i found a nomination for stupidest thing written so far in 2003 (please add your own!)

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For the rest of us-- Americans, predominantly-- this EP makes widely available one of the best dance songs released last year: Röyksopp's remix of The Streets' "Weak Become Heroes". It was the defining moment in the short-lived "microhouse" craze, which, in the simplest terms, translated to a sort of humble, almost twee dance music: beats untainted by crystalline production, boring arial-font layouts and you know... pacifiers, huge pants, that shit.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:31 (twenty-three years ago)

you have three guesses as to A.) where it was published and B.) who wrote it

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:31 (twenty-three years ago)

pfork, ott?

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:32 (twenty-three years ago)

It's like I'm reading it in large, irregularly-spaced crayon font.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:32 (twenty-three years ago)

yancey did you read pfork already today? no cookie for you!!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:33 (twenty-three years ago)

there's nothing wrong with Arial font - the rest is fine

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

pfork

heh, xpost. you guys.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Hey, I wrote THAT!

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:34 (twenty-three years ago)

(note: not really)

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:35 (twenty-three years ago)

no i didn't look at pfork. i rarely do anymore. and gimme back my motherfucking cookie!

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:37 (twenty-three years ago)

actually I still got Ned's remark about Ann Coulter in my mind, so this seems like a good thing - more Pitchfork cluelessness please (a wish that will be granted)!

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:39 (twenty-three years ago)

ILM's relentless obessesion with pfork continues. but if it brings anymore 'angry' stuff from ott then it might be useful.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:40 (twenty-three years ago)

i think the thing that bothers me most is ott's kneejerk contempt for "free weekly style writing"...this is no different than when scott seward plays dumm and writes somthing like "mogwai tech-step 12 inch"...except you never get the impression ott is just putting on a pose.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:41 (twenty-three years ago)

it's upsetting that nitsuh's medicine review had to play second fiddle to it. aside from that, is the track nearly that good? i haven't heard it.

― Felcher (Felcher), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:42 (twenty-three years ago)

For someone pretty illiterate in this sort of music, can you explain why the passage quoted is so off-base?

― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:42 (twenty-three years ago)

a.) Royksopp have nothing to do with micro-house...Royksopp make admittedly pretty but negligible coffee table downtempo ala dirty vegas

b.) "short-lived", "craze" ?!?!

c.) the references to pacifiers, and other rave acoutrements at the end.

mostly this is just ott's normal biases coming to the fore (cf. an ancient, epic ilm micro-house thread.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:45 (twenty-three years ago)

what abt the rest of the review?

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:48 (twenty-three years ago)

oh, the normal inability to write about a record without stopping every two or three lines for the scenic view around pot-shots-at-subculture-which-isn't-indie-rock lake

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:50 (twenty-three years ago)

i amended the title! add your own!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 15:58 (twenty-three years ago)

For the rest of us-- Americans, predominantly-- this EP makes widely available one of the best country songs released last year: Tortoise's remix of Yo La Tengo's "Autumn Sweater". It was the defining moment in the short-lived "Americana" craze, which, in the simplest terms, translated to a sort of brazen, almost rambunctious guitar-based music: drum kits tainted by barnyard production, boring courier-font layouts and you know... chaps, spurs, that shit.

― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:01 (twenty-three years ago)

haha!

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Andy I kiss you

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:03 (twenty-three years ago)

andy make sweet love to me in your giant raver pants

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:04 (twenty-three years ago)

I think a tendency has developed for people to see microhouse as just being softer, quainter, or dreamier than house -- that is, to put more emphasis on the fact that it's often more subdued than build-and-release house than on the fact that it contains all those textural shifts and ruptures. This is a bad thing; it also requires ignoring the artists that make a bigger deal of those ruptures, which is also a bad thing. But I get the feeling that's the impression Ott's working off of, which makes the comparison make slightly more sense. That "Weak Become Heroes" remix wouldn't sit so strangely on an MRI record or on Digital Disco: it's just that the resemblance between the two things -- as, umm, sorta mellow house -- don't really have that much to do with the defining characteristics of either. There are definitely points where they have something in common with one another, but eliding our ideas of microhouse and downtempo house doesn't seem fair to ~~micr~~ either.

