I don’t really know what I’m doing at the moment. This is a spur of the moment idea stemming from a conversation that is currently ongoing, which I’ve decided that I’m going to be an ass and go and take it off into this tangent instead of actually finishing the conversation like a normal person. So hey! What the hell, right? Fuck it, here it goes:
Because I’m an over opinionated, egotistical jackass on the internet with a music library full of shit that I never listen to but have just because other over opinionated, egotistical jackasses have told me that they are, in some way or another, worth my time, I’ve found an outlet in writing about the thing that I love the most (a good IPA is second) on this here website. I enjoy it, but at the same time I think that this very site and those like it, pick your poison — CMG, Pitchfork, Metal Reviews, Punknews etc etc — are inherently fucked because it all stems from taking the individual experience that is listening to a record and pulling it out of context; warping it into a collection of phrases and similes meant on describing something that is, at its core, indescribable. To me the power of music lies completely within the moment. Sure it can be dissected and studied, and there is a time and a place for such scholarly exercises, but that kind of approach completely misses the psychological effect that music has on us. The moment when people start to look at music, be it a song, an album, or a performance, outside of its immediacy is when I jump ship. Sure, you can try to claim it as a cultural identifier, but lets be honest here, music is now nondescript in the lexicon of what culture is, and the only music that has the kind of reach to rekindle that flame is more of a reflection of board rooms and focus groups rather than some sort of cultural zeitgeist. None of the music I listen to has any cultural weight. Its impact lies in how it makes you feel and what it makes you think while you are experiencing it. It’s more than words and noises. It’s an experience. That’s the only way I look at music anymore. So every time you read a review on this site, or on any other, the only words that should be there are, “Listen to it and experience it for yourself. It’s all subjective to your experiences anyways”.
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It's hard to think this way, but it's important to at least try your hardest.
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It's always hard to tell with the blog posts, seeing as there's the ominous "By ..." at the top...
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Music punctuates the cultural sphere less cleanly than it did before, but it's still got some weight behind it.
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but ya I agree with this to the point where I have nothing constructive to say...
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I am glad that you guys have been posting more unique content to the blog lately though. Keep it up.
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wanted to be the first post about the P.O.S. reference.
I'm too bored tonight.
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except judo...judo he is 3rd
I am also too fucking bored
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that hurt me deep, bro
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One thing that this post completely neglects to mention though, is the fact that there are albums which have a higher aggregate score than other albums; thus, clearly, there is a purpose to reviewing. Bad music does definitely exist.
Or maybe I just misunderstood this post completely.
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I've journed long and far this day
Lurking shadows in the parapets
Will never make me turn away
Darkened city veiled in crimson mist
Entombed in time without decay
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The Holy Mother
And the Father of Light
Will never refuse us logic
Crystal Logic
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That men have never seen before
Magik lives in all dynasties
The light of love shines ever more
In the crypt of Atlantean Kings!!
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I never felt so strange
To think that this could be our fate
To freeze in darkened pain
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1. Hear about it from someone (i.e. Love American)
2. Hear that it is acclaimed or influential (i.e. Refused)
3. Hear that it involves someone known for/involved in something that I enjoy (i.e. side project)
4. Hear it being played and enjoy it
The thing about that list is that number four is rarely ever applied, because I don't go to shows and I pretty much never hear anything good on TV/radio. So it pretty much comes down to exposure in terms of what I listen to, but opinion is opinion.
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I got a feel for games
I got a love for life girl
Hey baby I'm feeling free again
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I will never run away
In The Veils of Negative Existence
I am the master here to stay
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I sail the seas of negativity
To banish evil from this place
I fight with sword of fire and lightning
I am the guardian come this day
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That the cost is your mind
Ride the Serpent and make your stand
Cast no doubt to The Ram
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It is and endless tunnel where the light at the end is never brighter until you realize breaking things down is o k a y .
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Still they all mean the same, man burning in his fears
The Anti-Christ will come and rise up through the sea
The Dreams of Eschaton have shown this all to me
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So redsky (btw, you guys should really put your name at the end of these posts until this bug is fixed), do you discuss music at all anymore? A review is simply a type of discussion. Your thoughts about the selection of music; how you related to what was expressed. It's all about sharing the experience with others. Music is certainly personal in that it will affect different people in different ways (as does just about everything else in this world), but it is also a fact that it unites people through common thought so it's not exactly a personal thing in that sense. As for the cultural thing, it's clear that certain people with similar life experiences, ways of life and interests will identify with certain types of music than others. Globalization has only diminished that aspect of it a little. "Music punctuates the cultural sphere less cleanly than it did before, but it's still got some weight behind it." is an accurate comment.
