♥☮☯♫ PC MUSIC ♫☯☮♥ ☺☺☺ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°✌

ugh, the RA comments on Ben Aqu@'s mix are so terrible/hilarious.

this is a pretty good read: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/09/23/350580589/a-rational-conversation-is-pc-music-pop-or-is-it-pop

i'm not going to cosign any of those RA comments but i too find this stuff repulsive

this stuff is so perfectly art school lol
a lot of ideas about itself but its all a lil too ~thought out~ like the narrative is the point rather than an incidental exercise for historians after the fact

very well put

such a statement can only ever be a projection of one's own experience. one may dig the narrative and the raw dumb sensation of hearing. the two aren't completely discrete, even

but cool if that's what u think, w/e

i mean you're all much much cleverer than them so

OTMFM

Unlike most pop music I like, it doesn't make me want to dance or sing along, but I like listening to some of it because it's like listening to a bunch of funny jokes.

Yes! I asked my friend Julianne Escobedo Shepherd if PC Music is like "Weird Al" Yankovic for hipsters — the idea that it's an inside joke that we can all be in on, but that's still catchy and fun to listen to. She said that the precise difference is that Weird Al isn't cynical and that PC Music is cynical.

Cynical in what sense?

Cynical in the sense that PC Music's manipulation is possibly just too manipulated. It's like trend forecasting to an almost scary degree. As in: If you combine these X, Y and Z nostalgia points that the internet cares about so much, you're going to have a hit. It's like seeing what's culturally trending, combining them all together and of course that'll hit big.

So as a listener are you supposed to laugh at their approach or the fact you're responding to it?

You're supposed to be proud of yourself for being in on the joke, on knowing the references. That's the wink-wink. PC Music is almost a double-wink. It's having the ironic edge of the wink, but taking it one step further and letting us know that you even know that being IRONIC is lame. I hate to say it's post-ironic — because I hate when people say post-racial or post-gay or WHATEVER — but that's what this is, right? It's incorporated the laugh track right into the beat.

I'm also incredibly interested in what PC Music's relationship to the larger music industry is, in the sense that it feels like the antidote to the post-Disclosure house music that is now everywhere. PC Music is like the anti-Kiesza.

Whereas Disclosure is hoping to revive electronic music's history of soulfulness, and in doing so has brought house music back to a gigantic audience, PC Music is kind of saying that electronic music is still an insider's club. If Disclosure is now played at every wedding party in New York City, PC Music is saying, "No, this music is for weirdos."

from npr piece jordan linked to above

also see the beginning of the piece for what i meant about misogyny, bedroom boys co-opting drag for transgressive points when they're the same churlish cunts they're always going to be.

what i meant about misogyny in the qt - hey qt thread

Never heard any of this but it cant be as that Kiesza record

weird al is super cynical, or at least he was back in the new wave era

also see the beginning of the piece for what i meant about misogyny, bedroom boys co-opting drag for transgressive points when they're the same churlish cunts they're always going to be.

― mattresslessness, Tuesday, September 23, 2014 10:12 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am afraid this will not end well unless you explain yourself more clearly

oh it's already ended

i'm willing to concede that in person the pc music brigade are boring, self-obsessed, queer-culture-tonedeaf cunts, but they come off way more thoughtful than that & play with notions of pop and avant-garde in what is imo quite a fluent and mischievous way. 'coopting drag' is a really nice way of putting gender play though so kudos

i'm sure i'll be over all this soon, just don't get the vicious hatred at all, it seems consciously 'offended' in the most obnoxiously rockist way

*MAY BE boring, self-obsessed etc

this is probably the weakest shit you have ever hyped for being 'playful' and 'deconstructive' and thats saying

*sigh*

maybe i'll see the light @ some pt. mostly i find it irritatingly catchy ffs, the deconstructive element is mostly the discourse around it

just don't get the vicious hatred at all, it seems consciously 'offended' in the most obnoxiously rockist way

― Ѿ (imago), Tuesday, 23 September 2014 23:25 (2 minutes ago)

The 1975's shadowy record-label cabal told them to write about. "Write songs about...the city, money, sex, girls, clothing, maybe a sexual encounter, maybe settling down with a loved one...and keep the titles simple". Clearly these 1975 boys have the imagination of a breezeblock. Right, starting to really, really hate the music as well. I know it's IMPOSSIBLY NOW, and yet this knotty paradox compels me to rid myself of it before it might perplex me entirely! I shall listen until 'Sex' just to see if I really can rile myself up into some sort of homicidal rage. Oh Christ, dear God. I shouldn't be listening any more. This is utterly loathsome, the textures of 'The City' long forgotten amidst shambling priapic aural vomit. FUCK OFF.