(Somewhere, Matos is breaking things.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Eliding our definitions of those two things = Herbert.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:07 (twenty-three years ago)

somewhere Matos is mailing pipebombs I'd guess.

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I just sent him the entire Perlon catalog on CDR --> he is probably too busy waving glowstyx at the mo.

― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:22 (twenty-three years ago)

btw, andy i got yr cd-r over the weekend, thanx.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Haha -- it was only two yrs ago that you 'won' it.

― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:27 (twenty-three years ago)

I got yers too, Andy K! It was the Grand Shiznit.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 16:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Shit, does anyone know a good plumber? My toilet's all backed up. Might have something to do with me guiltily flushing my rave pants and glowsticks down it, now that the microhouse craze is over.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 17:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Also, what does "beats untainted by crystalline production" mean? Last I checked, crystalline production generally sounded pretty "untainted" to begin with. Does he mean that microhouse beats are really grimy? Going on dutty, going on stank?

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 17:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Your jokes are getting it backwards! Ott is bigging up microhouse for not involving big pants, a sentiment I'm sure opens itself up for enough picking-on without misinterpretation. (I actually had to read that sentence twice, cause I did the same thing -- "microhouse kids with pacifiers???" -- and then the other way around made more sense.) (For the record, tent-sized rave trousers in the US hit a peak that they never, to my knowledge, approached in the UK. I think it's because US-rave had that bunnysnake dancing thing, which I suppose is sort of visually enhanced by meter-diameter legs.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 17:47 (twenty-three years ago)

no, i'm picking on it for being bad writing nitsuh, a charge which still holds, especially for how convoluted that sentence reads.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 17:50 (twenty-three years ago)

andy's riposte pretty much nails everything i find wrong with it. anyway, why are you bothering to stick up for ott, a man who has slammed you as much as any of us on these boards?

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 17:56 (twenty-three years ago)

fellow traveler!!! ; )

― James Blount (James Blount), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 18:06 (twenty-three years ago)

that bunnysnake dancing thing

not sure if i've seen this yet ...

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 18:12 (twenty-three years ago)

God damn, dude, I'm not sticking up for him! I'm just saying, there were two jokes in there that seemed to be picking on him for the opposite of the good reason to pick on him. (Like the toilet one.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 18:13 (twenty-three years ago)

I mean, it seemed like the equivalent of going "Pitchfork sucks, they're so knee-jerk anti-indie" -- like no, no, you're supposed to be picking on the opposite. (And "microhouse is okay because there are no pacifiers" is surely a richer picking-on field than "microhouse involves pacifiers," which is too plain-wrong to allow for many good jokes.)

Bunnysnake dancing = the arms are the snake, the legs are the bunny. The US East-coast rave thing, you know the one.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 18:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Anyway I'm just jealous because Ott's gaffes get all the attention. :(

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 18:22 (twenty-three years ago)

grateful dead arm dance crossed with the bunny hop

i hear you, n, and i agree that contrasting micro-house - which is just a fad mind you! - with "rave" and assuming it is better because it is devoid of pungent cheesy extra-musical signifiers is lamer than confusing micro-house with rave.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 18:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Surely pacifiers and big pants are way more twee than the relative sobriety of microhouse? Ott doesn't even agree with himself, jeez.

― Clarke B. (stolenbus), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 19:54 (twenty-three years ago)

can we mock someones name now.

chris certainly dared to go over the top this time. he may have created a new brentmark.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 20:03 (twenty-three years ago)

OK OK nobody has noticed THIS:

the Fusion mix only made me remember how right DJ Shadow was: hip-hop really did suck in 1996.

