new hip-hop when I click past MTV or MTV2. So maybe there are good records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care.

but mattdc, i think "a lack of a definable narrative and perceived sense of it being vital" is as much an issue of perspective as it ever has been. i knew plenty of people in 01 who felt exactly the same about it that he does now

in other words, less vital to whom?

& dont say "timbaland & jay-z listen to coldplay" lol

things i think are diff about hip hop & disappointing about it in 2009 -- to me it seems a lot less interested in taking risks w/ novelty in order to cross over to a larger stage, many of its key artists content to record for established fan bases rather than feel like pop audience is at stake for them

& of course lil wayne, t.i., gucci, lil boosie all going to jail is like if biggie and pac both went to jail for 2 years in 96

There is no "big scheme of things." There is no "broader culture" to have a "sense" about. Start over.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 5:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

My take on the article, btw: I don't think hip-hop is "dead" because I never thought it was "alive" in some sort of huge society-defining way. I don't believe in mass popcult consensus, only in a zillion simultaneous microscenes that occasionally fire mortar shells into each other's trenches. These days I only hear new hip-hop when I click past MTV or MTV2. So maybe there are good records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 5:52 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^so so so otm

Simon's such a big-narrative guy, though, that for him no narrative = nothing happening

this is why i think he's such a terrible journalist tbh, and why he keeps misrepresenting so many scenes and artists. big narrative to whom? who gets to define those narratives? why is a narrative only existent to people who don't really care about a genre? there are tons of big and small narratives, both within hip-hop and w/r/t how it engages with non-hip-hop, happening at the moment. artist-specific, locale-specific, trend-specific...just because you aren't aware of them, which in most cases is because you're not interested in finding out, doesn't mean they're not important.

also i hate the false binary set up between the hip-hop faithful scouring blogs for the latest no-mark mixtape and the rest of the world - it enables fuckwits like reynolds to effectively dismiss and sweep away anyone with an actual rebuttal to him. you're a hip-hop fan, your opinion doesn't matter!

i think the problem is more that hes expecting the 'big narrative' to move a certain way & instead its moving left or right or sideways -- like, if you're looking for a 'massive change' why not consider that gucci released more material in one month this year than tribe called quest released in their entire careers (credit to noz on that observation) -- & the fact that much of it was still novel & creative & adventurous (it was mostly not filler, anyway) implies that we're in a new recording era -- he's come up w/ a way of releasing tons of material that feels kind of like a living body of work, adopted for the economic realities of our times -- how does that not qualify as a big & new direction for popular music? his entire style of prolific recording, of creating interest thru tons of variations on a narrow niche of themes, is pretty novel in the grand scheme imo

i mean isnt this the same thing hes done with uk funky ... "wheres the obvious signs of progress?? house again??" meanwhile the genre follows a kind of less-is-more strategy to 'progress'

I think the problem is that Simon's not pomo enough to get over narratives in the first place.

i am so not a big picture guy. or a prediction guy. so its hard for me to relate sometimes to people who are. or people who are always looking ahead to the new new thing. i think its a personality thing. i can take one record or even one song from another era and make a universe out of it. or for it. but i CAN dig a musical outlook/worldview that is more sociologically inclined or anthro-inclined. but broad sweeping statements and predictions and generalizations about what is happening/what is going to happen rarely do anyone any favors unless they are rigorously researched and thought out over a long period of time.

*applause*

i actually made a prediction a loooooooong long time ago and i don't think it really came true. or if it did it came true in some less obvious way that i didn't pay attention to. in the 90's when indie/undie rap was gaining strength and listeners i thought this might translate into more of a worldwide movement of people making great native language sci-fi rap of all kinds. and maybe people did and i just never heard the albums. i just thought that mo wax/stones throw/co flow/etc would spur people on to make rap music that wasn't, you know, major label rap music. that it would inspire people to make rap in their own image. ( i was really probably just hoping that the japanese would do this since one of my biggest hip-hop influences in the 90's was my major force box set) again, maybe this happened somewhat and i missed out on it or didn't know about the great latvian underground rap explosion.

