zing

hee hee

No one should ever change their names. I've been the same for 10 years.

― Jeff, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:23 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I don't get what people gain from constant name changes, except for confusion?

― Tuomas, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:24 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how much more confused could you realistically get tho

― j'en ai cache (darraghmac), Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:27 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

gentle ribbing imo, no shots fired

this show is mostly p bad at dialogue and restraint imo

― Lamp, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:02 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Could take a page from the Revenge book on dialogue and restraint amirite

― 1 of paper = 4 of coin (Deric W. Haircare), Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i sometimes wonder if the a/v club comments section realizes what a wayward star we have over here

― Lamp, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:31 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

10/10

two thumbs up. all the way up.

amazing

an elegant zing.

threads like this are fun but the broad sweep of just "90s" is always so deadening and meh. fight for your rights and demand hopelessly specific r&b cratedigger elitism imo

― r|t|c, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 8:40 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

― ghostface protocollah (some dude), Tuesday, April 10, 2012 8:01 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lets not pretend you wouldnt cosign any criticisms of anything ever

― man down (D-40), Saturday, April 14, 2012 5:29 PM Bookmark

lol

i am proud that he came up with the closest thing to a zing he's ever achieved, even if it took him 4 days to come up with it

youtube comments wouldn't have worked, a/v club comments reveals the masterful light touch

even if it took him 4 days to come up with it

― some dude, Sunday, April 15, 2012 10:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

well, it is deej

He said it took 4 days not 4 posts

it's kinda too clunky to be effective tbh

y'all are just the best

ha, i didn't even notice the time gap

i couldnt possibly have just not looked at the thread in 4 days? gtfo

we cant all sit at our computers to prepare return zingers everytime our names are mentioned al

if 4 days have passed since the post you have a wicked comeback for it might occur to you that the ship has sailed, so to speak

but don't worry about it, i know you don't sit in front of a computer very often, see you in a few weeks or whenever you get back to the thread

dissing 4-day-gestated zings, no wonder ILX hates pre-1980 comedy films

OR it stems from your love of Bob Hope's zippy comebacks

or it has everything to do with the internet and some other medium that we are not currently communicating through

and NOT some etc.

spending this much time lawyering yourself out of a zing is nagl, even if you win the case you are still a zing lawyer

srsly sit down and take yr zings like a man

yeah i know it's nagl to say anything once you've been on the summer jam screen itt, nevermind

"zing lawyer" is gonna make me giggle all afternoon

spending this much time lawyering yourself out of a zing is nagl, even if you win the case you are still a zing lawyer

― iatee, Monday, April 16, 2012 7:23 AM Bookmark

yeah otm

lol at "summer jam screen" tho

i like zing lawyering in that it is tried via zings, the only way to win is if yr zings are better than the original zings, which is tuff obvs as the original zing is a select zing

lol

http://i.imgur.com/r1vZG.png

attempted zing quashings can be a heartily enjoyable read.

I love to zinga
About the sunna and the moona and the springa

http://www.thebestlawyersguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Lawyer.jpg

i demand you repeal that zing!

"your zinger..."

my cousin zingy

'objection ur honor the zing, while snappy, clearly lacks substance and could have been swiftly tailored to fit any prominent ilxor'

Part 3...

Okay, so I've been listening to this album for three weeks straight now and am starting to fall in love. I initially disliked Kill for Love quite strongly (see above). I felt that its accolades were lazy and undeserved, that it was little more than an unfocused exercise in cynical, vacant and rather tediously predictable style. I wanted to dismiss it with prejudice, but felt that I should get to know it in order to more effectively eviscerate its pretensions. Thing is, the more I listened to it, the more distinctive and mysterious it came to seem. The melodies, textures and narratives didn't jump out and grab me at first, but I found that no matter how much I listened, I could neither satisfactorily solve for them nor leave them alone.

Two weeks ago, I allowed that I was "starting to come around". Now I'm almost certain that Kill for Love will wind up being one of my favorite albums of the year. Maybe that's a simple product of time invested, but there aren't many new records that I'd care to listen to 20 or 30 times in the space of a month, and fewer that I could still be productively exploring by that point. I'll happily admit that I don't fully "get" Chromatics, because that's what keeps me coming back.

