The All-New STYLUS.

Also, whatever you do, Nick Southall please keep writing. Your shit is half the reason Stylus is/was great.

yeah him too def. does he post here?

Yeah he does.

Nick Southall = Scik Mouthy

Aw i'm gonna miss the singles jukebox the most. I always thought Stylus wrote about pop and dance better than they ever did about indie.

And, of course, Scraping the Barrel < / selfish self-interest >

lol if only for the rare chance of encountering an extremely grumpy Ned.

xp naturally! must say i prefer your reviews 'in stereo' :). i bet you talk faster than you type so it's not an inapt comparison.

I will miss the extraordinarily vague musings of Martin Skidmore.

stylus rip

srsly will miss

hugs to scik mouthy

I ran into Todd on the subway once, hopefully that wasn't the same day he said "fuck it."

I haven't read it as much lately (oooh did I hate the grading system), and if Todd has stuff he'd rather do I respect that, but this still kinda bums me out. RIP!

I have a very fond memory of doing drunken karaoke with a bunch of Stylus gents two years agoish. Good times!

That's a bummer. Stylus was my favorite of all of 'em. They had the most consistent writers. I hope they keep an archive online for a while.

-- Fastnbulbous, Saturday, 27 October 2007 04:06 (3 hours ago) Link

yeah, anyone have any idea if there are plans to at least make sure the domain and archive stay up for the foreseeable future? i'd hate for all that stuff to disappear (at least party selfishly, for my own reviews).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/IMG_8031.jpg

I hear Nick Southall will be soon writing for "Cat Fanciers & Headphone Nerds Weekly" so it isn't a total loss.

It's on the frontpage of the site now, so I'll stop ignoring it. Yes, we're closing. Yes, Todd's had enough. No, I don't blame him.

:-(

(I hope this rumor wasn't the way you found out)

No; Todd told us a while ago. We're not Tottenham.

Phew. Your "I'm still writing" got me worried that they hadn't told you yet.

Haha, no; it's my "I'm not lying but I'm not telling you the whole story either" get out clause. I am still writing; I've got a bundle of things to finish for the last few days of the site.

Shit, I've been reading almost from the beginning, after doing a random search for Autechre reviews, as was my wont back in the day, and coming across this. rip.

I still don't get why somebody else couldn't take it over. It seems weird that one guy deciding one afternoon that he just couldn't be bothered with this would just fold the whole thing up.

Thanks for the kind words. Nick couldn't have said it better. For my part, I still got a bunch of copy to edit as well as a couple of things to write for the site, so I'm too busy to think of impending doom. I've been writing for other publications for a long time now, so if anyone wants to know where to find me please drop me a line.

The old Stylus UK Singles Jukebox was my first music journalism gig, so I have a lot to thank it for. Great site, very sorry to see it go... but I can quite imagine why Todd decided he had enough. You can't do something that staggeringly work-intensive and minimally profitable for ever and ever, can you?

It's very shitty. I always really enjoyed this great magazine. Some really good reviews and interesting articles. Good its ending on a high though: I think the recent piece on lovely music ltd. might be one of my favourite pieces of music writing ever. Best of luck to all of the great writers there, particularly those that post here.

I say with no hesitation that it was my favorite music publication, online or print, for the last five years. It was an honor writing there and it will be sorely missed.

this sucks.

Yonks ago they asked me to write about my favourite record. (Two and a half guesses which one I wanted to write about.) I never did. Well, I started but then I realized I was just a crappy writer and that my writings wouldn't be good enough for'em. What a great site. :-(

I really loved the "On Second Thought" column.

With a million blogs talking endlessly about every new release these days, it was really nice for a change to have someone looking critically at older albums that everyone either takes for granted or has forgotten about (which is also the appeal of ILM for me I suppose).

yeah, that aspect will really be missed.

The thing I will miss most is the effort taken to highlight things outside of the general "indie rock and things that people who like indie rock like" discourse. I don't see any similar sites out there with country columns or latin music reviewers

I still don't get why somebody else couldn't take it over. It seems weird that one guy deciding one afternoon that he just couldn't be bothered with this would just fold the whole thing up.

I'd like to hear about it too- not necessarily because it's wrong, there are several good reasons why this might happen. But I'm intrigued.

btw I didn't read Stylus (hardly read or even do any music writing these days) but am sorry to see it go from what I gather here. The Ashley piece is sweet.