maybe i should start a thread for the best non-u.s. rap albums of the 90's/00's. (yeah there was grime but there has always been u.k. rap)

I disagree with unperson - I'm still very much interested in the "big scheme of things", in any artform. And it doesn't seem controversial to me to say that all genres have highs and lows, and this isn't a high for hip hop. But the more comments I read on this thread, the more muddled Simon's piece seems. He'd have been on safer ground if he was talking about hip hop as a cutting-edge pop form which creates fascinating, innovative mainstream stars, which it has been for many years and doesn't feel like now, rather than ringing the death knell for the whole genre. deej's argument about Gucci seems fascinating to me, though I don't know enough about him to comment.

what does w/r/t mean?

reynolds is a cockhead

"with reference to"

this isn't a high for hip hop

no, it's been a terrific year for hip-hop. i mean no offence but you even admit that you haven't heard much gucci mane, who's been one of the biggest hip-hop stories of the year?

dj quik & kurupt
gucci mane
nicki minaj
pill
new era
ugk
marco polo & torae
pink dollaz
the bangz
raekwon
young dro
unladylike
jackie chain
kid sister

^^after all these US hip-hop artists across the whole spectrum of hip-hop did in the 09, you honestly can't say it was a bad year for the form. and that's just off the top of my head. maybe you haven't heard them but that's your issue, not hip-hop's.

*after what

there have certainly been v. good records this year but it isn't exactly a vintage '94, '99, '88, '03 type of year.

also ty dorian.

Well I haven't listened to a lot of Gucci Mane because I didn't much like what I have heard. I've heard a good half of that list and only warmed to UGK, DJ Quik & Kurupt and obviously Raekwon. A lot of the rest sounds drab and predictable to my ears, so it's not been a great hip hop year for me. But yes, I'll put my hands up - I let my personal tastes slide into an objective judgement in my previous post. Good job I'm not writing any pieces on the future of hip hop, eh?

a hoy hoy - "ty"?

Sorry - it's obviously thankyou. Thought you meant the British rapper Ty for some reason.

you're throwing up Kid Sister as a reason hip-hop was good in 09?

Also, seriously, real good old man rap like Quik/UGK/Raekwon has like zero bearing on hip-hop at large. It's like saying jazz had a great 09 because Evan Parker is still putting it down

lol i'm a bit of a ukhh stan and even i think ty is a bit rubbish

Also, seriously, real good old man rap like Quik/UGK/Raekwon has like zero bearing on hip-hop at large. It's like saying jazz had a great 09 because Evan Parker is still putting it down

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 27 November 2009 20:57 (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the mos def album is dope too

Honestly, pointing at the Quik/UGK/Raekwon/Mos Def axis is the rock critic/ILX/rap-blogger version of hilolarious "YOU'RE JUST NOT LOOKING HARD ENOUGH LISTEN TO REAL SHIT LIKE TALIB KWELI" comments

"Old man rap", that's my shit right there.

Mine too!

But yeah, Raekwon doesn't help anybody's argument. "Hip hop's booming! Just check out this sequel to a 14-year-old album!"

Kid Sister made my rap year!

Conversely. the whole Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis is basically just the rap version of nitpicking over chillwave and glo-fi and, again, has little to no bearing on hip-hop at large.

EVERY SINGLE YEAR is a good year for rap (or any genre, really!) if you look in the right places... But AN ACTUAL GOOD YEAR is when the good stuff is unavoidable.

This is basically what I've been fumbling towards, only really concise and with CAPS

yeah that's really well-put

man if you really wanted a rap is dead in 2009 example that ama show with a lame em and a lame fiddy and a lame timbo lamely limping to the finish line was all the proof you needed. if that was what you were looking for. thank god all the man on man action at the end of the show made you forget about it.

i listened to rap all year and found it fresh, exciting and generally had a great fucking time listening to it. also i do not care if simon reynolds thinks rap is dead. thank you.