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Don't get me wrong, there have still been a couple albums that have that emotionally walloping effect that I've gotten while here (something about GY!BE's music strikes several chords with me) and the fact that I've opened up to genres like folk and electronica is something that I never thought I'd do even a year ago, but music used to be my life support system. Now it feels slightly like a chore sometimes, since there's just so much I want to listen to.
I'm thinking that after I finish downloading what's on my list right now, I'm going to stick with what I have for a few months and just focus on listening through what I have, and just keep up with releases by artists I know I like.
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This means that a large percentage of the quality music doesn't get the exposure required to attain cultural impact (i.e. would Zeppelin have gotten any radio play had they come out in this type of marketplace? Would anyone know who they were or would they be about as popular as Slough Feg?)
Also what's up with all the weird spam people are posting lately? I'm assuming it's from some tumblr or something, but I have no idea...
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Damn thats alot of werrrrdz.
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EMERITUS
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lol how is this possible
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I'm the person he was talking to while writing this, and he didn't seem drunk at all to me.
Samizdat: Robert Christgau is a terrible writer.
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Maybe all your friends are a bunch of metalheads, but mine arent. I assure you they have no clue who Opeth is. Like I said they might be popular if you're into metal, but the average person isnt into metal let alone death metal and Opeth means nothing to them. You cant honestly tell me you havent noticed this yourself. Wherever I go its Rap and Pop music with sprinkles of the Foo Fighters lol.
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You can describe music, because it is not indescribable. Take music as an experience (of emotion, ideas), language is developed around experiences: what nailing that cavewoman was like and so on. It's perfectly equipped to explain the experience of music on the mind. I think the problem yoiu describe arises through trying to just explain the music and expecting the experience to be explained as well.
Also, can we all shut the fuck up about subjectivity? It's based on the assumption that we're all different; an assumption that couldn't be more wrong. We're born with very similar neural set-ups, and from their we're all exposed to a society which is very stringent on teaching people the same emotional reactions. e.g. if I place a picture of a cute cat in front of you most people would go "awww" unless they're sociopathic (though true sociopaths would probably still go "aww", just because they know that's what they're meant to do) or so up their own ass that they see that as somehow below them. Face it, people react to things in similar ways, so a reviewer is perfectly justified in expecting the readers to share in their experiences with an a album. (/psychology student)
The act of reviewing can be good for the reviewer, too. Personally, I fucking love dissecting an album: understanding how it works and why I like it/ don't. Maybe that's the autistic half of me showing through, but I love understanding.
Though to add to your out-pour, I don't think there's any point - for the reader's point of view - in a negative review for an album no body has heard of. Simply put, there's no reason to read a review of just another album you won't listen to.
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which is why everyone likes the same music YEAAAAAAAH
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not sure such a thing is possible anyway for many of the points in this blog and some of knotts
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music has relevance and meaning that goes beyond our immediate experiences or initial gut reaction while listening to it. so we write/think/talk about it, and attempting to articulate why it moved us or made us feel a certain way is part of the appreciation. anyone who isn’t mentally deficient already knows that it’s best to actually listen for yourself instead of blindly trusting a review but that doesn't mean the actual process is worthless. people may approach an album from different angles and draw different conclusions but the actual content remains there to draw from and be discussed
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not very!
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I never said anything about this, I just expressed surprise at your statement of not knowing a single person who's ever even heard of Opeth.
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yeah this basically. when you've devoted enough time to music, you know the moments that make you sit and say 'wow', and the input of others becomes pretty much irrelevant. and rating albums becomes irrelevant too. it doesn't matter if the album's a 2 or a 4 if it's hitting me just right at this moment in time.
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I mean they've sold millions of records...
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I've never been there, but I hear that NYC has a lot of people. Opeth was not that obscure when I was in high school either. I can only imagine that awareness of them has grown since Watershed. It's a little sad to think that there isn't anyone who knows them in your circle of acquaintances. You should definitely try to meet at least a single person who shares one of your main interests.
