Kazia Galazka shows an early penchant for coherence in her review of Camera Obscura's "French Navy," breaking with the more shoeless navel gazing(possible new genre classification?)indulged by some of her more senior counterparts at Pitchfork.
I'm still angry at Mr. Dombal for his dork-handed press release for Metallica Guitar Hero in which he asserts that Aerosmith sucks. Yes, Aerosmith do suck, like Nirvana sucks, by writing good songs, arranging them simply, and showing just enough skill to show the material to maximum advantage.
I save the last observation for last. Today the public Google search for Pitchfork no longer reveals the lame agrarian-baiting heading advertising farm equipment and livestock. Perhaps Ryan Schreiber finally realized "that joke isn't funny anymore."
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Ryan Dombal fails to test for Eno-centric viral strain: Compares Yeah Yeah Yeahs song to number 67
If anyone needed any more convincing evidence that Pitchfork Media is trying to distance itself from Brian Eno's history and any mathematical rigor they need look no further than the most recent review of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs song "Skeletons."
Ryan Dombal misses by a mile a glaring opportunity to mention, "The Big Ship" from Another Green World, instead ruminating cryptically on the difference between five inches across and six feet down. Let's figure it out: 72 inches -5 inches=67 inches. Quite a difference, as Dombal quite rightly observes, but to what end?
As I said, the song is quite fine, but it needs to be separated from Dombal's languorous relativist mathematics.
Public Pitchfork Watchdog of America is calling for a review by Pitchfork editor and founder Ryan Schreiber of the entire Dombal ouevre for such virtuosic soporifistics. What kind of unapproved FDA drugs are they using in that office, and how soon will it lead to a repeat of the epidemic of indoor folding scooter accidents that plagued young Silicon Valley technicians in the late 90's, robbing them of their health and able-bodiedness?
Ryan Dombal misses by a mile a glaring opportunity to mention, "The Big Ship" from Another Green World, instead ruminating cryptically on the difference between five inches across and six feet down. Let's figure it out: 72 inches -5 inches=67 inches. Quite a difference, as Dombal quite rightly observes, but to what end?
As I said, the song is quite fine, but it needs to be separated from Dombal's languorous relativist mathematics.
Public Pitchfork Watchdog of America is calling for a review by Pitchfork editor and founder Ryan Schreiber of the entire Dombal ouevre for such virtuosic soporifistics. What kind of unapproved FDA drugs are they using in that office, and how soon will it lead to a repeat of the epidemic of indoor folding scooter accidents that plagued young Silicon Valley technicians in the late 90's, robbing them of their health and able-bodiedness?
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Only valid Radiohead news please says PPWOA ombudsman in Akron
Try looking at a Pitchfork article, such as "Radiohead suffers the wrath of Miley Cyrus" and try not to lose control of your bowels while you search for salient facts about music or culture. The facts at hand give the lie to the cottage industry veneer of the Pitchfork Media operation and reveal it for the mouth-breathing Dan Brown fans playing Rock Band while the new Coven of Dork-Mongers" plays in the background.
One might say these are the seemingly benign type of short-takes are like those once emitted by the rock sage J.D. Considine which would pad out the back cover of the much-missed Musician magazine.
But a less sepia-tinted acid-crazed view would be it is all part of the Defamerfication of rock journalism led by Pitchfork pointing and clicking their talons at the balls and heart of rock and roll with cruel intent!!! Well no more. Pitchfork, hasn't Mr. Yorke provided enough material for you to enjoy that you don't need to dwell on his relations with Miley Cyrus.
There in lies the rub here; if she is so distasteful, why is Ryan Dombal even dignifying her actions with valuable digital column space? Perhaps Dombal finds Mr. Yorke's position unreasonable, and wishes he had been in his shoes: to engage the teenage starlet in an IM interview of some type, perhaps on-line from the Pitchfork offices at 4 a.m.
Meanwhile the brain and soul of the American hipster/not hipster rots in the flames of Dombal's lack of regard for the verities of rock journalism. Anyone desperately wondering what's the pick to click to dine out on is left floating in the flaming dinghy of Dombal's shameful purgatory. It is this action group's opinion they'll have to look a little further than Pitchfork.