It plays into what people are saying about the dearth of black artists on EOY lists. I love it when hip hop is producing such unarguably brilliant singles and albums that any decent critic has to acknowledge them, without any need for special pleading. This year, it really doesn't surprise me that P4K or NME or whoever aren't going apeshit over Pill. If there's one single as flat-out great, as say, TI's What You Know, then I haven't heard it yet, and I'd really love to.

i blame the economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5FwduDXz6k

A cynical person might think that a lot of this has to do with getting that Euro.

Pill's only put a couple of mixtapes out though hasn't he? Has there even been an album yet?

I meant Trap Going Ham, which is a big hip hop tune that means v little outside its base. Album-wise, it's pretty much old-man rap or nothing, isn't it?

q: is mixtape culture part of the problem for ppl like me who try to pay attention to what's going on but aren't devoted enough to download and plow through a ton of mixtapes? i tend to be at my best when i can go to a store and buy a cd--so i guess i am prob a minority that should not be catered to. i feel like i'm missing a ton of stuff tho.

sup yall. i'm trying to write my end of year list but i don't know what the huge standout Hip Hop songs that had the streets 'going ham' were. is rap dead or something?

If there's one single as flat-out great, as say, TI's What You Know, then I haven't heard it yet, and I'd really love to.

― Dorian (Dorianlynskey), Friday, 27 November 2009 21:23 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why hello there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHe18yE2kXM

My take on the article, btw: I don't think hip-hop is "dead" because I never thought it was "alive" in some sort of huge society-defining way. I don't believe in mass popcult consensus, only in a zillion simultaneous microscenes that occasionally fire mortar shells into each other's trenches. These days I only hear new hip-hop when I click past MTV or MTV2. So maybe there are good records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 12:52 PM (3 hours ago)

so why did you read the article if you don't like hip-hop?

EVERY SINGLE YEAR is a good year for rap (or any genre, really!) if you look in the right places... But AN ACTUAL GOOD YEAR is when the good stuff is unavoidable.

NOTHING IS UNAVOIDABLE. (You used caps first. I'll stop now.) Seriously, this is the same problem I had with that interview with you (some of which I liked, because you talked about listening to non-indie, non-canonical stuff) where you claim that lo-fi bullshit by some 20-year-olds in Brooklyn is "the year's biggest musical trend." Seriously? The majority of people in Brooklyn don't even care about this shit, let alone the world at large. I could easily assert that tech-thrash and deathcore are the year's biggest musical trend, and play you albums by Revocation, Born Of Osiris, and eight dozen other bands of under-25 death metal savants. That wouldn't be true, either.

so why did you read the article if you don't like hip-hop?

Because I like Reynolds' writing (he contributed to a book I edited and we exchange emails from time to time) and because I am a music critic who likes to know what other music critics are thinking, even when I vehemently disagree.

Conversely. the whole Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis is basically just the rap version of nitpicking over chillwave and glo-fi and, again, has little to no bearing on hip-hop at large.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 4:04 PM (48 minutes ago)

yeah i mean again this only matters if "hip-hop at large" means anything to you. there's plenty of great, classic rap being made all over the place.

and before the "but it doesn't sell anymore!/it's not ubiquitous anymore" arg gets trotted out again - nothing sells anymore! i'm hardly disheartened that rappers can't go platinum anymore when we're in an era in which like, 2 or 3 artists actually do per year

and at least 1 of them 3 is a rapper.

like, last year lil wayne, kanye and t.i. were the biggest releases in any genre, right? and ok, this year won't have anything *that* big, gucci should still be one of the 10 biggest releases of the year and lol black eyed peas are still technically a rap act

gucci will not be one of the top ten sellers, though that'd be cool

Because I like Reynolds' writing (he contributed to a book I edited and we exchange emails from time to time) and because I am a music critic who likes to know what other music critics are thinking, even when I vehemently disagree.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 4:50 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Saying "I am a music critic" after saying "So maybe there are good [rap] records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care" is pretty much like saying "I don't really pay attention to wisdom teeth and don't really care to... but I'm a dentist!"

And honestly re: my chillwave argument, I'm not saying it's some ubiquitous or popular thing, I'm saying its a sign of the way things are headed. Chillwave is the Gucci Mane of indie rock

Also, it was the first thing that came to mind when i was asked the question and in retrospect, is probably like the 4th or 5th movement of 2009, and not THE BIGGEST

please tell me that you personally didn't make up the name chillwave.

unfortunately i've heard it other places

oh okay it was the hipster runoff guy who did i looked it up.

