January 2012
1 tag
Records Which I Was Informed Included The Sounds...
Serge Gainsbourg - “Je T’Aime (Moi Non Plus)”
Donna Summer - “Love To Love You Baby” (extended mix naturellement)
Lil Louis - “French Kiss”
Enigma - “Sadeness Pt 1”
Records About Which I Actually Believed This
Erm…
I was a cynical boy :(
1 tag
Every idol a bring down
I really really like / am a sucker for someone turning up with a well-worked-through aesthetic: they always seem obvious after the fact but the fact that you end up groping at combinatorial lists of influences, algebraic descriptions etc suggests . Whether this aesthetic sustains itself beyond a song, over an album or career or w/ever - honestly I don’t really care, that’s not the...
“the album equivalent of a faked orgasm”
– Lana Del Rey: Born to Die | Album Reviews | Pitchfork (via desnoise)
Today in weirdly personal album zings you’d never use for a man*. (And I mean “today in,” damn it; there’s one in every single review, and it’s starting to get uncomfortably telling. Yes, I’m still working on my piece….)
*...
“‘Make good stuff and make it easy for people to buy it’ is so simplistic as to...”
– mikkipedia
Let the market decide. Vote with your dollars. Poor people shouldn’t be overweight. If minorities just worked harder. You can be sexist against men too. Just go to college. Just pay for college. Work harder. Just write. Just make stuff. Minorities can be racist too. Your accusation of...
Wondering "are we gonna laugh at loving this album...
theremixbaby:
imathers:
Preach preach preach.
I’d also say that if you love all of the same stuff ten years from now (or maybe it’d be better to say, if all the same stuff occupies the same place in your heart/mind/life ten years from now), you may want to think about whether that’s healthy.
It is the absolute worst attitude to have as a pop-culture critic. I cannot think of anything more...
parklakespeakers replied to your post: So, What ARE People Buying Instead Of Music?
Seems like acts play much bigger/more shows relative to record sales now. Could be substitution or just live sales not going down in same way, not sure which.
A couple of years ago I read an Economist piece on the music biz which pointed out that while live music revenues were on the up, this growth could be...
So, What ARE People Buying Instead Of Music?
Yesterday I asked the question, “what are people buying instead of music?”. If the free availability of music - legal or otherwise - has led to a relative decline in money spent on non-free music, where has that money gone? I got a bunch of really interesting responses, so here they are.
Tech
“Tech, above all. The most egregious piraters I know spend over $100 on Internet and...
“The amount of data that will get accumulated over the course of a person’s life...”
– “Designers Behind Facebook’s Timeline: 5 Keys to Creating a UI With Soul.”
The stream metaphor works really well to craft narratives, which is what Facebook is trying to have us do. Per Walter Benjamin, I believe the opposite: “History breaks down into images, not into stories.”
(via...
prawnmael:
“reblog like the plague”
who are these irresponsible people reblogging the plague?
What are people buying instead of music*?
Dipped my toe into the ever-circling “piracy debate” again this week: little new to be said. So this is a question I’ve wondered about a few times but not really seen answered. Let’s assume that the music industry has a point and that significant chunks of its core audience are spending less money on records than they did 10 years ago**. What are they spending money on...
“4. I have no idea what these songs are supposed to be about. The lyrics are...”
– Or, you could like, listen closer and think. It’s not that hard. I like Klosterman, but no music writer is ever anywhere near good when s/he tries to parse why others like an artist without doing the actual messy ethnographic work, or (much worse) to be a sportswriter/political wonk and predict an...
The Hermeneutics Of Screwing Around →
Paper by Stephen Ramsay, found via the Stanley Fish article, making the case for serendipitous/chance-driven trails as an alternative to sense-making strategies such as canon-formation or algorithmic big data analysis.
I am colossally sympathetic to this and wish I’d read it sooner (it’s from 2010) - chimes w/stuff I’ve been writing about for ages (like this - from 10 years ago...
1 tag
“When another scholar worries that if one begins with data, one can “go...”
– The Digital Humanities and Interpretation - NYTimes.com, via Tom A. (via new-aesthetic)
Stanley Fish’s interpretation of a line in Milton in this piece really reminds me of KRS-One’s “officer/overseer” riff in “Sound Of Da Police”.
There are more useful things...
I sold Jimmy Page a Graphic Novel
natepatrin:
rockandrolltedium:
I used to work in a bookstore in Central London whilst I was at university studying.
One day I looked up from my computer to see a small, very tanned, white haired man wearing a long black coat holding out a graphic novel to buy. It was none other than Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
by Benjamin Law Smith
And now the only thing I’ll be able to do with my...
The Last Three Years In Music According To My Pazz...
Alicia Keys; AraabMuzik; Arcade Fire; Azealia Banks; Beyoncé; Bounty Killer (Ft. Timberlee); Buraka Som Sistema; Cam’ron; Charli XCX; Cher Lloyd; Cold Cave; Dizzee Rascal; Electrik Red; Florence & the Machine; Fuck Buttons; Girl Unit; Gold Panda; Guido; James Ferraro; Joy Formidable; Jürgen Müller; Kanye West; Katy B; Kelis; Lady Gaga; Lily Allen; Lindstrom & Prins Thomas; Nadia Oh;...
