The All-New STYLUS.

90% of these "reviews" are just awful. but i guess that doesn't make it any different than music criticism in general. john's are ok.

I hope you didn't feel like you had to add that at the end just because you know me.

hah, i only scanned the mike powell essay so far, but in general i like his approach and he has pretty similar taste to me in a lot of stuff so. i mean there's never a sense that he's some jaded guy sick of the hype machine, he just seems happier to ignore the crtical climate's silliness and just hunt for great sounds

Stewart Voegtlin seems like a deeply fucked up person imo

what on earth?

he's a murderer imo

collaborates w/bin laden iirc

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

zapruder film enhancement captures Stewart Voegtlin passing envelope full of cash to the umbrella man. more champagne!

Voegtlin piece pretty good imo.

his metal article in the voice was *terrible*, jeanne fury's response piece was otm

^^^this

I wonder, if 'Stylus' continues after this brief revival - what would they call it? Because I doubt Todd Burns would let them use Stylus. Will it Stytwo? Stylu? Laser?

Pencil

Haha, what the fuck is Voegtlin's problem?

dude it's not his fault if you wrote about the worst music of 2008 -_-

Mostly thanks to dope-smoking, Patagonia-wearing Republicans, Mastodon’s still recording records and making money from ‘em.

I just think this particular line needed to be called out again. Dude is fucking horrible.

its okay if u 4get that all those words refer to bands bourrousian even

man, i love powell's essay. i'm not sure why i find him so agreeable and readable when 99% of music criticism pisses me off.

anyway yeah SV sounds a little o_O

agreeable is a good word, dude is obv not an ilxor tbh

maybe that's part of it, he never comes off like a dick, even when he doesn't like stuff

but also he has this really quietly personal way of writing abt stuff in general

this is by no means the first time ive repped for this here, but this is i think my favourite piece of writing ever

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/basic-research-lovely-music-ltd-and-the-universe-in-general.htm

its the only one i've saved as a doc on my laptop in case stylus goes down eventually anyway

voegtler on baroness ws hand-wringing of the worst kind and jeanne fury set him straight; haven't read his stylus thing but will do now

stick around to the finish and read about how he pwns harry connick jr and gets in a whitney houston zing (on the wrong end of the decade)

Mostly thanks to dope-smoking, Patagonia-wearing Republicans, Mastodon’s still recording records and making money from ‘em.

haha this arsehole is still butthurt about Mastodon all those years. This guy is the worst "writer" in the world. Anyone who employs him must be desperate.

*after

ok "Ante Up" in top 20 all is forgiven

― The Reverend, Friday, January 8, 2010 3:34 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xp after reading the blurb, I take that back

― The Reverend, Friday, January 8, 2010 3:38 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty much every dan weiss blurb in this list was painful

he mentions mastodon 5 times, lol

I wish the SL archives could be accessed.

What was his issue with Mastodon? From how tight he is holding onto this grudge I can only imagine they banged his girlfriend and his grandma.

hipsters like them

never bothered to listen to mastadon rly but <3 it when critics have chips on their shoulders

He thinks hipsters like them so gets all troo metal elitist about it.
In "troo metal" cretin circles it's very hip to hate Mastodon, Isis, Sunno))), Pelican, Wittr,Boris,Torche or indeed any band that "outsiders" like.

But it's funny that this guy has been peddling this shit on message boards since at least leviathan came out yet some people are stupid enough to pay him for it.

mastodon do suck tho

RONG

Maybe the sentence seems a little excessive and awkwardly constructed in hindsight, but I'm still a little confused as to why people are harping on this one sentence I wrote. I know I’m coming across like a sock (and furthermore, I know I don’t contribute enough to the discussion; I don't really have the time), but all I was trying to do was convey what I think Burial does sonically, which is that he often clips R&B vocals and makes them sound spectral. That ghostliness doesn’t characterize the emotional effect enough—-to me it sounds more like drowning, but into some sort of vast emptiness. The visualization of the sound itself is what I was trying to express. Because in the end I’m trying to explain why the music produces a certain kind of emotional response, which I take it from some of the reactions here I failed to do.

Burial’s music tends to have a wearied, bottomed-out sound that happens to affect me in a certain way. My comment about R&B was only meant to indicate that the music just doesn’t hit that synapse quite the way Burial’s does. But that wasn’t meant to be a negative interpretation of R&B or its pervasiveness; if anything, I was trying to express how R&B’s ubiquity is a testament to the consistently high quality of the music. With the amount of space we were given, however (more than usual, yes, but still not enough in some ways), I was trying to pack in as much information as possible.

