pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I honestly can't figure out the point of the article, it's too fuckin dumb or maybe I'm too fuckin dumb

anyone who questions pitchfork is racist

the problem with the article is that it tries to cut both ways, mixing some sort of hey people like the sound of different things *shrugs* conclusion with statements like "One thing that was not in question, especially in the early days, is that CDs sounded better than LPs." thats some pretty wonky logic there!

iirc the point is basically just "everyone thought cds would be the ultimate playback model because they have the best fidelity technically, but lots of people are going back to vinyl because technical fidelity is not always most important to the listener." which isn't a mind-blowing point or anything, but it's not a pro-CD article.

but see fidelity isn't what he is claiming it is! accurate reproduction (leaving out the inaccuracy argument abt sampling vs analog curve, which is also valid) is not the measure of fidelity.

well fidelity is my phrasing, i don't remember if that's the word he used

I stand by my point it's a dumb article

Gonna start a dog v. cat poll after lunch

― waterface

let's just move on to this part of the day

I don't really even get people who try to argue that vinyl "sounds better" than CDs or vice versa as a blanket statement. It's so hard to compare the two across the board, especially when you're dealing with so many variables -- are we talking about a 70s record vs. the digitally remastered version on CD? Maybe the remastering job is the problem. Are we talking about analog RECORDINGS on vinyl versus digital RECORDINGS on CD? Does the same digitally recorded new album sound better on new vinyl than on a CD through the same stereo setup? Do you perhaps like the distortion and "crackliness" of old vinyl?

i'm not a huge metal listener at all and i don't really know grayson currin's writing, but dude is reviewing like 10 metal albums a week there -- is p4k's demographic that interested in metal?

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:44 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

notice all the other metal content on the site, show no mercy, etc. i know they've been covering metal for a while now, 7-8 years, but it seems like a good %30 of the coverage on the site is metal-related?

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:45 AM (3 hours ago)

a surprisingly high, and sustained by now, percentage, yeah. i would be very curious to find out what's driving it - availability of writing, judgments about their readers, the simple fact that metal is having a moment, its hipsterfiability, or whatever.

i think the curious thing is that they run so many reviews without really settling on a stance toward 'the metal identity'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP4qdefD2To

instead of talking about a blog post, let's all listen to the goo goo dolls together

i doooon't want the world to see me
because i don't think they'd understaaaaa
when everything's made to be broken
i just waaaaannt you to know who i aaaaam

da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da
DUM DUM dummmmmmm
da-da-da-da
da-da-da-da
DUM DUM dummmmmmm

well i said i was walking down the highway baby
i'm just a rebel with a nothing to lose
i said you know i hate to lonely, lady
but the hard life is callin' and i just can't refu-use!

i doooon't want the world to see me
because i don't think they'd understaaaaa
when everything's made to be broken
i just waaaaannt you to know who i aaaaam

goo goo! ga ga!

ooh la la

DOGS V CATS

a surprisingly high, and sustained by now, percentage, yeah. i would be very curious to find out what's driving it - availability of writing, judgments about their readers, the simple fact that metal is having a moment, its hipsterfiability, or whatever.

i think the curious thing is that they run so many reviews without really settling on a stance toward 'the metal identity'.

― j., Thursday, August 1, 2013 5:17 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea, exactly. especially that last part -- the reviews and the coverage run constantly but it's all just kind of "there." all this kind of started with the "hipster metal phenomenon" around 2004-2006 but their coverage has just continued.

and despite the high coverage w/ reviews and columns, has metal been incorporated into the more influential "tastemaking" features of the site? (e.g. best new music, the year-end lists, etc.)

I don't really even get people who try to argue that vinyl "sounds better" than CDs or vice versa as a blanket statement. It's so hard to compare the two across the board, especially when you're dealing with so many variables

It's not really that hard to compare. Digitize a record though a good AD converter and then compare the original record playing to the digital copy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5fTtGylEO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jix7XcbVA4w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqgtsai2aKY

Wait, are we still doing baby talk?

It's not really that hard to compare. Digitize a record though a good AD converter and then compare the original record playing to the digital copy.

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:21 AM (1 minute ago)

or, if you care about sound quality, just cut a 12" from a cd run through a good DA converter

lmao mid 80s DACs were horseshit

or, if you care about sound quality, just cut a 12" from a cd run through a good DA converter

what would that test?

accurate reproduction is not the measure of fidelity.
― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, August 1, 2013 4:10 PM

Huh? That's precisely the measure of fidelity.

yeah, I was wondering about that one too

what would that test?

waxmanship

highly illogical

yeah that was sloppy on my part - definitionally thats exactly what fidelity is, but thats not how audio nerds use it casually.

the whole argument is also amusing to me because anybody in the know will tell you that the number one weak link in your audio chain is always going to be your speakers anyway

what i should have said is that accuracy in reproduction/fidelity isn't actually of much use when talking about quality of sound (again, removing bottom-feeder stuff like substandard encoding etc.) so i just see his statement abt all that tech spec totally pointless, but he's using it as a lynchpin for an argument that doesnt actually need it. and i dont find the "hey different people like different things that sound different" argument article worthy.

