does this graphic design style give anyone else early-web flashbacks? 2003 was tight
web.archive.org/web/20010813104144/pitchforkmedia.com
Jaunting through the p4k archives
Zachary Peterson
Other urls found in this thread:
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
youtube.com
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
twitter.com
Jaxson Ortiz
also lol fwiw
Tyler Watson
Autumns
Le Carillon EP/Covers EP
[Absalom]
Rating: 5.9/7.8
184.
The wizard Merlin, his eyes flashing and his long white hair writhing in the storm-wind, holds the two discs in his outstretched arms. "Ye must take one or the other, boy. Chooseth!"
You look down at your cousin Danny, who shrugs back. "Don't ask me. I'm not the one who got us into this crazy, mixed-up time traveling adventure." You gulp, wishing your uncle Dash Connors was here; he knows sophisticated L.A. space-rock as well as he knows his way around an F-16. Which Autumns EP to choose?
IF YOU CHOOSE LE CARILLON, GO TO 189.
IF YOU CHOOSE COVERS, GO TO 186.
Dominic Hughes
Fennesz
Endless Summer
[Mego]
Rating: 9.4
I'm sure you've all heard of a festival that started in San Francisco called Noise Pop. I like seeing those two words together, as their confluence gets to the heart of what I love in music. The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, the Flaming Lips-- at various times, all these bands lacerated melody with distortion, thereby making it so much more striking. I don't hesitate to lump this Fennesz album into that category, though he's coming at the intersection from the noisy part of town (buyer beware). If the Beach Boys represent the ideal of angelic clarity at the near end, and white noise is the sonic chaos in the distance, Fennesz currently owns the territory about 2/3 the way down the scale.
Justin Bennett
John Zorn
Songs from the Hermetic Theatre
[Tzadik]
Rating: 8.6
Feeling irremediably bourgeois? Complacent? Tired of cycling through the same three emotions day in day out until that car/plane/helicopter crash finally brings relief in hurtling flames, jagged shards of glass, and the small insurance pittance your family must subsist on until they too are struck down in a school/post office shooting?
This may surprise you, but you are not alone.
Dozens of Americans have found relief with Zorn, the miracle breakthrough in life amplification. Zorn is not a pill; nor is it a cult; nor is it the mild electrocution therapy that in the past has promised so much but never delivered. Zorn is a unique aural blend of computer music, Japanoise, avant-jazz, new classical, and cartoon cut-ups-- a cutting-edge synthesis of Eastern and Western traditions. Clinically tested, loaded with dangerous additives and absolutely 100% guaranteed to approximate the feeling of a condom full of methamphetamines leaking in your stomach. Zorn doesn't just help you cope with life; it helps you cram existence into your orifices, comfortably and discreetly.
Elijah Russell
There are a ton of albums where they arbitrarily changed the scores. Some of them barely, like bumping an 8.2 to an 8.5. Makes no sense.
Brody Torres
Neu!
Neu!
[Astralwerks]
Rating: 9.7
Now is the time on Pitchfork when we dance! As part of a court-ordered apology for unleashing Fatboy Slim on an unsuspecting universe, the Astralwerks label has undertaken the incredibly noble task of re-releasing the first three albums by the legendary Düsseldorf duo Neu. The albums are to be played round the clock at Astralwerks HQ; the cheap Crayon graphics of the compact disc are to be pinned on shirts like scarlet letters; all employees are to dance the Robot at all times. We need to praise Neu like we should.
web.archive.org
i was thinking at work yesterday p4k should do a 'times we fucked up really really badly' list
if they haven't already?
Jose Smith
The only thing I know of that's close to that was Ryan saying that giving that Daft Punk album such a low score was a mistake (it ended up really high on their end of decade list)
David Sanchez
webpages used to make so much... sense
Grayson Anderson
Neu!
Neu! 2
[Astralwerks]
Rating: 7.5
... Then something happens. In the Nintendo world, the sound of tinkling electronic music suddenly running at double-time can only signal one thing: you are running out of time. But in the real world, it means something else entirely: you are running out of money. I guess it's to their credit that our insolvent heroes didn't simply pad out the remainder of Neu 2 with a giant sucking sound, or the minimalist ambient textures of Rother and Dinger turning out their pocket linings. Instead, they proceeded by inventing the modern remix. ...
web.archive.org
ight from now on i'm uploading the same shitty little thumbnail album cover from the archives
and adding those ellipses to indicate excerpts. just in case
Brody Ward
i hate pitchfork's new design, the one they had earlier this year or last year or before whenever they last changed it was so much simpler and just all around better.