Not sure if this genre has a name. Seems like it needs to have a name that is ’serious.’ Here are some ideas for this ‘genre.’

* no-fi
* post-AnCo rock
* post-bloghause
* GorillaVsBearcore
* Chill Bro Core [via Butterteam]
* Kewl Boring Music
* Music 2 smoke weed 2
* Synth Computer Pop Atmospheric Wave
* GazeWave
* ShitWave
* CumWave
* WaveWave
* ShoeWave
* Chillgaze
* Pitchforkwavegaze
* Blogrock
* No-gaze
* Blowgaze
* GazeStep
* post-electro
* conceptro
* ChillHouse
* Browave
* Conceptual Blog Core
* ForkcastRock
* Forkshit
* No-fork
* ZanyCore
* Industrial
* post-freakfolk
* freakgaze

Feel like I might call it ‘chill wave‘ music in the future. Feels like ‘chill wave’ is dominated by ‘thick/chill synths’ while conceptual core is still trying to ‘use real instruments/sound like it was recorded in nature.’ Feel like chillwave is supposed to sound like something that was playing in the background of ‘an old VHS cassette that u found in ur attic from the late 80s/early 90s.’

You know, I'm shocked no one seems to be mentioning this about it, but:

If you told me 5 years ago that every hyped indie rock band in 2009 would sound like Ariel Pink, I would have said you were crazy

GorillaVsBearcore

hahahaha

HRO dude has turned self-loathing into a marketable lifestyle brand, and I for one am genuinely impressed

i think it's nice when there are easily identifiable big trends that pervade over a certain genre for a whole year. it's like all the bands have agreed on a set of rules and they all compete to sound the best within a certain aesthetic. and there is good chillwave! maybe not any classic albums but at least some great songs.

like what? i dont know what chillwave is.

there's this one really amazing neon indian song.

Saying "I am a music critic" after saying "So maybe there are good (rap) records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care" is pretty much like saying "I don't really pay attention to wisdom teeth and don't really care to... but I'm a dentist!"

Hardly. How many polka albums did you hear this year? How many North African releases that didn't come out on Sublime Frequencies? Every writer limits what they investigate, mostly based on what people will pay them to write about. Nobody's willing to pay for my opinions on hip-hop, so when I listen, it's because I've got some down time from all the stuff I'm listening to for money (90-plus percent of which is metal, jazz and assorted skronk). Hip-hop is strictly recreational to me, and I'd much rather listen to Follow The Leader again than whoever's fifth mixtape of the quarter just hit Rapidshare.

okay hipster runoff is already talking about post-chillwave. it's over folks:

http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/2009/11/the-beach-house-theory-of-2k10.html

they created it and then they killed it! that is kinda cool!

But Scott that's so he can position himself for the chillwave revival in 2010.

ummm, not listening to polka != not listening to possibly the decade's biggest genre of music

i.e. nu-chillwave

Hardly. How many polka albums did you hear this year? How many North African releases that didn't come out on Sublime Frequencies? Every writer limits what they investigate, mostly based on what people will pay them to write about. Nobody's willing to pay for my opinions on hip-hop, so when I listen, it's because I've got some down time from all the stuff I'm listening to for money (90-plus percent of which is metal, jazz and assorted skronk). Hip-hop is strictly recreational to me, and I'd much rather listen to Follow The Leader again than whoever's fifth mixtape of the quarter just hit Rapidshare.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 5:24 PM (3 minutes ago)

this is fair but last time i checked this thread was a discussion on the direction of hip-hop, and since you've admitted you know very little about it and don't care to, i don't see how saying this is productive.

also, unlike polka, north african music, and jazz, people actually listen to and pay for rap music

possibly the decade's biggest genre of music

Among whom?