I jock Entroducing so hard... but DO SHUT UP, SIR.

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:39 (twenty-three years ago)

(lest I clobber you in the face with a 180-gram double LP copy of Ironman)

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:40 (twenty-three years ago)

"...huge pants, that shit."

I wouldn't want to put on a pair of pants like that.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:43 (twenty-three years ago)

just when you think Ott can't get any stupider!

― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Trousers defecating of their own volition? Damn, way to be all Cremaster there.

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:49 (twenty-three years ago)

(I kiss nearly everyone on this thread, btw)

― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:49 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never thought that.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Skipping 14 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

stupidest thing written in 03: 'fusing standard crunk dystopia with hiphops unapologetic EARLIER DAYS'

― trife (simon_tr), Thursday, 17 July 2003 00:51 (twenty-three years ago)

get over it Ethan

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 17 July 2003 00:54 (twenty-three years ago)

matos do you remember when you still cared about stuff

― trife (simon_tr), Thursday, 17 July 2003 00:55 (twenty-three years ago)

do you mean all vocals or just microhouse vocals

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 17 July 2003 00:56 (twenty-three years ago)

microhouse vocals, they sound like theyre trying to be alt rock

― trife (simon_tr), Thursday, 17 July 2003 01:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Stuff that, what about the self-shitting pants??

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 17 July 2003 01:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Chris is like a smackdown-practice hobbey horse.

Trife: which microhouse vocals have you heard? Most of them don't sound like that at all and in fact the only one I can think of right now that does is that DNTEL/Superpitcher thing.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 17 July 2003 01:06 (twenty-three years ago)

haha yeah it was superpitcher!!! like i said ive heard very little

― trife (simon_tr), Thursday, 17 July 2003 01:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Trife that track is *so* the exception to the rule. I'd say the biggest factions of microhouse vocals are traditional dance music divas and guys operating in a Kraftwerk/Air vein of emasculated German cleanliness (which I like!).

Generally speaking, while microhouse has more vocals than techno it probably has less vocals than normal house.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 17 July 2003 01:52 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah josh put it on his tape, i shouldve known hed be feelin the indiest songs!!! i also heard akufen and schneider tm but we know the story with that shit, sadly ive yet to hear any with dance music divas : (

― trife (simon_tr), Thursday, 17 July 2003 02:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Trife one of these days I *will* make you a CD.

In the meantime you so obviously need to hear the second Luomo album.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 17 July 2003 02:18 (twenty-three years ago)

MATOS YOU WRITE LIKE A KITE

― donut bitch (donut), Thursday, 17 July 2003 02:45 (twenty-three years ago)

You mean he's FLY?

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Thursday, 17 July 2003 02:56 (twenty-three years ago)

no i remember when i thought every word i wrote was god's own truth and i was MISTAKEN

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 17 July 2003 03:26 (twenty-three years ago)

DB, I just have the brains of two cents

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 17 July 2003 03:28 (twenty-three years ago)

if you want to hear the way that microhouse is going in terms of vocals, check out matthew dear's and ricardo villalobos' forthcoming albums, which take really low, almost spoken vocals, and process the fuck out of them, but not typical vocoder-style... also perlon provides a pretty good reference point with that (pantytec?) tune that just says "pink" over and over.

and no, i don't think most of these producers consider themselves microhouse, nor should they necessarily. villalobos was particularly adamant that he was just making house music when i interviewed him a few years ago; last month herbert's manager berated me for using the term. like i've always said, for me it's a useful heuristic device, but hardly a hard-and-fast genre of its own.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Thursday, 17 July 2003 12:32 (twenty-three years ago)

The music is inevitably debased in the transfer to words, made worse by the fact that rock journalists are at the bottom of an already intellectually debased profession–most rockers are boring idiots.
Well, I suspect sports-writers are even more doomed than music writers. With rare exceptions, sports heroes give much much much worse interviews than rock/popstars. I swear the speeches given by sports heroes are all written by a very simple computer program, written in BASIC and not heavily randomized.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 17 July 2003 15:03 (twenty-three years ago)

i love love love the matthew dear track on the idol tryouts disc...