The people that write for Stylus, like many of the people on this board (and many people on this board wrote there), feel very strongly about the music they love. It’s understandable to me why people may go a little over-the-top when trying to express why music is so meaningful to them. Understandably, those tendencies occasionally need to be put in check—-but overall, I really didn’t think any of it was any worse than many other decade-end features.

(Someone upthread said that they feel like a lot of music writers can be really condescending--some of the time I agree. I wasn't trying to be smug or condescending in the blurb or in this response; ribbing and insults can be helpful in tamping someone's weaker habits in writing.)

hey, why stop with mastodon when there are these choice lines!

A band named Isis releases a record called, SGN>05, which is binary code for, “Years from now you’ll be loved by kids who own all the complete seasons of Scrubs on DVD and consider phone sex an ‘edgy activity.’”

Britney Spears marries the first guy she gave a handjob, viz. Jason Allen Alexander, tuggin’ 2004 on off. Marriage annulled 48 hours later.

Bjork, whom I’d like to give a handjob, puts out a record of beat-boxing

Mariah Carey wins a bunch of Grammys in ’06 but doesn’t mention the Coca-Cola flavored dildo in any of her ramblin’ man acceptance speeches.

Chan Marshall isn’t so Joy Division anymore. Instead she’s playing with Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder and making songs that only serve to anger her Republican fan-base.

Stephen Malkmus continues to look “too UVA” and make records no one but class-conscious enthusiasts could make out to.

No offense I really was just picturing actual "ghosts drowning in a black hole," in my head. It looked sort of funny. I actually do think the phrase does help to visualize Burial's music, it's pretty apt (though an awkward thing to picture in one's head).

Nothing against your R&B comment btw, I didn't interpret it the way lex did.

(xpost btw)

he deserves his own worst ramblings thread. Cant believe he gets paid to write that shit. Must have republican connections..
xp

back from pub and skinned up

told my mates about this board and they hada right laugh at me 4 gettin so properly trolled

u can say waht u like bout me don't make it true
u can call me whatevre name u like dont make it me

peace. out

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H7sQJQ1DL6Y/SK3Ng2Ryy4I/AAAAAAAAAQk/HkUGAUgatuY/s400/peace+out.jpg

actual friends and e-friends should be kept ENTIRELY separate, unless u enjoy worlds colliding or being chided for having internet friends. if u happen to be caught w/ yr e-friends by yr actual friends, u will explain that u met those ppl at compusa or best buy. moreover, u will refer to yr non-internet friends as yr REAL friends, as opposed to e-friends, who don't really exist as far as the outside non-e-world is concerned.

One of the best reviews of "Digital Love" I've read. Excellent stuff.

it's like, since they are unable to just describe what's interesting/compelling about the music, they feel they have to name the SPECIAL SIGNIFICANCE of each and every album in this i-top-your-hyperbole game that is exhausting from the starting gate. zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz

aren't these the best albums of the decade, though? i get what you mean, and i generally don't love the tone of music writing in lists, but i find most of the blurbs on this one are rather humble and do a good job sidestepping end-of-the-world epic talk.

swoods, you have made my morning. :-)

I don't know what I've enjoyed more, the great bits of writing on the Stylus Decade or the great bits of indietards on this thread moaning about Kid A or Analmal Deutschland being on the list.

ok youve had your lols but this is distracting from the real fun on this thread. ripping the piss out of lists

i don't understand how kid a keeps coming tops in this list. not because radiohead are utter shite tossbag dross even tho they are. the pedant in me wants to say its coz an album that came out in 2000 shouldn't even be on a 00's list but that's not strictly it either. it's more the idea of a decade or cultural-block-of-time being *defined* by an album that came out at the start of it rather than in the middle or at the end

it's like someone saying that *the* album of the 80s was london calling (forget where i saw that posted Rolling Stone maybe?) when that album screams 70's

kid a was such a dribble at the end of the 90s. it just sounded like such a retread of mid-90s idm aphex twin and squarepusher and autechre. it didn't define the 00's in any way. it didn't point the way towards what came next. this ineffective came-up-with-a-camel mix of bad prog rock and out of fashion beats didn't set the scene for anything. it was a white elephant. a road not taken. nothing to do with any kind of musical narrative of the 00's - either the shitty indie retreads or the rise and rise and rise of the actual music that was going to dominate the cultural landscape and the charts -> the r&b that only lex pretend seems interested in eulogising around here

i can understand why radiohead are on a 'best of the 00s' list given how much indie kids love these dead ends and false starts. but *the* album of the 00's? gimme a fuckin break. kid a didn't even define radiohead-in-the-00s let alone the whole musical landscape of the 00's