With a million blogs talking endlessly about every new release these days, it was really nice for a change to have someone looking critically at older albums that everyone either takes for granted or has forgotten about

Yeah, ulitmately those essays are the ones I'll most miss writing.

I still don't get why somebody else couldn't take it over. It seems weird that one guy deciding one afternoon that he just couldn't be bothered with this would just fold the whole thing up.

^echoed

I've been far too flippant so far so to speak seriously -- I'd contributed pieces here and there almost on a whim to Stylus but it was here on ILM where the whole concept of Scraping the Barrel (initially called Shoveling the Shit, but you can't have everything) came up in an exchange between Todd, a couple of other Stylus bods and myself when lots of bad promo crud was talked about and I said if they wanted to send it to me to write about I'd happily rant. Simple as that and it was a great result on a variety of levels -- I got to step out of the far more restrained pose I necessarily have on the AMG, I did discover some stuff I actually quite enjoyed and heard enough of other idiocy not merely to give grist to the writing mill but to help further clarify whatever my random aesthetic is. What you dislike is as important as what you like, after all.

Also, it prompted some of the only hate mail for my reviewing I've ever received (all of it incredibly defensive and amusing), while, of all people, Momus was once irritated by my use of hyperbole when I was trashing something. Can't go wrong there.

So to conclude -- thanks to Todd for taking that random chance. It worked very well!

(My own two favorite pieces in general were on Bark Psychosis's Hex and rockism.)

I have no idea what Todd's decision-making process was, but I don't really like this criticism about deciding to shut it down instead of, say, handing the whole thing over to somebody else. If you create and slave over something for years and then decide to stop, maybe you have a successor in mind and want it to live on as an institution beyond your involvement, maybe not, but I think either position is fair for someone in his position to make. Maybe Stylus is shutting down because the business model was untenable, or because it was hard to keep unpaid writers motivated and efficient (I for one loved writing reviews for Stylus and think I did some of my best work there, and stopped doing it not because I had a problem with not getting paid, but because I couldn't keep up with them on top of the writing I do get paid for). If someone else wants to carry the torch, maybe they should start their own band, so to speak, and come up with a new system that won't be as prone to the problems that (I'm guessing) helped lead to the end of Stylus.

Oh, I wasn't criticizing, just not understanding.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun in revealing this (and as such, I'll reveal as little as possible), but an ILX regular is working on putting together a website that could perhaps fill this new void.

I'd hardly say that NedsNudes.com is going to fill the same niche as Stylus.

the problems that (I'm guessing) helped lead to the end of Stylus.

It makes me even more sad to read this. I assumed that Stylus wasn't folding because of any problems it experienced, but rather because its founder and editor-in-chief decided to move on.

Naw, not that one, I meant danperrysDPzone.com

Now you've spilled the beans on both sites, ya shameless punk!

wow this is terrible. stylus really brought actual intelligent, insightful, thought-provoking music discussion. they did a great job. any word on where dom palladino will be trashing pop songs in the most amusing ways possible?

*yet another link to the DiS Scouting For Girls review*

as someone who has to try to keep a website afloat with unpaid writers and not a ton of advertising, i can totally understand why todd would get tired of running in place, in a business sense. i can't possibly imagine he would make enough $ to keep doing it as anything less than a labor of love. any stylus writer into electronic music is definitely invited to write for groovesmag.com if pitchfork hasn't already stolen their hearts and time.

that Lovely Music piece is superb.

I'm a newcomer to this entire world. I've barely posted here much and I only wrote for Stylus from May until the end. But I have Todd's back forever for taking a chance on this no-name university grad with no experience and kicking off my crit career. Between May and now, Alfred can vouch, my skills have improved threefold in that environment (I'm not saying they're very good, but they did improve. When I got the fateful email, I was really angry and felt betrayed at first, that I finally snag a moment and it folds up on me, but yeah, there's no point in pretending a successive manager of Stylus wouldn't be just unfairly compared to the old regime constantly, that it could ever be the same experience. It just wouldn't be fair. I'm just glad to have slipped in to be a part of it at all, and I met dozens of talented, frustratingly intelligent people in the process.

)

You can't say enough good things about Todd Burns and the job he does
leading Stylus. The amount of work he puts into the site is tremendous, and I don't think Stylus would ever be the same without his vision.

For anyone interested: the Beatz by the Pound wing of Stylus that I run will be continuing on (even if it has been mostly dormant the past month).