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Thursday, 17 July 2003 15:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Rework on playhouse has vocals all over it. Nakki ones, too.

― david day (winslow), Thursday, 17 July 2003 16:17 (twenty-three years ago)

New Villalobos CD, new Luciano 12"s, Perlon flying all over and off the meathookrackcross. Alpine Rocket has vocals on it. Lush and lovely. Anyone heard the "Trash Scape" remixes yet? Prolly off the cross, too. Mikrohaus uber alles.

― david day (winslow), Thursday, 17 July 2003 16:20 (twenty-three years ago)

i know a few people who mix microhouse but have never heard the term
(or claim not to have)
they call it deep techno
i got pissed off with both names and started calling it buftech

― robin (robin), Thursday, 17 July 2003 18:26 (twenty-three years ago)

i dunno dear is false right? i wasnt too impressed with his 12s

― Chip Morningstar (bob), Thursday, 17 July 2003 21:32 (twenty-three years ago)

oh yancey, you don't even know.... have you heard the newest stuff? the preview of his album is intense. and i'm loving the 12s on spectral - by far the best stuff ghostly has put out, with the exception of osborne's "bout ready to jack." dear's dear stuff blows his false tracks away.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Thursday, 17 July 2003 23:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Dear's one of my favorite producers right now. He keeps getting better and better. (The Jabberjaw 12" isn't too shabby either!)

― Andy K (Andy K), Friday, 18 July 2003 00:08 (twenty-three years ago)

yr killing me philip! i need to track this down...

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Friday, 18 July 2003 01:51 (twenty-three years ago)

jabberjaw is amazing! you should definitely check that one, yanc3.

― todd burns (toddburns), Friday, 18 July 2003 02:54 (twenty-three years ago)

every pitch fork article should be cross-poted to here (as Julio suggested)

an interesting editorial function in this new media might be to provide a pfork title as subject for a thread with blurb, critique, something as place holder.
new pieces titles would appear like the news on an auto-wire typewriter and trickle down the ilm and bob around if there if interest; an avenue for other opinion (and indicator of interest in the article -- "artificial intelligence" to provide editorial feedback, a letters column just a bit more so than it is now)
like RFIs, -- but how about auto RFIs ?
i have had to become used to more and more activity in most computer forums i've ever read or participated in (despite my own off-putting rants), so i'm used to thumbing through the typical dirth of threads because i'll usually find something (even if if think POV, POX, POx is an overworked contestant).
or is there a list-serve for p-fork that send a list of items each week (? sorry if there is) -- that would be handy.
but the idea of every article auto-generating discussion, reminder or just a one line thread subject on the new threads board -- it doesn't strike me as over-indulgent or spam-ish behaviour

(this is under my maybe mistaken assumption that there is some tech goodwill from p.f. to i.l.e. -- if so, it's hardly a big ask or a big chunk of computer screen content)

― george gosset (gegoss), Friday, 18 July 2003 03:20 (twenty-three years ago)

the other day i picked up a wicked microbox 12 on andy vaz's label, background, what else has that label done besides oliver hacke? i didnt much like vaz's own stuff. maybe it's time for a "microhouse the next generation" thread

― Chip Morningstar (bob), Friday, 18 July 2003 10:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Uhoh

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Friday, 18 July 2003 10:10 (twenty-three years ago)

that initial review is a thing of sublime beauty...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 18 July 2003 10:38 (twenty-three years ago)

My god...

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 18 July 2003 10:51 (twenty-three years ago)

"Second: for the sake of my inbox, let's dispense with the girl factor"

"Dying in Stereo is about as empowering as Legally Blonde 2."

Because they are women DO YOU SEE???