If you extend it to include norteño, the audience for polka is pretty fucking huge, you know. You don't hear it in many McDonald's commercials, but it's out there.

i started that cinnamon chasers thread 2 weeks ago and i should have just called them chillwave in my thread title! (cuz i saw they were mentioned on an origins of chillwave blog post just now.)

the dude behind CC also makes actual olde-tyme "chillout" music under another name:

do you guys like cinnamon chasers? (ambient electro-pop kinda stuff)

I'm waiting for the post-chillwave revival in 2030.

among whom? umm, the record buying public of the world?

EVERY SINGLE YEAR is a good year for rap (or any genre, really!) if you look in the right places... But AN ACTUAL GOOD YEAR is when the good stuff is unavoidable.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 4:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i feel like it's really easy to avoid everything nowadays though. like are there any other genres that are pumping out an unavoidable wave of great music? imo 2009 has been a fantastic year for hip hop and i didn't even have to look that hard, atleast not any harder than it was to find my favourite r&b, punk, indie or noise albums.

we are all in (i)pod world now.

back to our roots:

http://www.gadgetvenue.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/wooden-ipod-dock.jpg

How about "unavoidable if you're paying a minimum of attention," which is clearly what he means?

yeah i guess my point is that nothing was really "unavoidable if you're paying a minimum of attention" this year besides lady gaga and boom boom pow.

serious pedantry itt

ilm in pedantry shocka!!!

i think hip hop is getting a lot of slack from critics for falling out of the public eye and not having any huge hits or albums, while the quality of music hasn't changed drastically in the past few years. i think it has a lot to do with the fact that hip hop use to be really ubiquitous and unavoidable, so non-rap critics would keep clear account of what's going on with the sides of their eyes and now that it's dipped under the everpresent public eye it's suddenly like "where's all the good hip hop at?" but it's still there by all means.

Honestly, pointing at the Quik/UGK/Raekwon/Mos Def axis is the rock critic/ILX/rap-blogger version of hilolarious "YOU'RE JUST NOT LOOKING HARD ENOUGH LISTEN TO REAL SHIT LIKE TALIB KWELI" comments

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 4:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I take that back, i read your comment wrong

I do think part of the problem is that no critics are really covering non-radio/non-backpack/non-newspeg rap. Like the Cormega album is really good and, honestly, who's gonna tell you that?

I can list 20 awesome rap records that came out in 2009, but no one gives a fuck about any of them--which means more to the "death of a genre" than the records just not existing at all

all of those hip-hop magazines...oh wait

xp

whats the state of the source/xxl? do they still exist? will they last long if they do? still mouring hhc dying tbh and now dont really know where to get a good hiphop recommendation bar occasionally checking cocaine blunts

rolling autogoon thread 2009

I can list 20 awesome rap records that came out in 2009, but no one gives a fuck about any of them--which means more to the "death of a genre" than the records just not existing at all

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 6:02 PM (1 minute ago)

aren't you just pointing to the quik/ugk/mos def axis then? honestly, it doesnt bother me that there's not a huge, agreed-upon great rap album this year. i like rap, and as long as good rap records continue to be made i could care less if they dont put up huge numbers (and they will, it's just a matter of time). it's almost better than every aunt and uncle in the country latching onto a just-ok record like carter III

ha ok yeah rolling autogoon as well.

Is this a good place to talk about the excellent, slept-on art-rap that even the indie critics who stump for quik/ugk (and the autogoon crew) won't touch?

Good a place as any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00W9zT1rZs4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiEEitTx2GE

the excellent, slept-on art-rap that even the indie critics who stump for quik/ugk (and the autogoon crew) won't touch?

do you guys like blu and exile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_GDg7pW0Q

Is 2009 Anti-Pop C. and Dahlek as good or better or different than what they were doing in 2002? Just asking, haven't heard their recent stuff (other than the videos posted above).

genre name mockery is the preserve of awful british comedians, cease and desist order.