Kevin Myers
Sonna
We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight
[Temporary Residence]
Rating: 5.7
Coach Naham pronounced the stressed first "a" in his name like you'd find it in the alphabet, and the second "a" like you'd find it in the beginning of the word "alphabet," or like the word "ham." He had a perpetually frozen facial expression that looked like he'd just bitten into a ripe lemon. And ever since the day he was hired to coach our team, the Baltimore Newcomers, we'd had the worst season in minor league baseball history. We hadn't won a single game, or even scored a single run. We often blamed this fact on his unorthodox coaching methods. Today, we were about to play game 42. Naham brought us into the dugout an hour early for a pep talk.
"What's up, Coach Naham?"
"Well, kids," he replied with his trademark grizzled sourness, "I'm gonna show you exactly what you did wrong in the game yesterday." He brought out a boombox. We all knew what that meant.
"Awww! Coach Naaaa-ham!" we all whined in unison. "Not the Sonna lesson again!" ...
yeah for real. i have a bunch of sites in the same vein archived on an old computer
Christian Taylor
omg i'd love to read that saves the day review
Michael Campbell
Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston
It's Spooky
[Jagjaguwar]
Rating: 6.3
... Whoever thought of getting Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair together was a cold-hearted motherfucker. Johnston, a schizophrenic manic-depressive who believes he will be resurrected 100 years after his death to tour with the Beatles and the Butthole Surfers, and Fair, an eccentric, compulsive songwriter with bad taste in eyewear and a penchant for ranting senselessly, could not possibly be good for each other, or music in general. Maybe Jad just wanted to see if he could outcrazy Johnston. But such a thing is not possible, even for a guy that's made an album of monster songs for children and sports a frizzy homeless-guy hairdo. ...
You always hear stories about Johnston being "insane." For years, I disregarded them as legend or exaggeration. But any interview with the man will easily convince you otherwise as he discusses his many selves and his delusional battles with Lucifer with deadpan conviction. He never seems even remotely lucid, and has spent several years of his life institutionalized. What a lot of people don't realize is that most of the songs that sound to the casual listener like nauseatingly twee homages to cartoons are actually deeply personal insights into his hallucinatory existence. ...
it looks like everything else. some smart young graphic designers like David Rudnick refer to this shit as aesthetic fascism
Colton Foster
gotchu
Saves the Day
Stay What You Are
[Vagrant]
Rating: 2.9
FA: 1-Cent CD; SAVES THE DAY - STAY WHAT U R ADV. PROMO!
You are bidding on a CD advance promo copy of Saves the Day's new album, Stay What You Are. The condition of the disc is excellent, though I can't in good conscience say the same about the music contained within. ...
David Gray
I Am the World Trade Center
Out of the Loop
[Kindercore]
Rating: 7.1
Let's play "What If." What If... Britney Spears, who, in real life, shot like a buxom arrow from the American South to the Mickey Mouse Club to the waiting and greasily magical hands of a cadre of Swedish record producers, instead stayed home through high school, went to college in a fairly hip Southern city, discovered "indie," dyed her hair a blonde so blonde it was almost white, and moved to NYC with a guy to craft bedroom dance-pop on a laptop computer? Really. What If? ...
Robert Wright
skipping ahead a bit. aug 2003, new design
Xavier Fisher
no image on this one
Ova Looven
58:34
[Artikal; 2003]
Rating: 3.0
... Minute 58:34
As the album fades out, I pass through an alleyway going towards East Broadway. On the roof of one building, there are about twenty or so people drinking brews and watching a movie being projected onto a whitewashed wall of the building directly across from it. What a brilliant thing to do; whoever came up with that idea for a party must be the coolest, best-dressed hipster on the planet. He was on Friendster seven years ago, knew about the Strokes before Fab Moretti was even born, and bought his first camouflage mesh hat way before you did. What a guy. The second thing I thought was this: not even he could possibly garner enough ironic energy to enjoy this perfectly unoriginal effort.
