It was announced this week that music reviews website Pitchfork was going to be consumed into GQ Magazine by it’s publishers, with the loss of a number of jobs. For a period in the mid-00’s Pitchfork was essential reading, comparable the NME at the peak of it’s popularity. It captured the zeitgeist at the time, giving rise to a genre of “Pitchfork Indie”: North American based guitar music, mostly sung by white blokes (with the odd exception) and occasionally featuring drum machines or synths.
Make no mistake, it’s a big loss - although it had waned in influence over the years it was still one of the few places covering releases in depth as well as running longer-form features. It could make or break a record, a 10.0 rating was essentially a golden egg for the band, leading to bookings in the cooler spots on the circuit and orders from record shops across the US and Europe. There were criticisms of it too, a too-narrow focus on a particular genre of music (which it did eventually address), bad ratings for good albums (always subjective, of course) and writing that was too wanky (hey, we’ve all been guilty of that), but on the whole it was the place to read about a lot of interesting new music that was being made at the time.
Originally there was a sense of humour to Pitchforks reviews. This Chemical Brothers review was always a favourite of mine (although I didn’t agree with the reviewers clear anti-dance music bias), whilst their review of dreadful Aussie rock group Jet’s album Shine On captured how bad it was perfectly via the medium of a YouTube video. That sense of humour isn’t something we really see any more, either on Pitchfork or anywhere else. Music isn’t that serious guys, not everything needs to be so deep. Let’s chill a little when writing about it! As well as the humour Pitchfork wouldn’t be afraid to slate an album if needed - that’s something we rarely see anymore. Is it ethically right to criticise an album that an artist has put their heart and soul into? Who cares, if something is shit, or contrived, or a clear cash-grab then people shouldn’t be afraid to voice that opinion, and record labels should see that as part of the game. You can’t please all the people all the time, sometimes bad music manages to get released (sometimes bad music manages to go on and be really successful).
Bad reviews are part and parcel of releasing music - it’s totally subjective so what one journalist likes another might hate. About a decade ago (so in it’s heyday) I once got an utterly scathing review on FACT - it was on the first vinyl record I’d ever worked on (and a release I’m still proud of today) but the review tore it apart. Did I kick off at the reviewer? No. Did it stop me reading FACT? No. Luckily the record got a decent amount of positive coverage elsewhere but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little painful to see something I’d worked so hard on get criticised by a platform I respected. You rarely see a bad review any more - PR companies don’t like them, advertisers don’t like them, artists & labels don’t like them. You could say do we need to read about what’s bad at all, when the space could be spent telling us what’s good and what will add to our lives. I disagree - a bad review is an important tool in helping readers avoid the dross. Don’t be snide for the sake of it, but constructive criticism is always welcome.
There’s so much that’s already been written on the state of music journalism, and this Pitchfork news will inspire a thousand more thinkpieces on the subject. It’s clear we’re not in a golden era of journalism right now - there’s fewer and fewer big outlets for reviews, labels won’t pay to advertise in magazines or on websites, journalists are paid a fraction of what they were. Mixmag’s print edition died during the pandemic, FACT has just stopped it’s mix series, no doubt a precursor to the site closing down completely, Reading Resident Advisor feels more like reading The New Statesman than it does a music magazine these days (does going out clubbing need to be a political act? Can’t it just be fun?). Faith was reborn as a mouthpiece for Defected. There’s some hope, Disco Pogo has some pretty high quality writing in it but only publishes a couple of times a year so isn’t exactly the best place to aim for a review on a time-led campaign, and The Wire continues on in it’s own lane, probably the best music magazine out there right now, albeit with a less mainstream remit than most others. Online, The Quietus is home to some great writing, and is able to cover music a bit outside of it’s comfort zone in an interesting way. (One of my criticisms of Pitchfork was that perhaps it expanded a little too much, and started trying to convince readers that music they weren’t interested in was something they had to be interested in. If I want to read about pop music I’ll find somewhere to read about pop music - stick to what you’re good at.)
We need music journalism, as an industry we need it to promote and push our musical projects, to get people interested in them and to build the story around them. You can’t tell the whole story in sleevenotes or Bandcamp descriptions, a good journalist will tease a story out of even the most boring interviewee. As punters, music listeners, whatever you call us we need journalists to put us on to new things, to tell us what’s going on elsewhere. The world’s smaller than ever, but you’re still not going to find out about a music scene in Lagos, Rio or Warsaw without someone there to tell you about it. Playlists can only do so much, but there’s little context to them. Here’s a good track you should listen to, now here’s another, and another. Why are these tracks good? Why has the curator picked them for the playlist? There’s so much more we can be doing, but of course in the race to the bottom there’s no money to pay anyone to do it.