I wouldn't say drastically different, but APC has gotten way funkier and Dalek way more layered and shoegazy

Conversely. the whole Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis is basically just the rap version of nitpicking over chillwave and glo-fi and, again, has little to no bearing on hip-hop at large.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 27 November 2009 21:04 (Yesterday) Permalink

juiceman is nothing like pill/freddie gibbs and is yes "actually popular"

― ice cr?m hand job (deej), Friday, November 27, 2009 9:33 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest

i think hip hop is getting a lot of slack from critics for falling out of the public eye and not having any huge hits or albums, while the quality of music hasn't changed drastically in the past few years. i think it has a lot to do with the fact that hip hop use to be really ubiquitous and unavoidable, so non-rap critics would keep clear account of what's going on with the sides of their eyes and now that it's dipped under the everpresent public eye it's suddenly like "where's all the good hip hop at?" but it's still there by all means.

― samosa gibreel, Friday, November 27, 2009 4:54 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

exactly. which is why whiney's hilarious assumptions about what is 'actually popular' is so ridic. juiceman is freddie gibbs? lol. if plies album had sold would it would have if we were in a '99 era for the music industry ... or dudes like jacka ... theres so much shit out there that is 'actually popular' that whiney is pretending bcuz hes not aware of it, lots of other ppl arent either.

also i totally dont understand the idea behind comparing a populist rapper to a critic/tastemaker created 'genre' like 'chillwave'

I'm definitely "not aware" of OJ Da Juiceman who I've talked about in this thread

Gucci is a "populist rapper" only on Planet Deej, come the fuck on now

Like he's been steadily on the rise for years, but he hasn't had a single even break Top 30 in Billboard. He's gonna be huge and everyone knows it, but dude has literally nothing to show so far except cosigns, guest spots, the MTV MCs circle jerk and sharing an XXL cover with three people.

That's not populist, that's cult hero.

And, yes, taking everyone of his shitty throwaway lines and deconstructing "OMG HE SAID PENGUIN" like it's fucking illmatic is as sad and pathetic as a what.cd message board slapfight about whether Memory Wave is better than Indian Tapes.

not sure who should get the serial poster award, you or deej

I feel this double one-way exchange is somehow emblematic of the discourse of Simon Reynolds.

He's gonna be huge and everyone knows it

GODDAMMIT WHAT IS "HUGE" AND WHO IS "EVERYONE"

You know, that one guy.

Gucci is a "populist rapper" only on Planet Deej, come the fuck on now

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 11:33 PM (Yesterday)

tbf all my white eight classes-taking friends are very aware of gucci's existence, which i was a bit surprised to learn myself

maybe they thought u meant populist fashion house gucci????

no disrespect unperson but "everyone" is people who at least pay a little attention to pop music, a group from which you've already admittedly excluded yourself

"everyone" is people who at least pay a little attention to pop music, a group from which you've already admittedly excluded yourself

Hip-hop is not the be all and end all of pop. Show me where I said I don't pay attention to pop music.

i don't really consider metal, jazz and assorted skronk "pop" but can we just drop this?

Too bad hip-hop songs never break the pop charts or are played on pop radio. He really got you there, kevin.

Also, I've heard a lot of reasons why people don't listen to rap, but "no one pays me to" is by far and wide the stupidest

well that's why i don't listen to rap, fwiw

heres fifty cents

A-

a thousand xposts:

i actually made a prediction a loooooooong long time ago and i don't think it really came true. or if it did it came true in some less obvious way that i didn't pay attention to. in the 90's when indie/undie rap was gaining strength and listeners i thought this might translate into more of a worldwide movement of people making great native language sci-fi rap of all kinds. and maybe people did and i just never heard the albums. i just thought that mo wax/stones throw/co flow/etc would spur people on to make rap music that wasn't, you know, major label rap music. that it would inspire people to make rap in their own image. ( i was really probably just hoping that the japanese would do this since one of my biggest hip-hop influences in the 90's was my major force box set) again, maybe this happened somewhat and i missed out on it or didn't know about the great latvian underground rap explosion.

Scott have you heard the album 'Astromantic' by a band called M-flo? it is my favourite record of the 00s and it is the first thing i thought of reading "great native language sci-fi rap of all kinds" - they're a japanese rnb group with a floating cast of guest singers who make ridiculous overstuffed bi/trilingual pop and they had this one perfect album, in 2004, and... you might like it?