-Nicholas B. Sylvester, July 28th, 2003
Bentley Lee
Swans
Children of God
[Caroline; 1987; r. Young God/Atavistic; 1997]
Rating: 9.4
Swans
World of Skin
[Product INC./Rough Trade; 1988; r. Young God/Atavistic; 1997]
Rating: 7.9
As a college radio DJ in the mid-90s, I once played "God Damn the Sun"-- the coda from 1988's The Burning World-- for over an hour on repeat. Every time the song faded, I placed the needle back in the starting groove and waited for the tentative drones to begin again. The Swans' bleak eulogizing mixed perfectly with the snow outside the station window, and I imagined passers-by who could hear were realizing we'd found the proper soundtrack to wait out the winter, literally and figuratively: "When, when we were young/ We had no history/ So nothing to lose/ Meant we could choose/ Choose what we wanted then/ Without any fear/ Or thought of revenge/ But then you grew old/ And I lost my ambition."
Aaron Jones
Northern State
Dying in Stereo
[StarTime; 2003]
Rating: 0.8
You're a good person, you really are. You care deeply about the underprivileged; you are aware. You went to Vassar, or Wesleyan, or Wellesley. You know your Plath and Angelou, your Naomis (Wolf and Klein), perhaps even Laura Mulvey. The right's brazen usurpation of power, and the subsequent crusades, send you into paroxysms of anger. Time has come to share your compassion, your outrage, your unique insight. Too bad you lack even the modicum of talent required to put your musings into any form other than a weblog. Ahh-- but you can make them rhyme. Sort of. ...
Aaron Hill
King Geedorah
Take Me to Your Leader
[Big Dada; 2003]
Rating: 9.0
Alright, this is how it is. You don't know it yet, but this is your favorite album of the summer. Shit, of this whole foul and corporate-owned, Republican-approved year of our lord, two thousand and three. What MF Doom can do is on par with anything you can name off the top of your clever, underground noggin', and he most likely does it better. Never mind that his re-entry into the game, Operation: Doomsday, was a masterstroke of genre-shaming samples and virgin-tight beats that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Kool Keith's otherworldly approach to hip-hop (while keeping in touch with the asphalt, and digging a little deeper, one finger on the trigger and the other checking the TV Guide for B movies on Showtime). Heads will be discovering that album for the next ten years, and it'll still sound fresh. So... what to do when you've dropped a masterpiece and carved your name in granite after returning to the scene?
First step is to smoke trees, and catch up on your monster movies.
Charles Cook
Quantic
Mishaps Happening
[Ubiquity; 2004]
Rating: 6.9
I've been waiting forever to write this sentence: Fela Kuti is everywhere these days. Fela's complex history, unwavering politics, and indelible musical legacy have created the kind of iconic anchor necessary to hold down an increasingly flimsy global culture. Thank Universal for beginning the flood of reissues in 2000: now Fela's dark continental grind and scathing socialist message are reaching more Western listeners than ever before. The dense, syncopated rhythms and low-end swell of Afrobeat currently tints almost the entire urban dance music palette, from revivalists like Antibalas to Common's hip-hop highlife to Afro-dub rockers Tussle.
Obviously, electronic music's extended instrumental breaks are especially suited to the Afrobeat makeover; witness Masters at Work's sweaty, traditionally propulsive "MAW Expensive (A Tribute to Fela)" or Bugz in the Attic's buzzing broken-beat remix of "Zombie" from 2002's Red Hot + Riot compilation. Ubiquity is perhaps a little late to the party, showing up with Bristol's Will Holland, under the moniker Quantic, doing his take on four-on-the-floor Afrobeat and breezy Braziltronica. I've come to expect consistently fresh sounds from Ubiquity, and Mishaps Happening delivers a fair dose of their usual smoothed-out California breaks/sunrise house cocktail. But when Holland dips his ladle into the Afrobeat bucket, he comes up lacking; watery production and hollow beats fall short of a potentially thunderous dance floor deluge. ...
Jaxson Watson
Erlend Oye
DJ Kicks
[!K7; 2004]
Rating: 8.2
Dance music is pretty gay.
Let's not beat around bush, my stalwart indie-rocking comrades: In our world, lyrics can be heartfelt, songs can be ironic, albums can be post-grammatological, and occasionally, guitars can be acoustic. But unless there's some punk behind that disco, we aren't likely to indulge in dance music too often-- let alone dance to it. Because unlike indie rock, dance music's all the same, it's gay, and if it's in Massachusetts, its equal marriage rights are probably going to be denied.
Wait a second: Is it 1998 again? Because I remember more than a few of us thought the same thing about IDM, until we were all persuaded to pick up Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children. It was electronica and it was taboo, but we purchased in good faith because it was on Matador, a label we trusted. Boy, did we love the shit out of it-- and there weren't even guitars! ...