It’s looked for a while that the future of journalism is one of two things, high quality, infrequent periodicals (like Disco Pogo), or Substacks, written by individuals, sharing what they love and more importantly telling you why they love it. You might not always agree with them, but when did you agree with every 4.5 or 9.9 Pitchfork doled out?
Substacks are basically a move back to the blogging era - which gave us some exciting stuff. There’s a couple of problems with this - the first is that it focuses on giving a platform to the individual - and that’s something that is soon going to get expensive if you decide to subscribe to a number of writers. It’s unfair on established (and upcoming) journalists to have to rely on direct subs like this, for some people like me music writing is a labour of love, but for many it’s their bread and butter. (I wouldn’t ever dream of charging for this newsletter as these are just a collection of thoughts and hot-takes rather than any serious attempt at music criticism.) I tend to pick and choose the writers I subscribe to every few months or so, but having one central place where you could just pay once and read the thoughts of a number of writers would be much better… if someone can figure out a way to pay writers fairly whilst using an affordable subscription model for readers then I’m sure they’ll be onto something. The other issue is, whilst I can go back and look at a Jockey Slut or Mixmag issue from years ago in an archive the moment that Substack gets bought, or changes its business model then writers will move somewhere else, and that content will eventually get lost. Maybe that’s the world we live in now, where no one owns anything. Music comes and goes from streaming services, music writing comes and goes too. Nothing is permanent.
Ten Point Oh
This weeks music then. I’ve put a load of Pitchfork-era stuff in the playlist to kick it off. Big tunes, great tunes that all got pushed hard by Pitchfork around that time. A mixed bag of stuff, I liked it all, and back when I DJ’d regularly, played it all. Paper Planes never failed to go off, and it’s still a wicked tune these days. Same with All My Friends - genuinely one of my favourite tracks despite James Murphy trying as hard as possible to destroy any mystique of cool he had about him…
There’s a new Burial record out, but it isn’t Christmas! He’s been putting himself about a bit lately has old Burial hasn’t he? First releasing something on Fabric and now going to XL which feels like the logical place for him outside of Hyperdub. I feel for the poor sod who paid £100 for one of the white labels on Discogs now it’s getting a ‘proper’ release. Is it any good? It’s twelve minutes long which is a good start. Some of Burial’s recent tracks have felt a bit phoned in, but this seems like it’s reinvigorated him a bit. Breakbeats! Ecstasy! It definitely sounds like it belongs on XL, that’s for sure. Yeah it’s pretty decent, not up there with his best, and maybe a bit too hectic for repeated listening, but in the spirit of this newsletter I’ll give it a 7.4. (Also can someone reissue South London Boroughs?)
Whilst we’re on XL - there’s a new Joy Orbison tune out via Hinge Finger which sounds pretty gruff. Less garage-y, more ruffer, I like it.
There’s a compilation of Sandwell District singles and outtakes and stuff. I’ve not ordered it yet, but probably will. The reissue of Feed Forward was my favourite thing of last year (I nearly called this newsletter Feed Forward, but didn’t) so this is bound to be good too.
Two new Recollection GRM titles. We used to have a running joke about people buying these and having them sit on their shelves sealed for ages. There’s no doubt they look nice, but you have to be pretty committed to ‘out there’ sounds to listen to a lot of their catalogue. That’s the point of the label I suppose, to really push the boundaries of what is and what isn’t music. I don’t think any of their catalogue makes it to digital, so you’re on your own in finding it to listen to. One for my fellow electroacoustic headz.
The Trilogy Tapes has got to be one of the UKs most reliable labels hasn’t it? Have they ever put out a bad release? Some of it’s pretty tough to listen to (Chemotex, Metasplice, Aaron Dilloway), but it always wins you round you in the end. It’s one of my favourite labels currently, and they’ve just released a couple of new mixtapes. One from Extrastereo and one from Batata, rumoured to be Will Bankhead himself. Part of what’s so good about these mixtapes is the element of surprise, they’re probably sold out now but if you can get hold of a copy of either (or both) I doubt you’ll be dissapointed.
Vadislav Delay’s Dancefloor Classics project has a new release out today, compiling all five physical volumes into a digital release. I struggle with Footwork if I’m honest, whilst some of it is truly excellent, a lot of it is really lazy, but this definitely falls into the former camp. It’s fun, for an artist generally considered fairly serious it’s nice to see him work with pop and R&B samples and generally just sound like he’s enjoying what he’s doing.
Finally, there’s a new Donato Dozzy album out titled Magda. Typical Dozzy this, not that that’s a bad thing of course. Reminds me of that Bee Mask remix project he did a few years ago (one of the greatest pieces of electronic music period. If you don’t have it, check it out, trust me.).
Anyway, that’s enough from me this week. Playlist below and thanks as ever for reading, sharing, commenting.