♥☮☯♫ PC MUSIC ♫☯☮♥ ☺☺☺ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°✌

i'll admit my previous post was a little (read: a lot) off base, imago. I've enjoyed "Pink And Blue" previously which is exponentially more heartfelt and irony-free than this new one. I feel as if the nudge and wink is lost on "Hey QT" to the point where it comes off as slightly cynical, and yes, insensitive. take that as you will

faaaair enough well i'll disagree on the word itself but that's a dignified response & i shall retract some of the more vituperative language aimed your way

why do you guys have to over-intalectualize everything? i thought this website was called "i love" music

yah bummer thread but fwiw i luv QT's one song b/c it's fun and silly and i can enjoy it both ironically and sincerely, and rlly it's been p funny to see all the 'serious techno' and pop critic types going into conniptions over it

it's not that fucked up! it works as pop imo

― imago, Tuesday, September 2, 2014 5:07 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

since when has whether something "works as pop" been important to you?

(and it doesn't really)

(it doesn't work as a "deconstruction" of pop either; pop is a pretty good genre at regularly "deconstructing", refracting and commenting on itself, but of course if you don't like or don't listen to mainstream pop you wouldn't know that, so of course you'd think this was something really clever)

A great new Mike Paradinas mix which has a handful of these tracks with a bunch of Planet Mu stuff

I think it works best in a mix like that. ie other non-pop (as Lex insists) non-dance electronic music.

defensive overreaching itt feels like ppl street teaming for a middle tier streetwear brand that recently gifted the emperor with some new threads

some truly grody posts imo

Thread is setting some new records for ad hominem attacks I'll give you that.

why is sparkling future pop sensation qt addressing qt in "hey qt" idgi

Some of the greatest records ever made are completely banal but that banality needs to be delivered with sincerity rather than with a knowing smirk.

Nah, there's plenty of good records that are banal and smirk.

yes but it's 2014 and the knowing smirk is the new sincerity!

i love this stuff

fwiw, the 'possibly most repulsive sentiment I've read on ilm for a while' was in fact inspired, I now confess, by a slight misreading

it's still bad imo (how can you presume to speak for hannah diamond & judge her success on such material terms as well as atomise what was clearly a thoughtful collaborative process into 'producers & singers' acting individually for their own ends) but it is true that a lot of individuals working in the pop industry (which PC MUSIC is tangential to) are exploited for their talents while not receiving the plaudits they might deserve (i can imagine this happens to a lot of women)

I read your post initially as judging the artistic success of the song on how famous & minted its singer got, which is obv repulsive but not quite what you were doing - judging it, however misguidedly, on how exploited the singer seems is much fairer

this has obv cut deep so seems fair to clarify

Phil Sherburne weighs in - http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/485-pc-music/

I got nothing from that article; it just kind of explained what it is and how other people feel about it in a very music-writerly way but didn't really say all that much

Well, "weighs in" is probably the wrong phrase for that link. Maybe Sherburne writes profile with faint praise, says they are not the worst, would have been more accurate.

lots of controversy in RA forums over this sort of stuff

RA forums might actually be the worst tho.

The artwork for this stuff is pretty awesome. Really digging the stuff on Hannah Diamond's web site too. Haven't heard the music, not really planning on it bcz I genuinely don't care for "actual" chartpop

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

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