Don't let Pitchfork distract you and make you forget they took more than a week to jump on the Bee Gees' Odessa reissue and review it, an unfathomable omission for a group whose early work has such cache with the self-styled urban sophisticates who patronize Pitchfork's cybernetic vault of tin-eared lies.
Just two suggestions to get you started Pitchfork:
1)A retrospective evaluation of the soundtrack work of horror director John Carpenter with accompanying interview.
2) An exegesis on Vangelis' development from Aphrodite's Child through the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Serialize it, and even make it premium content for a fee. Stop dwelling on Mr. Yorke's alleged asociality and get cracking on some thing that will burn off some of that cyber-paunch hanging over your digital belt.
Rourke Maggis
One might say these are the seemingly benign type of short-takes are like those once emitted by the rock sage J.D. Considine which would pad out the back cover of the much-missed Musician magazine.
But a less sepia-tinted acid-crazed view would be it is all part of the Defamerfication of rock journalism led by Pitchfork pointing and clicking their talons at the balls and heart of rock and roll with cruel intent!!! Well no more. Pitchfork, hasn't Mr. Yorke provided enough material for you to enjoy that you don't need to dwell on his relations with Miley Cyrus.
There in lies the rub here; if she is so distasteful, why is Ryan Dombal even dignifying her actions with valuable digital column space? Perhaps Dombal finds Mr. Yorke's position unreasonable, and wishes he had been in his shoes: to engage the teenage starlet in an IM interview of some type, perhaps on-line from the Pitchfork offices at 4 a.m.
Meanwhile the brain and soul of the American hipster/not hipster rots in the flames of Dombal's lack of regard for the verities of rock journalism. Anyone desperately wondering what's the pick to click to dine out on is left floating in the flaming dinghy of Dombal's shameful purgatory. It is this action group's opinion they'll have to look a little further than Pitchfork.
Don't let Pitchfork distract you and make you forget they took more than a week to jump on the Bee Gees' Odessa reissue and review it, an unfathomable omission for a group whose early work has such cache with the self-styled urban sophisticates who patronize Pitchfork's cybernetic vault of tin-eared lies.
Just two suggestions to get you started Pitchfork:
1)A retrospective evaluation of the soundtrack work of horror director John Carpenter with accompanying interview.
2) An exegesis on Vangelis' development from Aphrodite's Child through the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Serialize it, and even make it premium content for a fee. Stop dwelling on Mr. Yorke's alleged asociality and get cracking on some thing that will burn off some of that cyber-paunch hanging over your digital belt.
Rourke Maggis
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Still Illing: Paul's Boutique not given proper hip-hop/pop culture stress tests by quasi-regulatory Pitchfork Media
This is your Pitchfork ombudsman again giving Pitchfork a big 3.9 for its most recent top review.
While much of the nation was celebrating the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the King Shit music cops over at Pitchforkmedia.com were quick to rush away from the punch bowl and back to their True North of misleading and saddling the hapless indie-rock public with another albatross. Why are you so angry Mr. Focci you might ask? Yet another rubber stamp 10.0 Triple AAA rating for the 20th anniversary reissue of the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, I reply.
The rating itself is not so much the problem as the tortuous snaking genre references which contribute little to the more important debate of how rap musicians could improve upon Paul's Boutique, by y'know, bringing it into the 1990's stylistically.
Even Pope Benedict is on the record paying lip service to this album, so what else can be added here?
The reviewer, (billed as the suspiciously pseudonymous sounding Nate Patrin) actually admits on relying on Wikipedia references to identify the manifold samples throughout the work, hiding behind another mega-bucks corporation to obfuscate his refusal to tackle the main issue that Americans care about: how the hell do we fix Paul's Boutique and has this album been exposed to extensive enough cultural stress tests to guarantee I won't be laughed at for mentioning it as a cultural watershed?