Gucci is a "populist rapper" only on Planet Deej, come the fuck on now

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 10:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

only in the whiney school of popular culture -- its funny how u basically have no understanding of popular culture tho -- how would you say he stands on the continuum of kevin smith -> chillwave??

Like he's been steadily on the rise for years, but he hasn't had a single even break Top 30 in Billboard. He's gonna be huge and everyone knows it, but dude has literally nothing to show so far except cosigns, guest spots, the MTV MCs circle jerk and sharing an XXL cover with three people.

That's not populist, that's cult hero.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its funny how u had to edit it to 'top 30' because he has had 'top 40' hits. um, & he's been the featured performer on hits that have done better than that. so do explain, how does one 'become' huge as measured by the charts w/out 'being' huge first. nothing to show for it? are billboard charts the only 'real' presence? planet deej? whiney, i recommend getting to know a single human being not on ilx it might do wonders for your perspective

And, yes, taking everyone of his shitty throwaway lines and deconstructing "OMG HE SAID PENGUIN" like it's fucking illmatic is as sad and pathetic as a what.cd message board slapfight about whether Memory Wave is better than Indian Tapes.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 10:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah maybe i should spend my time writing one thousand twitter reviews of bands like memory wave & indian tapes u fucking clown

Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis

lollllll

whiney is basically the living embodiment of exactly what my problem is w/ mainstream critics now, altho at least he out & out admits that now that rap has no way to 'prove' its popularity on the charts it might as well be as popular as whatever crit bands he spends his time gchatting about.

lol @ breaking down ppl feeling gucci's lyrics to "omg he said penguin" -- it might help you to spend less time listening to brooklyn hipsters who discovered gucci thru the 'cold war series'

you're throwing up Kid Sister as a reason hip-hop was good in 09?

yes

goddamn this "argument" is annoying

I love it when hip hop is producing such unarguably brilliant singles and albums that any decent critic has to acknowledge them, without any need for special pleading.

it's much more probable that the drop in quality is to do with critics rather than hip-hop

i really hate the lazy "music must come to me" mindset that a ton of critics have - goddamn it is your job to get out there and hunt for music you love! the industry has changed and if you're going to sit back and wait for things to drop into your lap you'll miss 90% of all the best shit out there in whatever genre.

eg: the one consensus hip-hop album of the year, quik & kurupt - unreleased in the uk. barely a ripple of coverage in the uk mainstream press. and that sad state of affairs has nothing to do with blaqkout's lack of quality.

xpost. How do you work that one out? Critics are responsible for a drop in musical quality?

I appreciate we're coming at this from different angles. You obv think it's been a brilliant year whereas I've diligently followed up every track mentioned on this thread and liked only a handful. It's all very well saying look for the best shit but what about when you do look for it and it's just not (imo) that great?

Just read your last post - whole different issue there re: whether UK publications should start reviewing albums that aren't released over here on the assumption that people can hear them online regardless.

there are plenty of trends w/in hip hop i dont like or think are creatively zzz. A lot of rap that gets attention, incl raekwon/quik/etc. is not really a great indicator of active 'scenes' & more about nostalgia, sure -- i mean i think those records are great & have no illusions that they should be measures of hip hop's health as a genre. but SR's grand statements about the state of the genre when he's got such a poor understanding of what is actually going on is like thinking whiney's centimeter-deep knowledge of rap this year being indicative of anything more than critical lack of awareness.

it used to be easier to let rap just hit you thru osmosis, no question. but is the sudden need to actually be, like, a journalist about it a result of rap becoming less creatively vital, less broadly popular -- or is it about channels of access? Is it about the lack of an accurate measure of popularity? there's no soundscan on bootlegs & mixtapes, the industry has stopped releasing nearly as many rap records as it used to ... but does that mean less MUSIC is being made relative to other genres?

xpost. How do you work that one out? Critics are responsible for a drop in musical quality?

i meant critics have got worse, hip-hop hasn't

Considering how little interest you have in the history of criticism, I can't see on what basis you're making that judgement. I don't get the impression you've ever had a high opinion of critics except those who share your own tastes. It's daft to suggest that critics are significantly different from, say, 2003-4, when hip hop figured more highly on EOY lists.