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So Dudley/Radiator/Bear Hunter said:
The more I look at this latest effort,plan b or pitchfork the more I realise music journalisim is inherently undesirable - the only decent band in years a magazine ever got me into was the Icarus Line, whereas my current sonic beaus The Polysics and Mochipet were discovered through chatrooms, and my love of Devo came about out of idle curiosity.
The simple truth is 90% of music reviews are complete and utter bollocks - either the reviewer hasn't got his facts right (I'm thinking of the reviews for Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned here) or s/he'll decide to go off on some weird Will Self(-important)esque tangent of barely coherent prose. I'd hold Plan B's unreadable review of !!! as a good (bad) example of this. Of course interviews reporting the bare facts are great - knowing about release dates, and new stuff happening is essential - but the second someone sits down to write up a CD the chances of them flying up their own bottom increase by 90%.
And arms house/Just-I-Fly/Flyboy said:
Radiator's point is interesting, although it'll probably take us off-topic, but what the hell: I guess it comes down to the question of what you want music writing to be, and what you want it to be for. One argument is that it should be primarily functional: this is what this album's called, this is who the band, this is when and on what label it's out, this is what it basically sounds like. I think the idea that that last one can ever be done in an objective way is a myth, and has led to a lot of bad, boring music writing.
Personally, I like reading music writing almost for its own sake: growing up reading the Melody Maker, I didn't have access to 90% of the music described (if not more, initially - bear in mind that this was before Oasis started getting on daytime radio, so it was basically a question of matching the bands written about to the songs heard on the Evening Session). So I've always liked music writing that makes me think: and possibly makes me think about stuff other than music. This is why the best stuff I read is often online. There are very few print publications that are willing to take risks in this department: Plan B is definitely one of them, though. Of course taking risks means you'll get it wrong too - there will be pieces that are self-indulgent, or borderline coherent - and some people will call you these things, or 'pretentious', even when you're not - but it works when it produces pieces as good as David McNamee's review of the !!! album, which is one of the best things I've read this year, so I'm glad you mentioned it, Radiator (anytime you want to pick up where we left off on that topic, feel free).
Couple of questions:
Radiator says that he is mainly persuaded to explore new sounds through chatrooms rather than music reviews. In one sense, a bloke in a chatroom telling you that the latest Tourniquet album is great *is* a music review, but it does have advantages - you can interrogate that judgement, ask questions, steer the discussion towards the things you feel are important in an album - in a way you can't with a music review. More precisely, you can to an extent, but it is a different discipline - for example, it may take becoming familiar with a journalist's tastes and also how he expresses himself. So, Radiator dislikes David McNamee's review because he feels it fails to provide what he wants from a review, whereas Flyboy feels that it does in fact provide the necessary, but Radiator is not reading it aright.
Chatrooms open up another issue, of electronic communication and taste matching. I can go to Amazon, tell it the names of eight bands I like, and it will tell me a bunch of other bands that people who like those bands also like. As long as I don't want to make any adventurous moves, I can therefore quite safely explore the ground without even having to read any reviews - an automated version of somebody in a chatroom saying "if you like the Polysics, why not try..."
Ultimately, there is the question of how *he* found out about the band, and how the guy he found out about the band found out about the band... possibly there is a principle of the commons here where some people just randomly buy music (or buy out of idle curiosity, as Radiator did with Devo, although I suspect that decision was not made without some critical input), which allows them, when they pool all their random purchases through, say, a chatroom, to construct a critical model...
But anyway. What do you consider the key ways you find out about music, and what do you want from them? |
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