What is music writing 'cool' today?

[Corpsey]

Speaking from personal experience, there's a pressure that falls on you when you write something for a publication either online or in print, a sense of responsibility for whatever meagre influence you might have on the success or failure of a record, the knowledge that the artist themselves might read what you've written, the platforming of your opinions etc... but also a pressure to write something polished and 'proper'. Something with a structured form, something impressive and clever, and all the rest of it.

On Dissensus there's obviously certain pressures being exerted but on the whole people can be more themselves here, less filtered, less bothered about being witty. So you get opinions, and writing, that you'd never find in a magazine or online publication. Apart from anything else there's no EDITOR. (The extreme version of this would be a 4CHAN style Dissensus, which is what the tag system semi-simulates.) Also, you get PEOPLE you'd not get in a magazine writing on forums or social media. The polished nature of magazines discriminates towards people who can write in a certain way, people who usually would be university graduates, presumably less and less necessarily white middle-class but I would expect still fairly predominantly that.

I find comments under videos on YouTube that resonate more than anything a journo might write, because they'll be coming from a very personal place or they'll be an unapologetic un "reasoned" opinion.

(There's definitely PROs to the platform effect. I have written more considered and 'elegant' sentences in album reviews than I generally do on here.)

 

[luka]

Elegant overwrought sentences feel fake whenever I find myself using them on dissensus. Show-offy, in a gauche way. A conversational format keeps prose honest.

 

[Corpsey]

There's more self-consciousness to journalism than forums. Not less egotism but less consideration. The posts I make on here are often little more than brain farts. But a fart is honest if nothing else.

 

[entertainment]

Speaking from personal experience, there's a pressure that falls on you when you write something for a publication either online or in print, a sense of responsibility for whatever meagre influence you might have on the success or failure of a record, the knowledge that the artist themselves might read what you've written, the platforming of your opinions etc... but also a pressure to write something polished and 'proper'. Something with a structured form, something impressive and clever, and all the rest of it.

On Dissensus there's obviously certain pressures being exerted but on the whole people can be more themselves here, less filtered, less bothered about being witty. So you get opinions, and writing, that you'd never find in a magazine or online publication. Apart from anything else there's no EDITOR. (The extreme version of this would be a 4CHAN style Dissensus, which is what the tag system semi-simulates.) Also, you get PEOPLE you'd not get in a magazine writing on forums or social media. The polished nature of magazines discriminates towards people who can write in a certain way, people who usually would be university graduates, presumably less and less necessarily white middle-class but I would expect still fairly predominantly that.

I find comments under videos on YouTube that resonate more than anything a journo might write, because they'll be coming from a very personal place or they'll be an unapologetic un "reasoned" opinion.

(There's definitely PROs to the platform effect. I have written more considered and 'elegant' sentences in album reviews than I generally do on here.)

I see that too. I mean, very often, the best or most accurate things that you can write about a piece of music have already been written. But you can't just re-affirm what other people have said about it. You have to find some original angle or analysis. Some empty piece of ground to stand on. If it's not readily apparant to you and you have to invent something, then it's not sincere, and that shines through.

 

[entertainment]

Then you get to a place where I'd rather have personal anecdotes of what the music means to the reviewer than some contrived stance

 

[craner]

Nothing wrong with elegant sentences.

 

[sadmanbarty]

What's 'nuum?

genuinely one of the greatest, most exciting times in my life was when i first heard about the hardcore continuum.

i'd only just dropped out of school and i was working really horrible jobs (one involved cycling through turbulent elephant and castle traffic delivering medicines for this pharmacy in which i was exposed to staggering levels of poverty and suffering). every day i'd get home and would get on my computer and just enter the magical world of the nuum. reading millions of blogs theorising about it. going on youtube and mixcloud and discovering loads of old tape packs and pirate radio sets.. trawling through discogs try and discover which tracks pioneered which elements of the music.

idyllic respite.

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writin...ynolds-on-the-hardcore-continuum_introduction

 

[craner]

Apart from some rare established writers there has been no good writing about music since music journalism became an adjunct to PR in the mid-1990s and young journalists began to treat record companies as mates and benefactors and needed them to plan careers.

 

[entertainment]

No this has not been good. One of the reasons why stopped reading FACT and RA. That forced politization of anything. I enjoyed when Mark Ernestus in a RA features refused to be boxed in by the writers comment on the refugee situation. Also the overt PC-ness of RA prompted the reactionaries in the comment section which became the only spot for interesting viewpoints, really. Then they closed it, and now nobody cares about RA.

It's good that Elvis or Beethoven can have their cultural significance reappraised. It's less good that people are forced to being critical of their own feelings towards art via political implications. Think we're on the same page.

 

[craner]

It is understandable. Kodwo Eshun described ditching his law degree to become a music journalist (or cultural critic, or concept engineer or whatever) as taking a vow of poverty. Tim Finney saw the writing on the wall, and actually became a lawyer instead. There's no money in it and you might as well work for a record company anyway, for all the creative or intellectual freedom you actually get. Unless, I suppose, you stick to an aesthetic ghetto like the Wire, which is kind of like writing a blog anyway.

 

[firefinga]

Nothing, it's absolutely dead.

 

[luka]

Nothing wrong with elegant sentences.

Depends on what you mean by elegant. It's absurd to try to write like Gibbon in today's world. In fact it's shameful. It's like insisting on wearing a bow tie.

 

[Corpsey]

Are people writing music reviews in the style of Gibbon? :crylarf:

 

[Corpsey]

Actually 'The Decline and Fall of the Hardcore Continuum' is a book I would read

 

[entertainment]

Trying to write like Faulkner while reviewing a hip hop or rock record is pretty strange in the first place. They're antithetical mediums.

 

[Corpsey]

"It has been remarked with more ingenuity than truth, that the virgin purity of the 'nuum was never violated by schism or heresy before the reign of Mala or Joy Orbison, about one hundred years after the death of Rave."

 

[luka]

Are people writing music reviews in the style of Gibbon? :crylarf:

It was Craners original career plan.

 

[version]

I enjoy some of the reviews on RYM. You sometimes get these huge ones which have nothing to do with the record.

 

[version]

When you look for music writing do you tend to look for writing on stuff you're already into or writing which will get you into stuff? I get the impression that back in the day it would be the latter, but nowadays it's the former.

 

[blissblogger]

Apart from some rare established writers there has been no good writing about music since music journalism became an adjunct to PR in the mid-1990s and young journalists began to treat record companies as mates and benefactors and needed them to plan careers.

That's not true

There's been plenty of good, occasionally even great, writing in the last couple of decades

And people do still do negative take-down pieces - perhaps not so much within incestuous dance scenes, it's true.

The problem with the good writing is that it is scattered across this huge field of discourse, so it's harder for writing to create sparks with other writing

There aren't really hubs as such, where people either violently take issue with a rival viewpoint, or build on it

The Wire has had that in the past, not so much nowadays - but i think the monthly nature of its publication always made it hard for debates between writers to sustain, because of the gaps between issues being just a bit too long c.f. the weekly music press, where you could counter-attack or pick up on what was written by someone else the previous week.

The disappearance of magazine-vibe is a problem too - caused by the isolating nature of digital communications - contributors will write for a magazine, emailing in their copy, and might never have met the editor in person, let alone any of the other writers. That kind of collective personality that a magazine could have, and the useful friction of viewpoints and personalities within it, has gone - because people never hang out.