Browsing All Posts filed under »Music news and opinion«

Review Of The Year 2013: 12 Albums

December 18, 2013

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This is the fourth consecutive time I’ve written a review of the year’s albums, which is slightly scary, as I’m under the impression that writing about music is something that I’ve only just started doing. Still, as senility begins to work its erosional magic on the brain, the years do slip past without leaving so much cognitive residue, and as long as someone can confirm for me that I’ve been having a nice time, I won’t rail against it too much. At least I can look back through these annual articles, and although I’ll think it was someone else that wrote them and I can’t remember any of the music, I’ll know that a year took …

Monday Musing: If Property Is Theft, Who Stole Our Music?

May 13, 2013

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Meaningful utterances can be represented in physical form: a spoken sentence may be represented symbolically by writing, or mimetically, by an audio recording. Such representations may be reproduced indefinitely, whether by a symbolic process (someone reads the words and writes them down again) or a mimetic one (someone makes a photocopy of the writing). Each time this happens, a physical object becomes the conduit for an idea, for some units of meaning. You may be able to guess where I'm going with this: I'm going to be talking about music, as is my wont, and the reproduction thereof. This has been something of a hot topic since information technology made it so easy, and it raises a number of questions that anyone with much

Monday Musing: A Noise In The East

April 29, 2013

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As I write this I’m looking forward to an upcoming Damo Suzuki gig in Colchester. Suzuki spent around three years as vocalist with Can and was recorded with them on four legendary albums. Since 1973 he has been doing his own thing, much of it also involving making music, and much of it very interesting and creative by all accounts, but none of it quite as influential as the work he did with the Krautrock trailblazers. It’s hard to overstate the importance of those four albums, in terms of how great an influence they had on such a wide range of musicians, all over the world; although Suzuki’s global fame and star status can be gauged from the fact that he will be playing a mid-sized music pub when he comes to Colchester, in terms of his…

Monday Musing: The Ideology Of The Album

April 15, 2013

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I've been wondering about the way that I choose what music to write about, what the reasons for those choices are, and what the consequences of them might be. I feel I've been fairly rigorous in examining the way I think and write about specific pieces of music in detail, and I've gone to the effort of engaging with (relatively) current schools of thought in critical theory in order to inform my thinking. But this basic question, related both to my personal tastes and to the utility of my blogging, has remained something of a black box. I decided to have a poke around and see what I could break…

Monday Musing: Hacking, Creativity And Cool

April 2, 2012

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There’s a cinema ad I see sometimes… I think it’s for a phone or something. So, a singular failure as an ad, but as an inspiring piece of film-making it hits the nail on the head. It basically shows people (mainly young and pretty people, but you can’t expect social realism in a phone ad) going about their daily lives, finding ways to be creative about what they do, finding modes of jouissance in the banalities of their existence, be it dancing while ironing, putting detailed artwork in the suds of a partially washed car, parking a bicycle by jumping off it moments before it lands in the rack, breakdancing with an ad-board strapped to their back …

Monday Musing: Is Art Political Again?

March 19, 2012

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The more I write about different things, musical aesthetics, the music business, music industry politics, culture and all the rest of it, the less I feel like I’m writing about different things. It’s only when I take a step back that I can see how abstruse and theoretical some of the things I say about aesthetics, for example, must appear, because for me there is nothing less political about a topic like that than there is about any overtly social subject. Everything is political, everything is aesthetic, everything is emotional, everything is spiritual and everything is subject to fruitful theoretical examination …

Monday Musing: The Aesthetics Of Nature, And The Nature Of Music

March 5, 2012

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Every human being is a unique individual, and inherently valuable; what’s precious about them, moreover, is somehow connected to their uniqueness, their particularity. Trees, on the other hand… well, one’s much the same as another. Agree or disagree with these statements, there are certainly a lot of people who subscribe to both, but today I’m rambling aimlessly on in my inimitable style about aesthetics, and I get the impression that commonplace aesthetic responses reverse those positions.

Oli


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What I review:

People send me music faster than I can write about it, so I write about the submissions I like the most. I no longer actively solicit review materials, even if I absolutely love something. If you don't send it to me, I won't review it. If I pay for it, I won't review it. If it isn't (and won't be) available to my readers as a download or physical media, I won't review it. I enjoy listening to, and will review, music in any style whatsoever.

Submitting music for review:

If you have a physical package for your release, contact me for my address, as that's my preference, but if it's a download, just send me the link. When you submit digitally, I need the files on my hard disc: I won't review a stream, and I won't listen to a stream and tell you whether or not to submit. If you want me to consider your release for review, then submit it. Digital submissions need to arrive in a single folder with all of their metadata (ID3 tags) correctly set – track, artist and album names typed as you want me to see them – and with the artwork attached. If the release doesn't archive in my iTunes library as a single album, or I need to type in any of the info myself, I'll just bin it. I don't review music I've paid for, so if you send me a link to a paid download, I'll ignore it. If you don't understand any of this, ask someone before you submit. Don't ask me. I will review your release based on the information you give me (a link to your website is fine), so if you want me to list the correct price, release date, label, catalogue number etc., that's down to you. I make no promises about whether or when I'll review your work, and I won't discuss my decisions about what I do and don't review. I give preferential consideration to physical submissions, but I receive too much music in all formats to make any guarantees. The very best music I receive, and that I can think of the most to say about, will get a feature review, but if I review it at all it still means it's among the cream of the submissions, so don't be disappointed if it's a short write-up in a post with a lot of other releases.

What I want in return:

I put a good deal of work into my reviews, and pay very close attention to your music: writing about someone's music is a responsibility I take as seriously as looking after someone else's child. In return, I ask two things. Firstly, please be patient: your release will be featured as soon I get time to write the review, and as soon as my site's schedule can accommodate it. Secondly, please promote my site. I'm trying to support artists with publicity, which works both ways, so if I post a review of your work, I really appreciate it if you link to it through all your usual promotional channels.
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