― 141 Jute Gyte - Discontinuities 142 drake - nothing was the same (imago), Thursday, January 30, 2014 7:12 PM (7 months ago)

oneohtrix point never is 7895437985x the artist they are in a musically compositional/deconstructive sense obv, fine whatever i'm going away under a fucking rock

hey i can't help my visceral gut reactions m8

ilm decides: is it ok to like a music?

fucking absolutely done with this thread & probably pc music as well, if this is what happens

their fault, ultimately. fuck them. they wrote catchy, playful songs that were transcendentally shit & i got badly captivated for enough of a dumb moment to take up cudgels in their honour, knowing scant it was absent

the rest is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eAZHnfe394

the deconstructive element is mostly the discourse around it

― Ѿ (imago), Tuesday, 23 September 2014 23:29 (19 seconds ago)

this goes to show that if these same exact tracks were just found eurotrash from a moldovan soundcloud page you wouldn't give them the time of day, yet since they have been authored and introduced into the discourse stream by discourse amenable partially educated wastemen it is now 'deconstructive' (subtype playful, the best type of deconstruction)

slightly harsh given i only found out about them by opening 'hey qt' sight unseen after steve d recommended & found it catchy, but since then i've found the 'phenomenon' and 'debate' of mild fascination, whatever though, i'm not gonna keep coming back

something i'm not clear on...imago, are you a fan of pc music or nah?

everyone fuck off and listen to autechre or black metal or fka twigs or w/e

i'm going to cofound a london-based movement called PC MUSIC whose lyrical themes will discuss cis male oppression, the fall of the gender binary and ableism. i will not be its leader, but i will be dubbed PATRIARCHY. it will be super positive & sincere & everything PC MUSIC (1) is not. alternatively, i'll trash my computer and go live in a hole

thanks for clearing that up

There's a number of people here who enjoy at least some of this music and are not going to post on this depressing thread about it (any more).

ILM at it's very worst.

weird al is super cynical, or at least he was back in the new wave era

― example (crüt), Tuesday, September 23, 2014 5:17 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

if you don't care for actual "chartpop" you are the target audience of this music, you might as well give it a shot

― dyl, Tuesday, September 23, 2014 1:03 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right, i don't like chartpop therefore i would like this music that presumably sounds like chartpop... wait what?

It mostly doesn't sound anything like chartpop. It's more like early 2000 breakbeat crossed with the last couple of Cornelius albums.

ok i listened to a few tracks.. kid606 updated for the bass music era. no thanks.

Early pranky kid606 i should say

There's a number of people here who enjoy at least some of this music and are not going to post on this depressing thread about it (any more).

ILM at it's very worst.

― everything, Tuesday, September 23, 2014 5:58 PM (32 minutes ago)