Also why haven't Adam Yauch, Mike D, and Ad Rock supplied a full list of samples here, so the indie public could determine whether those samples represent a sufficient breadth and depth of pop culture to merit revisiting? I could conjecture, but one thing is certain: We don't see any indication Patrin sought out answers in his role as self-appointed guardian of the hipster-corporate trough.
Mr. Patrin, if you were put on the hot seat by an independent agency about this, would you be able to say your Pitchfork editors had touted the concept of "best practices" at any point? Perhaps even a reminder to bring your full vigorous attention to the evaluation of PB would be of great assistance if an independent and newly established authority should want to see your notes for this review? Just questions meant to guide you in the future.
In a separate point I want to address the tortuous abuse of the rhetorical device of litany on view here, which puts paid to the myth that two people are working on the same sentence at the same time over there:
"There's dozens of clever touches and big ambitious ideas:... a sparingly-used Alice Cooper guitar riff adding a mockingly pseudo-badass counter to the whimsical Gene Harris-based soul jazz backbone of "What Comes Around".
There is also the defacto canonization of the production duo the Dust Brothers, without proper acknowledgment of the role of unofficial Dust Brother Matt Dike, the actual bridge between a young Adam Yauch and King and Simpson. Perhaps future generations might care to have some historical perspective on that issue.
You would think that Pitchfork would not be so eager to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers who didn't ask hard questions about Paul's Boutique from the outset. What impact will this have on the future of rap? Is there a link between this and the late 1990's rap-rock revolution that created Limp Bizkit and Korn? Can the "indie-rock" labor force afford a new copy of Paul's Boutique as well as that Primus reissue which will inevitably rate a 9.0?
As if there wasn't enough trouble: the latest google metric reports have shown a disturbing three feet high and falling slippage in Pitchfork's page rankings for the term "Marni Stern." Maybe the office midget forgot to get that copy to the webmaster, or perhaps they were to busy celebrating their fool-hardy and altogether unexamined endorsement of Paul's Boutique.
Perhaps most disturbingly, we see another example of Pitchfork's gold-class double standards at work in their omission of any mention of the Dust Brothers' legal posturing to force the Chemical Brothers to change their name.
Perhaps having two bands with the same name is too radical a concept, but I think that given Pitchfork's rough treatment of some other artists with a history of litigiousness, perhaps a separate codice about the lawsuit appended to the Paul's Boutique review would have been warranted.
Instead we see them rushing forward with the full on anointment of the Dust Brothers partnership as some paragon of creative and humanistic equity, full on grey smoke coming out of the chimney.
While much of the nation was celebrating the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the King Shit music cops over at Pitchforkmedia.com were quick to rush away from the punch bowl and back to their True North of misleading and saddling the hapless indie-rock public with another albatross. Why are you so angry Mr. Focci you might ask? Yet another rubber stamp 10.0 Triple AAA rating for the 20th anniversary reissue of the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, I reply.
The rating itself is not so much the problem as the tortuous snaking genre references which contribute little to the more important debate of how rap musicians could improve upon Paul's Boutique, by y'know, bringing it into the 1990's stylistically.
Even Pope Benedict is on the record paying lip service to this album, so what else can be added here?
The reviewer, (billed as the suspiciously pseudonymous sounding Nate Patrin) actually admits on relying on Wikipedia references to identify the manifold samples throughout the work, hiding behind another mega-bucks corporation to obfuscate his refusal to tackle the main issue that Americans care about: how the hell do we fix Paul's Boutique and has this album been exposed to extensive enough cultural stress tests to guarantee I won't be laughed at for mentioning it as a cultural watershed?
Also why haven't Adam Yauch, Mike D, and Ad Rock supplied a full list of samples here, so the indie public could determine whether those samples represent a sufficient breadth and depth of pop culture to merit revisiting? I could conjecture, but one thing is certain: We don't see any indication Patrin sought out answers in his role as self-appointed guardian of the hipster-corporate trough.
