Best Music Writing

You are wrong. You fuck with it or you don't, there is only 0 or 10.

I mean I only read the 0s and 10s on Singles Jukebox :/ I don't care about your 6s

if i didn't read 6s i'd never read alfred

"i want your 6" -george michael in 2014

6 is natural
6 is good
not every song scores it
but every song should

i posit that this is an example of a great list http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/50-best-bootleg-bart-t-shirts.html

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/content/dam/vulture/slideshows/2014/9/bootleg-bart/boot-leg-bart-18.jpg.r.nocrop.w610.h610.jpg
skuhfkesnfkebggeukfj

in non list-related but great music writing I really enjoyed Damon Krukowski's article on mono http://pitchfork.com/features/oped/9492-back-to-mono/ - it's a good historical presentation, it explains how sound works really well and makes a good case for advantages to mono. He's written quite a few good articles for p4k, would like more. I like his tone and style, reminds me a bit of Byrne in How Music Works.

I saw some Twitter lolling when that article came out but many many mixers just work in mono and/or almost mono without even thinking about it. I called around! Drums in mono, overheads super narrow, it makes sense. Ideally I'd love one and the other for different contexts. Stereo recordings sound weird in public places.

it's weird when i hear a recent/modern pop/rock/indie rock record that uses stereo sound in an interesting/creative way. noticeable. remarkable. most stuff could be mono and nobody would be the wiser. most of it sounds mono.

I wrote about this last year, when that box set of nine Miles Davis albums, reissued in mono, came out - I would love to see labels like Posi-Tone or Criss Cross switch over to mono.

most stuff could be mono and nobody would be the wiser.

This is otm. Listening to Cheap Trick's debut recently, it dawned on me that the fact that the drums are mixed mono does nothing to diminish the power of the music; if anything, said power is accentuated.

Some stereo drum mixes are ridiculous. Panning the hi-hat hard right only makes sense if the listener's head is positioned where the snare drum is, and facing the drummer. If you're sitting four (or three, or even two) feet in front of a drummer, you will not hear the hi-hat only in your right ear.

As a guy who got a state college education in Aesthetics, my knee-jerk reaction to that title was “Fuck yeah! Finally someone speaking up about this music ‘journalism’ bullshit.” Then I read the article and found myself shaking my head, going “No, no, no, Drew, you’re not wrong, you’re just totally missing the point.” I literally never feel the urge to call someone out online for being wrong or misguided or whatever, let alone do any sort of long-form writing on AGB, but I felt like Drew was begging for a conversation about this, that he was intentionally pushing people’s buttons (while still being true to his opinions), and that I actually had a strong enough opinion of my own (again, very rare) that I should respond to Drew’s rant and make people not feel bad about saying something like The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid is their favorite ambient record.

Not fully read it yet, but Fact just pointed to and approved of this long reply to Drew's piece here

That piece also misses the point, as I see it. Numerical ratings, Baker's Dozen lists, democratic procedures of list-creation like Metacritic, or voted-by-critic pools like Polaris, they create an illusion of "objectivity" and that is the problem. Under that pretence, all 13 of Drew's arguments are in fact true. The pretence of objectivity. It's reinforced in the language used by music writers, when they presume to speak on behalf of everybody instead of themselves or their publication alone. All my absolute favourite writers put themselves at the heart of their criticism, take responsibility for what they praise and what they pan, instead of being some illusive ghost prophet. I mean, I didn't actually realize that the Baker's Dozen thing was supposed to be an "all time" list, tbh, I assumed it was meant to be fun and subjective, just like Quietus usually is

It's reinforced in the language used by music writers, when they presume to speak on behalf of everybody instead of themselves or their publication alone.

Speaking on behalf of the publication is often the publication's house style, not a decision made by the writer. I'm all for the "I."

I don't think it's bad to say that some albums are better than others. I have a friend who gets very cynical about any sort of Rotten Tomatoes/Rate Your Music type site, because "why form your own opinion?" - to which my response is "just see every movie and listen to every album, then you can!"

Well yeah! The delusion-of-objectivity holds writers back just as much as it eradicates enthusiasm in audiences xp

It's different for video games and films. I always look to Rotten Tomatoes and other numerically-based review sites for video games and blockbuster films because at the heart of those art forms is the necessity of functionality. Gameplay has to be tight, i.e. 3D has to titillate. That famous argument that Hideo Kojima had that video games like food cannot be considered "art" because they still have to be playable, be edible. Not like music or dance or lit

I tend to like writers that express fannish enthusiasms about things, and lists are an outlet for fan enthusiasm. There's a kind of arrogance involved, though I wouldn't characterize it as arrogance to objectivity. It's more like arrogating to tell the world what is good. I don't need writers always to be careful thinkers. Sometimes imposing absurd hierarchies is more fun and more reflective of the writer's honest feelings.