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Opeth isn't death metal brah.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Shit, son, way to not be a part of any of the many, many music communities here. Opeth aren't 'mainstream', but I don't know how you haven't met a single person who has heard of them in NYC unless you never go to any shows or engage in any physical scene.
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yeah they are, at least their first 2-3 albums
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in other news Tyler the Creator is more obscure than Jay Z
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If you're not going to engage in the communities that revolve around styles of music, you're never going to meet people and make friends that are interested in the same styles as you.
And NYC is one of the LAST cities where you're likely to draw a blank if you mention a 'Sputnik band'. I'd understand if you were from Bumfuck, Midwest, but this city has one of the most diverse representation of music tastes in the world, so for you to not run into people who know a relatively popular metal band just indicates that you're almost completely disengaged.
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You're complaining about not being able to find other metal fans when you associate yourself with a very small amount of people, most of whom don't even listen to music? Holy fucking shit, shut up. It's like complaining about not being able to find old school horror fans while hanging out with a bunch of old people.
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But, your suggestion is not a new one (nor do I imagine you intend it to be)--Gadamer basically made the same argument in "the Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem" by arguing all art criticism is a corruption of the art itself because it removes the subjective experience, or approximates what an acceptable subjective experience might be. However, this suggestion, that all forms of art criticism (film, literature, etc.) is a corrupting practice, negates the expansion of thought about why we like the things we like. The reason I write reviews, besides on a recommendatory level, is to explore the ever increasing brain trust of writing about art and the experience of experiencing.
Yes, there are problems especially with the internet level critics, the muddying of the consumer/producer/gate keeper dichotomy, and the over-reliance on creating trends instead of lasting music, but I also think simply raising your hands and saying "well you like what you like" is also problematic.
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I'm not quite sure what you seem to think you're getting at, unless you believe that these 200gb+ libraries are being amassed over the course of a few weeks by people who just download any and every "hyped" album. I've been listening to, and subsequently collecting, music for 10 years. And during that time I've amassed a rather large collection of music. It's not a dick measuring contest in the slightest
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and guys are like YEAH RIGHT!
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head=exploded
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huh I played three sports in high school and specifically remember jamming old school Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera etc in the locker room before football games. And I wasn't the one putting it on. In fact, the first time I ever heard Entombed was in a high school locker room. In the fucking Midwest yo!
plus not all people who like rap are wiggers, this YankeeDudel fellow sure is saying a lot of dumb stuff up in here.
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;)
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BUT STILL
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Obviously it's more difficult to find large groups of people into extreme types of music; that's a large part of their genesis anyway. I know like maybe 6-7 people irl who even can stomach metal, and out of those maybe 3 who can stomach the heavier stuff. If metal or indie or "electronica" had mass mainstream appeal, we wouldn't really need sites like this. Turntable really is a great site to somewhat mimic the action of listening to music with friends.
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but then again there were metalheads in all three of them. I mean, do you guys just go to small schools or something? the high schools I went to ranged from 1300 to 4000 students...
or maybe it's that sunny west coast that just breeds pop and indie fans? idk
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cause we're better than everyone duh.
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but yeah my experience in high school also probably had a lot to do with being a musician, so I hung out with a lot of music nerds
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Chicago's awesome though
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missing out, brah. shoulder-length blond hair and surfing every day. and just yesterday i ran into ryan gosling on the way to the market.
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"it speaks to me man. they take chaos and make it beautiful"
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Emim's butthole will never be the same again
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"I can understand the use of reviews and such when people use them to find new music and such,"
^ This pretty much explains why reviews are important to music sites. I don't even understand why there was a debate going on when this point was mentioned more than once haha.
To the current discussion, I had a group of like 6-8 friends in high school that all listened to death metal/progressive metal, a couple even into black metal. Obviously you might get shafted and just don't know people irl with a good varied taste in music. That's what the internet is for !
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Every person on sputnik shares similar experiences with music (with the exception of BaselineOOO, whose taste reflects a different upbringing), making this site possible. Saying, I like this is tantamount to saying you might like this, so that's where writing reviews and such comes in... but yeah, the site regulars have made writing into their own arms race... not that that's bad, but it can detract from the music, I think.
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I would say expose yourself to new experiences, like listening to jazz, classical, and regional music stylings (bluegrass, for instance, which is popular in Minnesota).
Also, try to get out of the house and talk to new people, make friends, have fun, do dumb stuff. Life is good, but not everyone on here has one tbh