Mr. Patrin, if you were put on the hot seat by an independent agency about this, would you be able to say your Pitchfork editors had touted the concept of "best practices" at any point? Perhaps even a reminder to bring your full vigorous attention to the evaluation of PB would be of great assistance if an independent and newly established authority should want to see your notes for this review? Just questions meant to guide you in the future.
In a separate point I want to address the tortuous abuse of the rhetorical device of litany on view here, which puts paid to the myth that two people are working on the same sentence at the same time over there:
"There's dozens of clever touches and big ambitious ideas:... a sparingly-used Alice Cooper guitar riff adding a mockingly pseudo-badass counter to the whimsical Gene Harris-based soul jazz backbone of "What Comes Around".
There is also the defacto canonization of the production duo the Dust Brothers, without proper acknowledgment of the role of unofficial Dust Brother Matt Dike, the actual bridge between a young Adam Yauch and King and Simpson. Perhaps future generations might care to have some historical perspective on that issue.
You would think that Pitchfork would not be so eager to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers who didn't ask hard questions about Paul's Boutique from the outset. What impact will this have on the future of rap? Is there a link between this and the late 1990's rap-rock revolution that created Limp Bizkit and Korn? Can the "indie-rock" labor force afford a new copy of Paul's Boutique as well as that Primus reissue which will inevitably rate a 9.0?
As if there wasn't enough trouble: the latest google metric reports have shown a disturbing three feet high and falling slippage in Pitchfork's page rankings for the term "Marni Stern." Maybe the office midget forgot to get that copy to the webmaster, or perhaps they were to busy celebrating their fool-hardy and altogether unexamined endorsement of Paul's Boutique.
Perhaps most disturbingly, we see another example of Pitchfork's gold-class double standards at work in their omission of any mention of the Dust Brothers' legal posturing to force the Chemical Brothers to change their name.
Perhaps having two bands with the same name is too radical a concept, but I think that given Pitchfork's rough treatment of some other artists with a history of litigiousness, perhaps a separate codice about the lawsuit appended to the Paul's Boutique review would have been warranted.
Instead we see them rushing forward with the full on anointment of the Dust Brothers partnership as some paragon of creative and humanistic equity, full on grey smoke coming out of the chimney.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Pitchfork 101
It looks like Pitchfork has posted some news, including a bit on Coldplay's ongoing recordings with Eno. They are still ignoring the reissue of the Bee Gees' 1969 double album Odessa for some involuted Machiavellian reason I can't fathom. Come on guys, 7.8, 7.8.
If most Americans took a closer look at Pitchfork and the faux indie-rock travesties they perpetuate on unwitting consumers they would recoil in horror. Somebody should create an indie-rock spell and fact checker over there too.
Indicative of the anemic level of criticism being purveyed is the latest review of Morrissey's latest album Years of Refusal in which the reviewer resorts to comparing the "savagery" of Morrissey to former triumphs such as "Speedway" on Vauxhall and I.
In government as in Pitchfork, this type of cloudy nebulous comparison tells record buyers nothing if they don't know "Speedway." Perhaps this younger generation would be better served with a fuller description of Morrissey's "arsenal" of instruments, and the general sound of the record.
Please Pitchfork: After eight years in the wilderness indie-America is waiting for more consumer-minded record reviews, not an 8-point rubber stamp. Roll the margins inward, and start at the beginning.
If most Americans took a closer look at Pitchfork and the faux indie-rock travesties they perpetuate on unwitting consumers they would recoil in horror. Somebody should create an indie-rock spell and fact checker over there too.
Indicative of the anemic level of criticism being purveyed is the latest review of Morrissey's latest album Years of Refusal in which the reviewer resorts to comparing the "savagery" of Morrissey to former triumphs such as "Speedway" on Vauxhall and I.
In government as in Pitchfork, this type of cloudy nebulous comparison tells record buyers nothing if they don't know "Speedway." Perhaps this younger generation would be better served with a fuller description of Morrissey's "arsenal" of instruments, and the general sound of the record.
Please Pitchfork: After eight years in the wilderness indie-America is waiting for more consumer-minded record reviews, not an 8-point rubber stamp. Roll the margins inward, and start at the beginning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)