Luke Haines and Peter Hammill weigh in:

https://twitter.com/LukeHaines_News/status/515127513212026880

They only have to be functional for the player to understand the controls. A game like Minecraft doesn't really explain anything to you and has no clear objective, for one.

xposts

Yeah I don't agree with Kojima of course, but I only play ADOM and I only eat Chipotle

pompous drivel shock!

ha fuck that guy

well this is Luke Haines we're talking about

i remember that guy from the 90's. he was debonair.

He's widened a bit

thank god peter hammill is here to save us from pomposity

i mean i love the guy but that's a bit rich

LOL (xp)

the guy from VDGG calling out pompous things is so many levels...

Maybe he's gone all Chas + Dave in his old age

Fuck yeah! Finally someone speaking up about this music ‘journalism’ bullshit.

can we please replace the awful "my god it's made of girls" ILM board description with this

...got my beer on the mellotron here, let mother sort it out if he comes round here...

*flute solo*

I mean, I didn't actually realize that the Baker's Dozen thing was supposed to be an "all time" list, tbh, I assumed it was meant to be fun and subjective, just like Quietus usually is

It isn't. We tell people to interpret it however they want and we also offer them the choice of doing themed lists - no matter how weird or obscure.

crüt otm

XP: See The Haxan Cloak's recent favourite teenage metal albums list as an example.

oh man i want to do a weird obscure list! i'm not famous though...or in deerhoof or whatever.

i have my list-y moments.

I'm working on one at the moment... my 13 favourite screen drunks. We may blast the idea into smithereens after Xmas.

I've picked up some amazing LPs via Bakers Dozen and that was maybe the secondary or tertiary reason for me starting the series originally but after a while it did feel like I wasn't reading enough interesting choices after a while. So it feels like just giving people the option isn't maybe enough, like we have to actually pro-actively say to people, 'Will you choose your 13 favourite Turkish psych records' or 'Will you choose your 13 favourite horror sound tracks?' just to get it back to more of a potential buyer's guide or listening recommendation device.

I would do: 13 Records that Dr*w Dan*el Would LOVE to Pieces!

I loved doing mine w Luke but was disappointed that I didn't actually go deep with the how's and why's of Total Freedom's music saving my life

:///////

*squares hero-worship of hammill w/ all this, can't, weeps*

i suppose his thing was always to stray the slightly wrong side of emotional largesse & get away with it on the strength of the music, plus he's fairly seasoned now, not that this is an excuse

I like A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers as much as the next man but that was a major own goal right there.

Personal taste in music is transferable. Because if somebody- anybody, really, doesn't have to be someone I know or care about- is sufficiently enthusiastic about a record, I am going to listen to it in a different way, and after I am done there are two likely outcomes: I will love the record, or I will hate that person. There are plenty of bands I simply didn't like until I read a recommendation from someone who was really enthusiastic about that band in a compelling and persuasive way.

This looks wonderful (and organised by an ur-ilxor, too). The list of contributors is v.strong.

http://marksinker.co.uk/birkbeck_under_over.html
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/underground-overground-the-changing-politics-of-uk-music-writing-1968-85
http://therockwriteproject.tumblr.com/

UNDERGROUND / OVERGROUND
The Changing Politics of UK Music Writing: 1968-85

This will be a two-day symposium at London’s Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, consisting of panel discussions and Q&As. Run by Mark Sinker, former editor of The Wire, it will bring together writers, editors and readers of the underground and trade music presses of the 1970s and 80s with academics and other media commentators, to discuss the emergence and evolution of the countercultural voice in the UK, as inflected through the rock papers between these dates. The plan is for proceedings to be recorded and transcribed, to form the core of a subsequent published collection, alongside additional memoirs and essays from participants (especially those unable to attend).

so mad i won't be able to fly to london for this.

That does look like a great May event:

Simon Frith , Paul Gilroy, Barney Hoskyns, Cynthia Rose, Charles Shaar Murray ,Bob Stanley Richard Williams and more

ILX's Michaelangelo Matos has the best Christgau interview from his book tour up on Red Bull Music Academy. Fantastic piece:
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/robert-christgau-interview