Black people listen to music like this, but white people listen to music like this.

No Josh

yea, exactly. especially that last part -- the reviews and the coverage run constantly but it's all just kind of "there." all this kind of started with the "hipster metal phenomenon" around 2004-2006 but their coverage has just continued.

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and despite the high coverage w/ reviews and columns, has metal been incorporated into the more influential "tastemaking" features of the site? (e.g. best new music, the year-end lists, etc.)

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't that just make metal like several other genres that are frequently reviewed on the site, but don't have enough fandom within the overall staff to consistently have a major presence on the year-end lists? isn't that a good thing (assuming the reviews aren't clueless/bad)?

lol waterface is a ghost in the machine reference

i'm still blown away some people are accepting that early era CDs with the horrible digital mastering and CD players with DACs that are a joke by today's standards were better than a good record player and good records in the early 80s.

i sort of question whether some ppl on this thread have heard a clean record on a good player before.

but man the industry saw gold in them hills and wanted to sell you all the warhorses over again and boy did that early anti-record propaganda stick around in the ether

nobody on this thread ever really said 'cds rool, vinyl drools,' that's just been waterface's hallucination

not really

but please, everyone continue to misinterpret me

wouldn't want to do that

yea, exactly. especially that last part -- the reviews and the coverage run constantly but it's all just kind of "there." all this kind of started with the "hipster metal phenomenon" around 2004-2006 but their coverage has just continued.

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and despite the high coverage w/ reviews and columns, has metal been incorporated into the more influential "tastemaking" features of the site? (e.g. best new music, the year-end lists, etc.)

― marcos, Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doesn't that just make metal like several other genres that are frequently reviewed on the site, but don't have enough fandom within the overall staff to consistently have a major presence on the year-end lists? isn't that a good thing (assuming the reviews aren't clueless/bad)?

― some dude, Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yea defintely, i'm not making any value judgement on p4k's metal coverage -- it's totally a good thing that other genres are getting coverage on the site, assuming the coverage is of some reasonable quality. despite reading the site a lot, i myself don't even really follow their "core" coverage of indie rock and hip-hop. i'm just pointing on that this one particular genre (metal) gets consistently high coverage on the site despite not seeping into their broader assessments of "the best music." like pitchfork covers some international/world music (especially their writer joe tangari) but it's not like every single day there are 1-2 world music album reviews along with a world music column.

a few thoughts paraphrased from algerian goalkeeper's Post 1990 British Indie Rock/Rock/Metal thread. they were always meant to go here, but got distracted along the way:

i'm a fan of heavy/harsh indie rock from way back, and i trace my current interest in metal to the gap between dopethrone and dopesmoker, so i figure i embody the "nigel hipster" strawman as well as anyone. imo, a good chunk of the crowd that would have been listening to noisy, scurrilous US indie rock in the 80s & 90s are listening to metal these days (thrash, doom, black, "extreme", converge-style metalcore, w/e). indie as a contemporary genre no longer makes much room for the noise, ugliness and aggression that were once so central to indie as an ethos.

the two streams have never been all that far apart in the first place. many of my college friends dug voivod, metallica and slayer alongside sonic youth, scratch acid and butthole surfers. indie/metal cross-pollination bred & fed the likes of soundgarden, monster magnet, kyuss, helmet and the jesus lizard in the 90s, though i jumped ship on "alt metal" at a certain point. moving into the current era, stoner rock (qotsa, fu manchu, nebula, high on fire, e-wiz, boris) got lots of attention from the indie/generalist rock press circa y2k, along with art-doom from khanate and sunnO. earth and melvins as through-lines.

Indie certainly no longer has a DIY punk aesthetic overall. So much of it is clinical and edited very specifically to match some predetermined vibe. All of the album covers look like magazine ads as well.

AKA I agree on that overall contemporary indie genre assessment (if "indie" can even be defined at all anymore)

idk if contenderizer is "otm" there but as an '90s indie/college radio guy who has been shifting increasingly toward metal/noise/punk/heavy/whatever over the past few years, all that stuff made sense to me

oh it was on this thread.

my metal/grunge/noise rock/hardcore listening started at pretty much the same point (post-nevermind) so I never graduated from one to another but at various times from then til now I will have listened to one more than the others. (Why I'm still seen as a non-metal outsider on the rolling metal thread by some haha). It can only be a good thing if metal is getting quality coverage from Pitchfork IMO.

Perhaps p4k are trying to build up their own metal community from people outwith the site rather than convert their existing, some may say, boring and close minded conservative, demographic/strawmen?

Jon/Via/Chi was always pissed off despite good reviews metal bands never got best new music. Has anything changed on that front?

i just scrolled back through a year of BNMs, around 50-55 albums total.

Converge and Deafheaven were in there. also Swans, GYBE, Iceage and Metz. Draw yr metal line where you wish. (you can see where mine falls.)