FKA twigs

Well, I didn't know 'offcut' meant rotten meat, so I've learned something today. I just thought it meant not prime cut, but the more you learn.

An offcut means the bit you have left over after your other work (be it meat, wood, whatever).

You never know exactly how a recording process works (and talking about the finished product is usually more interesting than talking about the process) but in some cases you can take an educated guess - ie if there are multiple producers with a highly unified aesthetic (like this album) or if the songwriting and production sounds very similar to what the songwriters/producers do for everyone else, or if the producer's usual sonic signifiers are absent (like the Omar Souleyman record produced by Four Tet).

(I really mean the producer-artist dynamic, not the process, I'm none the wiser as to how this album was made)

funny how when I raised the exact same point about pc music it was "the most repulsive thing I've ever read"

Like to shout out all the session musicians, jobbers, backing vocalists, hired guns, hacks, you all made some of the greatest pop music. Waddylyfe

as for "offcuts" I've read enough mixed metaphors that the idea of someone using "offcuts" and intending a pejorative meaning is... rather difficult to believe (plus, if we're going to nitpick offensive metaphors then "fuck it with guns" would come rather higher up on the list than "offcuts," which is why I suggest we don't.) as for "jobbing," it's kind of hard to believe that anyone who's in the business of music writing sees this as an insult given that music writing in 2014 consists almost entirely of jobbing. some things are just jobs, you know? rent must get paid.

In my experience, the gauzy veil is often drawn round the truth of who did what post-recording. As we're getting subjectif and theoretic like, I wonder if FKA Twigs is 'collaborating', as she has a creative agenda to pursue (whoever she records with), 'cause I agree with Janny Wurts who sez:

‘To collaborate, you have to let go. The outcome will not be your work anymore, but something else altogether. You will not control it. It is going to be different. If you can handle the idea that the concept will go its own way, and be other than what you expect, then you're in line for a successful partnership. You need to respect your partner -- know their strengths and also know your own -- and just step in and let the synergy happen. The peril is in getting too attached, or trying to hang on to your private identity. If you can't free wheel and just let things happen, let that juggernaut go its own way, you will be miserable. Sometimes the tightest friction that arises in the collaborative process gives rise to the most transcendent bits of inspiration. The trick is to look for the silver lining, not get sucked into the mire of arguing.’

....and I think that applies to this thread too ;)

No, it doesn't surprise me that a music writer would see "jobbing hack" as non-pejorative, or why.

"Offcuts" dictionary denotation means scraps. In carpentry, it's sawdust and those little odd-shaped bits of wood too small to use for other jobs. But it's definitely picked up a pejorative connotation due to its association with butchery and offal.

And yes, "fuck it with guns" is an offensive term, it is an old ILX phrase with a history as the most offensive thing one can say about something, and was used deliberately to show the height of my distaste for DC's language. So you can stop the pearl-clutching now.

I do actually have a great deal of respect for session players, jobbing musicians, backing vocalists and hired guns. Which is why it really offends me to see their work reduced to the level of sawdust and offal.

I mean, come on! Even DC has admitted that he intended what he said to be highly disrespectful. What we are arguing about is where that disrespect ended up being aimed.

I'm not pearl-clutching, I'm just pointing out how fruitless this path tends to be. (Besides, if we're being this pedantic, wouldn't it be the *producers'* work reduced to sawdust or offal?)

The "it doesn't surprise me that those hacks see 'hack' as non-pejorative!" comment is not worth addressing.

If I'm honest I was just kind of derisively gesturing in the direction of the entire scene, but I definitely eyeroll more towards the producers than the singers. Kelela I would probably like in a different context.

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/radical-strain/

mentioned: fka twigs, some ilxors

She's nommed for the Mercury!

intention of that tni piece is cool but the execution is hideous

TNI piece OTM OTM OTM so fucking OTM it hurts and I really hope that "the execution is hideous" is some kind of ironic joke because if it is, it's failed, and if it's not, christ, you're hideous.

lmbo

lol

feel like the piece overrelies somewhat on critical darlings and the past five years (I mean, shit, if there was ever a topic to pull out the cliched-and-now-timely-too Kate Bush reference, this is it) but overall it's good

She's my favourite music writer tbqph

My relationship to this piece is complicated by how much I really don't care about Grimes. I don't find her interesting or compelling as a performer, either in the way that she sings or in how she puts together the music. I don't think this is due to a gendered dismissal but I don't really know; it's not something I've strongly interrogated in my musical consumption but I do know that I'm a big, big fan of every other critical darling namechecked in the piece (and thinking that CREEP, Planningtorock, Frankie Rose, Savages, Wax Idols, Glasser, tune-yards, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift all fit into this discussion in different ways).

I don't think it's off-limits to talk about the producers (if anything, it should be done more) but it should be done across the board

That is a good piece, The Knife section especially.

I feel like male rap and pop stars get the producer-centric approach more than rock bands do (most reviews of a Justin Timberlake album will spend a good paragraph or so talking about Timbaland) but that very rarely happens to indie bands unless they happen to be working a name producer like Fridmann or Weatherall.

More critics should be turning their guns on the vocal void that is the Cloud Nothings dude though, but Pitchfork-centric indie has such pitifully low standards when it comes to male vocalists in any case.

OK, over my half-drunken rant about her name and have listened to the album and it would appear to be very good, at least the first half.

I definitely have issues with that piece. I mean: I think the overall gist, that a lot of people who write for publications should probably think a little harder about the received wisdom about men's and women's roles, as undeniably true.

But like:
Like it does with women’s bodies, popular culture permits a narrow range of acceptable beauty in women’s voices. There’s a reason Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons has room to sing flat on a live television performance but Beyoncé is expected to catapult through multiple key changes with perfect tone and pitch. There’s a reason Lana Del Rey bore the undiluted resentment of her audience when she failed to sing charismatically on Saturday Night Live. There is a reason Britney Spears’ isolated, untreated vocals score listens in the millions every time they’re leaked and the guttural quality of Shakira’s voice is as hotly debated in YouTube comments as her sexual attractiveness. As an object of beauty for public consumption, a woman’s pleasantness must permeate the senses.

This isn't taking into account a LOT of different power dynamics that don't fit quite so easily into "girls have to be more pleasant than boys to make it" & fails to account for the different genre values...the focus on vocals in R&B is different from the values in rock ... and of course all of this is shaped by gender/class/race, but in much more complicated ways than she's engaging w/ here IMO. I mean for example: Beyonce is "pleasant"??

up until '4' I'd say that would be a fair statement to make (cf _Dreamgirls_), but I think the recent album was a deliberate attempt to screw with that

it's a fair statement to make about Beyonce's vocals across the board aside from examples like the shouted part of "Ring the Alarm"; Beyonce did not make her money off of singing ugly

Sure Dan, but neither does Frank Ocean

Maybe i'm being too harsh on the piece. There are just points where I'm like...idk ... quoting Jim Derogatis is when you know your polemical is relying a little heavily on the LCD rock cliches, you know?

It’s worth noting that Pitchfork gave Channel Orange a score of 9.5, a full point higher than Devotion.

....

R&B is about pretty singing. Kind of a trait of the genre, right?

Frank Ocean is given more room to sing ugly than Beyonce is.

well frank ocean's always been punching a bit out of his weight class as a singer anyway

trying to convey "ugliness" in R&B isn't done the same way it is in rock music regardless. Ugliness is more liable to be conveyed through personality than by vocal distortion—by affecting a derisive tone, by performing a different mood. It's a conceit of the genre that you are performing ideas perfectly.

even if those ideas are ideas of imperfection

is the imagine dragons guy one of those operatic metal belter dudes or just a nu metal groaner type

at any rate i'm not arguing against the overall thesis—as brad said, it's the execution

is the imagine dragons guy one of those operatic metal belter dudes or just a nu metal groaner type

― goole, Wednesday, September 10, 2014 5:15 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a yarl type

imagine dragons isn't a metal band goole, it's a bastille-ish, onerepublic-esque nu-poprock anthemic outfit

bastille-ish?

as in the hated symbol of the decrepit old order or is that a band

Imagine Dragons dude is a grunge baritone

This piece also got me thinking about Courtney Love; I love her on a bunch of Hole songs, particularly the angry ones, but there's a point in 200 Cigarettes where she's singing along with a jukebox (can't remember the song now) that came across as one of the worst vocal performances is ever heard. Context strikes me as a critical component of this.

It's a strange voice-centric article, with lots of over-simplified assumptions about male and female roles, behaviours and preferences.

it's about the voice, so I am struggling to find an execution that is not "voice-centric"

This isn't taking into account a LOT of different power dynamics that don't fit quite so easily into "girls have to be more pleasant than boys to make it" & fails to account for the different genre values...the focus on vocals in R&B is different from the values in rock ... and of course all of this is shaped by gender/class/race, but in much more complicated ways than she's engaging w/ here IMO. I mean for example: Beyonce is "pleasant"??

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Wednesday, September 10, 2014 4:52 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well does P4k review female R&B singers in the same way that they review Frank Ocean, i.e. giving them a fullness of humanity and agency? For the purposes of this exercise, you're not allowed to reference any Beyonce reviews

ftr i thought the article was really good

Yeah me too; I'm not sure what BN and DJ are seeing that's so abhorrent

reads a little like a college paper i guess but so what

my guess is that The New Inquiry has been written off in advance as "abhorrent" so it is necessary to call any included pieces that

I liked the article; also I feel like I need to sit down with an ILM counselor to figure out which music is correct to enjoy if I want to call myself a real feminist

I'm not being included in the list of ppl who finds this abhorrent because I'm thinking out loud about how gender assumptions affect my perceptions of male/female performers, am I? Or is "DJ" supposed to reference deej?

Deej, I'd never refer to your by your initials because this is a family forum

I mean, sans middle