The first thing I want to talk about here is the idea of distance. Over the past couple weeks, I've read a great many reviews of both Night Drive and Kill for Love, and I'm surprised at how little attention most critics have paid to the way Chromatics "distress" their sound through the application of faux vinyl crackle. This strategy is quite prominent on both albums, and it distances the listener from the music in at least three ways. First, it creates an illusion of separation in time. We are listening to something that does not exist in the now, but is instead arriving to us from the past, from the vinyl-only era of postpunk, Italo-disco and Carpenter-style synth horror soundtracks. The second way the distressed sound distances us is by calling attention to the mechanics of audio reproduction. We are not allowed to sink into the music as immediate/vicarious experience because we are constantly reminded that it is being brought to us via the agency of a medium. The effect is similar to that produced by scratches and dirt on an old motion picture film print. We cannot fully inhabit the vision because we are forced to notice the screen on which it is projected. Finally, the "surface noise" distances us from the music simply by obscuring it. At 2:14 in Chromatics' cover of kate bush's "Running Up That Hill", Ruth Radlet's voice is momentarily lost in distortion and crackle. Here the distancing actually eclipses the music for a moment. This trick is duplicated on the Kill for Love track "Birds of Paradise".

Chromatics' use of this kind of distancing is interesting to me because it helps make sense of their overall aesthetic and approach. When Night Drive came out in 2007, most critics addressed the band's radical shift from fragmentary postpunk rock to sleek, club-friendly electropop, but few admitted how little they'd really changed. Skeletality, noise, mechanical disaffection and staggered rhythms were a big part of the early Chromatics' game, and these are still some of the key elements of their sound. Night Drive and Kill for Love may sound slick and synthetic on the surface, but the individual sonic elements of which they're composed are often quite harsh and awkward. We hear fingers on strings, piercing highs and layers of hissing, curdled static. The rhythmic propulsion is often slightly awkward, lacking dance music's in-the-pocket drive, and most of the tracks feel weirdly scooped out, as though several key elements were missing. Riding over all this discombobulated emptiness is ruth radlet's paper thin whisper of a voice. She has no range to speak of and almost no expressive power. Her singing denies us even electroclash's comedy of confrontational disaffection.

These elements and approaches combine to create an interesting inversion of way "humanity" is conventionally constructed in pop. To some degree or another, we typically equate musical humanity with emotionalism and sentiment. Chromatics flip this completely on its head. In their music, the humanity is the inexpressive. It's the rhythm that doesn't quite come together, the hiccup in the bassline, the failure of the vocals to hit notes or convey emotion. Surrounding this frail and complacent vision of humanity are the mechanisms of music and sound: icy synth arpeggios and plodding drum machines, a fixation on medium and technology, the familiar phrases and melodies that pop songs ordinarily use to convey and induce feeling.

The problem with Kill for Love, mentioned by most critics, is that it's a sprawling, unfocused mess. Not only is it overburdened with second-rate filler, it's very poorly sequenced. Everyone seems to love the band's cover of "Into the Black", but to my mind, this is the song that plays over the end credits. It simply doesn't work as an opening theme. (And I'd like to object very strongly to the Pitchfork review's contention that it is in any sense a "deconstruction" of Neil Young's original. It is not. It does nothing particular novel to or with the song. It does not cause it say anything it didn't say the first time around. It is simply a cover. A nice one, but by no means a reinvention, illumination or deconstruction.) The album's running order as released puts too much emphasis on crispy, brittle, bleach-blonde sunshine up front, sickly horror soundtrack darkness towards the back. Both wear out their welcome, which is unfortunate because there are at least as many worthwhile songs on Kill for Love as there were on Night Drive. The playlist version I'm currently enjoying:

1) Dust to Dust
2) These Streets Will Never Look The Same
3) Kill for Love
4) The Page
5) Candy
6) There's a Light Out On the Horizon
7) Lady
8) Birds of Paradise
9) The River
10) Running from the Sun
11) Into the Black

― yuppie bullshit chocolate blogbait (contenderizer), Monday, April 23, 2012 2:53 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

could you elaborate

― Deverly (Bangelo), Monday, April 23, 2012 3:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would like to see a zingo judo thread, where attempted zings are deflected back at the would-be zinger with much added zinginess

lol @ "Part 3 ..."

― Deverly (Bangelo), Monday, April 23, 2012 3:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ catch a wry zing star

Part 3!

I was gonna post that one but decided not to. I need to trust my zing-stincts

The World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta has Mexican Cokes for sale for like $2 per in the merch area.

― Choad of Choad Hall (kingfish), Saturday, April 28, 2012 4:15 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what an entirely unremarkable fact

― thomp, Saturday, April 28, 2012 6:56 AM (9 hours ago)

:-)

my sympathy for people who repeatedly reference their "$200,000 education" is approximately nil

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Saturday, May 5, 2012 3:11 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

your hardman stance is a mighty steed and it will take you far in life.

― how did we get here how? (ytth), Saturday, May 5, 2012 3:13 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ fortune cookie fortunes of the post-ironic future

it's weird how little I care about this

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, May 9, 2012 2:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it? go on

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, May 9, 2012 2:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark