the usefulness of disliking music, as a writer or as a listener etc.

haha im totally guilty of trying to rope music into some larger point abt aesthetic values or est some kind of connectedness btw things, i mean its obv p easy to do badly and its not like id base a review around this but thats like 80% of what my longform essay writing is abt :(((((((((

yeah artists have become really disgustingly savvy about working the press and realizing how marketable they are if they name their own microgenre.

This gets more complicated when you talk about interviewing them, like I interviewed one dude who was going on about how lame rappers are that use simple rhyme schemes, but he was a pretty straightforward gritty type rapper himself, so I start to suspect he thinks hes telling me what he thinks I want to hear

I pretty much refuse to do interviews b/c I more times than not I end up getting annoyed with the artist for doing the above plus sounding like dog latin.

haha

i love doing interviews but then most of the people i talked to are not too media trained and are still able to have actual conversations about their music that aren't well rehearsed rituals

lol @ me but thinking abt this some more: its obv subjective but i do think that its easy to shrug off or underrate the value in critics who can illuminate ways that a genre or group or trend is connected to other things, even/esp things beyond music at work in the culture at large. i know its sorta wankish, grad school hangover stuff but its also really valuable/impt. idk at least to me. like, i really hate biographical approaches, those long artist profile pieces that are all manufactured intimacy and 'telling' detail. they are so tedious and empty asked abt the controversy around her celebrity relationships, ms. swift shyly brushed a non-existent piece of lint off her immaculate cashmere cardigan and reached for the straw sitting limply in her strawberry milkshake. 'the thing abt all that gossip stuff', she sighed leaning forward... but i can see what it does for other ppl, the way it helps provide context and meaning to the music. i mean taylor swift's music wouldnt sound the same if she was ke$ha!!

in the same way stuff like stefann goldman's essays for lwe are obv 'unprovable' and not as well grounded as id like, but i really value the fact that hes trying to tie a bunch of things together conceptually, and that too provides an impt context for hearing/evaluating new music

I feel like a lot of indie coverage would benefit from that kind of "what are these guys actually like as people" type reporting, instead of the feeling I get v often which is that they are treated w this auteur-ish respect, as if who they are isnt related to the music they produce, like it's some kind of detached "statement"

tbrr and its been a long time since i looked but indie coverage would benefit from p much anything that wasnt an awkwardly constructed sentence or a reference to another band

More generally isn't the issue how these tactics are disproportionately distributed amongst genres.

So you get ad hominem crit (positive or negative) of stars like Taylor and Drake vs the small-scale inter-referentiality and over-priviliging of particular emotional impacts in indie rock writing vs post-dubstep and chillwave as reflective of the (ghost)modern condition of musical experience... and, like, none of these approaches are bad in themselves but it'd be nice to see some of the subjects and styles mixed up a bit more.

Not that people are consciously saying "oh if i'm gonna write about X then I have to do so in Y style."

I think most critics would say they're not really conscious of shifting their style based on what they write about (I don't sense that I do it, for instance).

It's more the issue of the venn diagram overlap between how people write and what they are drawn to musically.

imo more writers should use illustrations cf themartorialist.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-great-non-2011-song-i.html

Chillwave is a good example of as thing where (for me personally) there was too much written and talked about it for me to then hear any with my own ears - to listen to any would only be possible through the collective ears of everyone else and the only reason to do so would be to add my opinion to the pot but without it really feeling like my opinion.

Then yesterday I heard that james ferraro record without knowing anything about him at all and I liked it! Different from what I normally like (simultaneously makes sense that I would and also strange that I would) - but then read a bit about it and it was kind of annoying what was being written, so I didn't read any more

Chillwave is a good example of as thing where (for me personally) there was too much written and talked about it for me to then hear any with my own ears - to listen to any would only be possible through the collective ears of everyone else and the only reason to do so would be to add my opinion to the pot but without it really feeling like my opinion.

mark richardson did a good bit abt this on pitchfork, he compared it to seeing the 'most photographed barn in america' http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/8713-this-is-me-music-making-as-re-blog/

But I'm not a critic! It doesn't matter if I never hear a record, or hear it too late. It doesn't matter that I've never heard drake or metronomy or if i hear james ferraro later than everyone else. for the most part I actually DO hear music in a vacuum, or in my own contexts

A critic is much less able to do this so I think lex is right when he says about context - I would find it impossible to hear most of this music without context - I've already an opinion on many of the artists on the EOY lists without ever having heard most of them! But that opinion isn't my own, its received

xp

mark richardson did a good bit abt this on pitchfork, he compared it to seeing the 'most photographed barn in america' http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/8713-this-is-me-music-making-as-re-blog/

― joey joe joe junior shabadoo, Thursday, December

I dpnt think thats anything to do with the music though or any attendant qualities about it!

Its more to do with it being a thing that is talked about a lot and with strong detailed opinions - but that I haven't heard for myself. It could be any genre, I was just picking an example one that I was unfamiliar with (albeit the kind of one people like to intellectualize)

I mean - and I don't wish to criticize here - but even just the URL of that is the kind of thing that would make it even harder for me to hear chillwave for myself because on some level I now think that a chillwave artist is remaking music as a blog/tumblr/whatever - but before I've actually heard them to see whether I actually really do think that or not!

And even after hearing them i will still think that to some extent!

Maybe I'm too malleable and not opinionated enough!

I'd be interested if people are able to identify, in retrospect, the tipping point where they were no longer easily swayed by popular discourse in respect of particular genres - i.e. where they no longer felt vulnerable to that filtering of exterior viewpoints april refers to.

b/c I totally identify with that viewpoint april, but not in respect of areas of music I feel really familiar with and as much or more of a critical content generator than recipient.

april that's not an article about chillwave, i was just talking about the idea of responding to music's discourse making it impossible to hear the music

haha well, i mean you can just listen and see how well the framework seems to fit what you hear, i guess. like id argue that a bunch of tumblrwave stuff esp that new james ferraro record is sorta commenting on its own invisibility, the emptiness inside the air quote (haha arent i glad theres no sb on the sandbox)

Agree with Tim, inside a genre its not quite the same...

I'd be interested if people are able to identify, in retrospect, the tipping point where they were no longer easily swayed by popular discourse in respect of particular genres - i.e. where they no longer felt vulnerable to that filtering of exterior viewpoints april refers to.

― Tim F, Thursday, December 8, 2011

...in practical terms i think it might be as simple as "I hear a record before I read/hear about a record"

but even within a genre, and even with no one talking about an artist this can sort of happen - it can even be your own words that do it!

Like, i really liked a record by an artist this year and told a lot of people oh this record is really good. Now when that artist releases another record, people will probably ask me "oh what do you think of the new one?!" and that almost creates a micoversion of the above. This would happen even if no one asked! Its not the same but its like a smaller version of it, "I should have an opinion on record no 2 BECAUSE I had an opinion on record no 3"

it was the record i liked, not the artist per se

oops that should be "because i had an opinion on record no 1" not 3

I should say the smaller version detailed above isn't really an actual thing that happens or affects in the same way. Is probably more subconscious, but the mechanism is similar

And of course there is more reason for me to hear record no 2 than there is say radiohead or metronomy

idk ronan yr whole first post seemed p mean spirited in a thread that acknowledges its failings in it's premise. I guess I can see yr problem with the lex but everyone finds themselves disagreeing with 'consensus' at times

i wasn't mocking the entire thread by any means, just find people talking about "herd mentalities" pretty rich. i mean, it literally is saying other people's taste is based on them following each other like actual animals in a field. other people (and seemingly it was a huge percentage of them) put as much thought into what they like as a cow does when it follows another cow. come on!

anyway to move things on, i come at all this from the position of completely ignoring most current stuff just because i got a bit tired of having to engage with it and have opinions about whatever new thing each week.

i find weirdly if you never read about music and just pursue your own natural habit of an occasional mix here, following up a track you like if it happens, that any sense of hype just disappears really.

i listen to a lot of older stuff like jazz or classical and opera and things at the moment, just because i find it a nice removal from my job which involves processing about 30/40 very pop type pieces of content a day, and it's nice to have something which exists far beyond that.

but equally i do still check beats in space and stuff, oftentimes i'll hear something and really like it and it'll turn out to be someone i've seen friends posting about on facebook, or whatever, and i think "oh okay...that's who that is."

this sometimes reminds me that often hyped things are actually good, if i find myself looking up a track and it turns out to be whoever.

i guess overall what i'm saying that being relatively unconscious of hype about things isn't that different from being really inside the genre and feeling able to rubbish it. the net result is making your own decision.

it's just less angry, there's no need to really be that bothered, some people are hyping a record...very good.

are there people who are somehow beholden to hype or something? i'm quite interested in where choice stops here...pretty sure hyped things are hyped because everyone who likes them genuinely does so.

the funny thing is that what you're saying is what i thought was the baseline of the lex's worldview, but it's like he's pushed so far he's come back around to the other side

i assumed everyone on ilx had a baseline of dismissing talk of "herd mentalities", like as i said, isn't that the most common way people dismiss pop music?

stop attributing "world views" to me! i have never held a consistent or logical position on these things, it seems to me to miss the point somewhat.

btw i was not the first person to start talking about the "herd mentality", and when i do so it's referring to people who work in the music industry rather than ordinary listeners.

i have never held a consistent or logical position on these things, it seems to me to miss the point somewhat.

I identify with this a bit, I think this issue - how affected one is by hype etc. - is one in respect of which it's hard not to have really variable reactions, like one day to be supremely unruffled by it and the next to be filled with righteous indignation.

I guess because ultimately it's less about one's attitude to music than one's relationship with tribes.

It's probably one of the areas of music awareness that gloms onto politics most easily.

Well actually the first part of lex's sentence more than the second at any rate - by virtue of the first part i'm not sure if there's really a 'point' as such to miss.

the point is more to do with how one responds to music? having a rigorous world view misses the point that being a music listener is an unpredictable and messy affair (cf kogan's boney joan rule)

oh okay.

My reading of boney joan (which doesn't at all contradict the above) is that it's about the inadequacy of concepts vis a vis experience, that two voices can both code as being like a babbling brook and that can mean totally different things, because analogies for music can never exhaust it.

But most people (who understandably aren't as rigorous as frank) try to deny the above and fashion their post facto rationalisations of music enjoyment to be as predictable and as neat as possible.

So I don't think it's totally wrong to say e.g. "if you like this then logically you should like that, why don't you?" (or something similar) (rhetorical strategies which presume a certain consistency and orderliness to people's taste and enjoyment) because in general people's experience of their own music enjoyment is that it is self-consistent. Our conversations here tend to assume it as a given, in fact.

I pretty much refuse to do interviews b/c I more times than not I end up getting annoyed with the artist for doing the above plus sounding like dog latin.

i've only had this a couple of times - you just have to avoid the questions that are obviously going to lead to pat answers. i've grown to really enjoy doing interviews tbh.

same, still hate transcribing though

Actually yeah that may be the bigger issue. Basically anything involving set up, preparation, back-end work etc is irritating for me. Whereas reviews are like: sit down, write it in one go, submit.

I never really devoted myself to being a pro music critic sufficiently to get many interesting interviews anyway. One glorious exception was Sabrina from Mis-Teeq - who wasn't pat at all.

i might have said the same, many years ago! i learned to do it b/c you have to do it to make a living as a journalist (not just a music journalist), and in the process learned how rewarding it can be.

tbh - this is not meant personally - i am not wholly down with people swanning in to do the fun stuff and airily going "oh i don't like the rest of the job". though i guess this is kind of like me not understanding why professional journalists hated other people writing for free, back when i did that. then i went freelance and ohhhhh boy do i get it now. (though at the same time if i hadn't written for free then, i wouldn't have this career at all.)

transcription is the absolute worst obv

Is there some ethical imperative to do unenjoyable tasks beyond the usual Protestant one?

Or is it a more general issue with people dabbling in journalism who have other careers?

i think it's more a concern w/ the state of journalism and that it's easy to find people willing to share their thoughts with the world but rare to find people willing to actually tell stories

like, there's a very real value provided by journalism

of course, that doesn't defend 90% of vaguely journalistic puff-piece interviews, but still

I'm not sure that interviewing necessarily equates with storytelling and reviewing necessarily doesn't.

The state of music journalism as a career and the state of music journalism as a body of work are heavily related and mutually interdependent, but they're not the same thing.

In respect of the former, I would think it's more ethical of me not to be stealIng work from poverty line freelancers and then doing a half-assed job of it.

people who work for free undercut people who do this as a profession, basically. re: dabbling, i dunno, i did journalism as a side thing for years while having a proper job and i can't really blame anyone for choosing to actually earn some ££, but i'm sure you can think of an analogous situation in law whereby someone swans in to do the most fun, easy part of the job but airily dismisses the legwork that you do because it's, y'know, your career

I'm not sure that interviewing necessarily equates with storytelling and reviewing necessarily doesn't.

right but there's information that informs the public that can't be obtained through any other means

i guess i was gonna make a point about how being forced to include interviewing as a thing i did actually made me a better writer/journalist/reviewer, even though when i started out it was something i disliked, wasn't comfortable with, thought tedious etc. indeed learning to love it has been as much personal development as career development!

I'm not dismissing interviewing. But if someone told me that they decided not to become a litigator because they cannot stand document discovery I would sympathise.

The above makes absolute sense to me; to be clear, me saying I don't really have the temperament for interviewing was a self-criticism rather than a criticism of journalism or journalists. The same things that I struggle with there are things I struggle with in work.

my point was that i thought i didn't have the temperament for interviewing 5 years ago! but it's funny how wrong we can be about ourselves.