As a strong PC Music partisan I'm going to try and speak for those people.
I got in a tad ahead of the curve with the label (by way of A.G. Cook's brisk remix of DJ DJ Booth's "Heaven", which I think kind of encapsulates what everyone's overlooking in favor of the "irritating" pitched-up vocals and trance stabs), so all I had to go on to figure out what they were was the mixes and A.G.'s Tank interview where he talks about how utterly serious he is about making fun pop music, and furthermore not acting like that has to go hand-in-hand with monster budgets or major-label backing. So, you know, not a Pitchfork recommendation. Just some weird thing on Soundcloud that ticked a lot of aesthetic boxes for me. And when other people started picking up on it, I was happy, because that's how you're supposed to feel when someone else falls in love with something you like. But because Pitchfork played a noticeable role in that I think it's thrown up some false flags for a lot of people. And because it's obviously what PC Music is closest to on the spectrum of things people complain about Pitchfork for, they've gotten caught up in the tiresome "authenticity"/"sincerity" debate. Actually, that's not really right - they were involved in that beforehand. But I think it's in a markedly different way than how they're currently being called out. Because the common complaint seems to be that they're using the trappings of art-school irony to pass off subpar pop music as something better than it is. Whereas I've felt - since day one - that they were bringing the jaded art kids out into the light. And it's necessary to think of this in terms of what's going on in electronic music right now: it's experienced a long-deferred step into the spotlight (in America especially) and belatedly developed, like all other genres, a "pop" variant that's visibly distinct from the splinters that previously made up the whole of it. And the splinters are displeased by this, consider the pop-accepted variant disingenuous, and, rather than try to compete with it, retreat further into the depths. Whereas PC Music look at this turning point and say, wow, isn't this wonderful, dance music is being born again on the pop charts, unfolding right before our eyes. Which it is: a generation mostly divorced from the old scenes are finding new ways to do things, and they’re getting sizable support from big-label dollars (ie, putting aside all arguments about quality, big room house is something rather without precedent in dance music, let alone the kind that sells). And what PC Music is doing – what I think makes them totally distinct, in fact – is taking music from the “splinters”, along with the neglected flotsam of dance music’s various other stabs at pop crossover, and treating it and themselves like a major label, with an A&R department and various in-house producers and vocalists. All the trappings of pop, including some of the things usually associated with its more pernicious aspects, divorced of the actual perniciousness. And they’re visibly having a blast with it. Which is why the NPR article, and its comments (as well as the reflections of their attitude within this thread) make me more than a tad uneasy. Two guys talking about how serious and anti-fun SOPHIE supposedly was at his MoMA show, and how he and all the PC Music people are co-opting drag imagery for their entitled pseudo-pop posturing and taking advantage of their vocalists when it’s not just them pitching their own voices up. So let me make it plain: I was at the MoMA show, it was a blast, everyone in the audience had a wonderful time (and you need not take my word for it: I filmed the majority of the set, mostly pointed at the crowd due to SOPHIE’s enforced anonymity, which I’ll upload at my nearest convenience). I saw him in the VIP section chatting up QT (who is, indeed, a real person, and one distinct from Hannah Diamond at that) and later ran into him in the refreshments area, where I briefly subjected him to my effusive praise of his music and then asked him a few questions (first and foremost: his next single is called “Fizz” – or “Fizzes”, it was difficult to hear over Evian Christ). Amongst my questions came one about who was in his place on the decks during his Boiler Room set, and he responded by motioning across the room to one of his friends from the VIP section – wearing a skirt-ish denim outfit, but currently out of drag. I could sense his genuine delight at meeting someone so obsessive about what he did. So, yes, I’m going to defend him and his affiliates because I like them. But also because I think they’ve earned that affection. Just keep that in mind before you try to argue that PC Music is a label for people who can’t enjoy anything genuinely.
Shout-out to Marcello Carlin, who began my love affair with pop music and is currently swearing off of ILX due to stress.

Apologies for the novel, though I'd say it about equals the amount of frankly depressing stuff I've read about the label.

i think i genuinely enjoy this music. it's like teen/kogan pop + vaporware mashup. i think lj is right that it's no oneohtrix, but idk these npr bros all fretting over the level of irony + distance they feel from the music. i hate to be like all sontag beyond interpretation but at some level u have to listen w/out the analysis. it sounds good (or it doesn't)

You're supposed to be proud of yourself for being in on the joke, on knowing the references. That's the wink-wink. PC Music is almost a double-wink. It's having the ironic edge of the wink, but taking it one step further and letting us know that you even know that being IRONIC is lame. I hate to say it's post-ironic — because I hate when people say post-racial or post-gay or WHATEVER — but that's what this is, right? It's incorporated the laugh track right into the beat.

^ this is so much more embarrassing than any PC MUSIC track i've heard

idk i feel like a lot of elements of the music and especially the presentation are practically begging to be analyzed

like i'm sorry so many of u are upset that this music is naturally going to mean different things to other ppl than it means to u

yeah i agree, these guys can't have it both ways--like it's either about fun pop music appreesh or it's about a carefully controlled image and aesthetic

Why are we assuming that they are co-opting queer/drag culture??? Do we have any reason to presume that they're straight? Bcz assigning them as such by default wd be really fucking offensive.

who's we?

personally this stuff offends my senses (and sensibilities) not my politics

I love this stuff, so if the main takeaway from my Pitchfork primer was that "they are not the worst," I'm clearly going to have to keep writing about them. I mean, that wasn't meant to be a gushing personal essay or anything; it was meant as an introduction, a who's who and what's what. But I'm definitely a fan (even though not unconditionally; like I said, I think QT is undercooked so far). Love Kane West, GOFTY, Danny Harle ("Broken Flowers!"), all the mixes, etc.

oh did you write that?

ok yr username, so yes

Once I realized it was just an intro for the unfamiliar (as noted by ": A User's Manual") and not, like, an analysis or something I warmed up to it a lot more; I spent the whole time reading it going like "YES YES I KNOW ALL OF THIS BUT THEN WHAT???" and then it was like "okay well this article's prob written for ppl who have never heard of this and don't know all of this" in which case it is a v solid piece of writing that does an excellent job of conveying their ~zhuzh~