The All-New STYLUS.

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

good work kiu

Will never understand what makes a god-fearing Christian vote Fishscale over Supreme or Toney tho.

real talk.

"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"

This default position (Wire Subscriber/Oh-dear-look-what-the-cretins-are-doing-now/Keenan sneer) is just as stupid as the one up thread (OMFG! KID A IS THE BEST THING EVA!!!) You're ascribing stuff to people they don't care about. I know, for example, that Ned Rag loves this album because, durr, he thinks it's a great album, not because it points the way forward to some unclearly defined future music movement.

I mean who even thinks like that? If that kind of critical appraisal was applied to other forms of music that weren't indie, then you'd like a sum total of fuck all. "Hmmm. I really love this album but it's quite closely linked with some stuff in a totally different genre that happened a year or so ago that a very small cognoscenti were into and it doesn't truly point the way forward to Hypnagogic Pop, minimal techno or hauntology or other forms of music that, in six years, will have the all important fashionable beats."

Kid A, for mainstream rock album is pretty sweet with some killer tracks on it. I'd fucking love to see what happened on here if you applied the same reasoning to R&B, hip hop, house, techno etc that you apply to indie.

Right. I'm already sorry for posting that.

[/lack of sleep]

Kid A is on top because it appeared on the most lists.

"it just sounded like such a retread of mid-90s idm aphex twin and squarepusher and autechre."

yeah, i've always thought 'optimistic' could easily be an outtake from LP5.

This guy is the worst "writer" in the world. Anyone who employs him must be desperate.

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, January 8, 2010 11:05 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ehh I think he's self-evidently a decent writer, his problem is that he has awful and idiotic opinions about things. Like I said, I think this piece works and is amusing because his stupid opinions are fairly incidental to one's enjoyment of it, or at least should be

doran: in trying to put me in the wire-reader default position as opposed to radiohead-stan default position your missing the point of what i said

kid a is for all intents and purposes a 90's album that only got assigned to the 00's through a pedantic quibble over which arbitrary group of ten years we're going to make a list about

it's on top coz it appeared on the most lists. yup.

assigning this album as the best album of the whole decade says alot to me about the demographics of the group that voted for this list. guessing it's a bunch of late 20s early 30s white dudes for whom kid a was the defining touchstone of their music listening lives because of who they are and when it came out. putting it in pole position says something about this bunch of dudes. it doesn't tell you much at all about what music was actually *like* in the 00's. which is what you would assume a 'best of the decade' album should do?

so what album sums up an entire decade (arbitrary though that term may be) worth of music?

London Calling topped the RS list because it came out in 1980 in the US. Kid A came out in 2000. Why is that an issue?

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.

do u realize "the decade" covers 2000-2009? the pedant in me wanted to tell u that

The pedant in me has been gagging for ages to point out that the decade ought to be 2001-2010.

But I am resigned to the fact that humanity has decided to give up on basic maths.

the albums that topped the 10 BC - 1 BC also topped the '0' CE - 09 CE list. totally ridic.

xp i'm really not sure if i want to get into this but why would that be better?

for humankind to give up on math?

It'd save tons of seventh graders the pain of figuring out the quadratic equation, for starters.

Seventh graders need to man up imo

Karen: Your point about Kid A being a 90s album is admittedly a strong one and I should have said as much and I'm in 100% agreement with that and the thing about London Calling - it must have been released later in America as it was released in 1979 in the UK. (I'd go as far as saying it was more representative of the 60s than the 70s even.) I do think though that very few people when compiling these lists think 'What sums up the decade the best?' rather than the more likely 'Which album do I have fondest memories of' or 'Which have I played the most'. You're applying a set of criteria which - while admirable in some respects - aren't (IMHO) held by most.

My slightly snide post was aimed at the LOL-old-beats-ness/not forward looking=no critical merit of it.

And I'm not even getting annoyed with you but Edwin Pouncey (a usually brilliant writer/illo guy) and his recent review of the radiohead reissues, which was itself a less aggravating version of the sneering at the proles bile usually spouted by David Keenan, by proxy.

It's probably clear by now that, yes, I am a WIRE subscriber and probably secretly enjoy the deep spasms of anger it causes me on a monthly basis. Also for the record if I was forced to draw up a best albums of the decade poll (it would have to be at gunpoint) Kid A would definitely not make my top 20 and probably not make my top 30 BUT I think the context is important that as a mainstream rock record and as a follow up to OK Computer, it is (in its own context) a much more radical album - and more radically influential album - than, say, String Theory by Derek Bailey released in the same year, was in the field of improv guitar.

But, as I don't even really like radiohead that much. I'm going to stop now.

And reading back, the crux of our disagreement is a semantic one purely over the use of the word 'best'.

I know we should be able to be literal about it but a 'best of' list is never going to be more than a vaguely useful tool. 99% of the time they're either telling you something you already know or appalling you. Best, is taken by most people who fill in the form, to mean favourite.

Is this actually any different to the argument on the Pitchfork thread or should I just not bother reading it?

Well, here we're calling for a math ban.

Is this actually any different to the argument on the Pitchfork thread or should I just not bother reading it?

Take a wild guess.

Er, has anyone mentioned that Kid A is overrated shite?

nope youre the first!

"Is this actually any different to the argument on the Pitchfork thread or should I just not bother reading it?"

I haven't read the P4k thread, so I've no idea. Why do you find the idea of reading three paragraphs so taxing?

because when you've read 30 paragraphs of the same argument already you'd really rather not

Propose we set up an all-purpose thread for people to be surprised that po-faced alt-ish Rock with Meaningful Lyrics is popular with music critics and we can keep everything in one place.