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 18 July 2003 10:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I mean, wtf next? "Get Rich Or Die Trying is about as empowering as Brown Sugar"?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 18 July 2003 10:53 (twenty-three years ago)

the northern state one isn't stupid so much as crassly ignorant of gender issues.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 18 July 2003 12:30 (twenty-three years ago)

i don't know why we even bother pretending to be aghast at pitchfuck reviews... it's all deeply regrettable pseudo-intellectul posturing that manages to be unseemly, snide and waaaaaaay wide of the mark at every turn. jess had the best idea by posting a *good* pf review as something to really take notice of...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 18 July 2003 12:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Holy shit, it finally happened. Took us long enough, but here it is: welcome to hip-hop as a vessel for smug, middlebrow liberal condescension.

ha ha has this guy ever noticed, like, 99% of the other hip-hop pitchfork covers?!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 18 July 2003 14:31 (twenty-three years ago)

what, necro?

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 18 July 2003 14:38 (twenty-three years ago)

But Mr. Lif is black, Jess. D'ya see?

― rumpernickle (nabisco), Friday, 18 July 2003 14:38 (twenty-three years ago)

smug, middlebrow, liberal condescension = p diddy - "d.i.d.d.y."

― jess (dubplatestyle), Friday, 18 July 2003 14:41 (twenty-three years ago)

and never mind the hip hop pfuck covers, have they never read their own reviews, jess!?

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Friday, 18 July 2003 14:42 (twenty-three years ago)

fuck, Jess beat me to it. I was going to say "Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy to thread!"

also Mr. Lif is grate

― M Matos (M Matos), Friday, 18 July 2003 16:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Mr. Lif is indeed often pretty great, but content-wise I'm not sure there are gigantic differences in the quality of his rhetoric versus that of Northern State. (This needn't be a bad thing, either.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 18 July 2003 17:58 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't make my writing into a heart!

― Chris O. (Nicole), Friday, 18 July 2003 18:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Nicole, I'd ask you to marry me if bigamy weren't a crime.

― RickyT (RickyT), Friday, 18 July 2003 22:45 (twenty-three years ago)

bigamy's a crime?!!!

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 19 July 2003 01:08 (twenty-three years ago)

blount's whole family = criminals

― jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 19 July 2003 01:58 (twenty-three years ago)

blount's whole family = playas

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 19 July 2003 02:57 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Lif is a far, far, far better rhymer than N.S. are. I like N.S. fine, though--the voices and the delivery, mostly, which get the rhymes across even when they're pretty chumpy. too bad Dying in Stereo doesn't have the best song on the EP, though (that would be "Rewind").

― M Matos (M Matos), Saturday, 19 July 2003 03:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, definitely on the rhyme level -- I'm thinking of the sort of socio-political content. I.e., in both cases it seems fairly straight-ahead and obvious, the sort of thing a certain type of listener is bound to probably agree with in general terms -- not liking Bush, being skeptical of government policy or corporate power, etc. -- but not in a way that's too dedicated to getting past that into anything too much deeper. (Which is fine; I'm actually trying to rid myself of the habit of tearing down anyone who says stuff adjacent to what I think just because I think they're saying it over-simply.) Northern State have the added range of culture-humor, Lif has the added range of occasionally straying off the usual text with this stuff. But if you're the sort of leftist who can't stand to hear leftish ideas presented in vague easy-to-swallow terms, I imagine you could have the same problem with both acts. (The best thing about Lif is that he always sounds like he should have a podium in front of him, and in the opposite of the Chuck D kind of way -- it's a podium in a college course too small for the lecturer to possibly use a podium without seeming sort of funny. He sounds like he's about to pick someone from the back of the audience and ask them a question about what he just said.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Saturday, 19 July 2003 07:50 (twenty-three years ago)

"You're caught inside a homicidal groove / where only the idle lose / for violating one of life's most vital rules / Miss Wisnewski, do you want to tell us what that rule is?"

― nabisco (nabisco), Saturday, 19 July 2003 07:52 (twenty-three years ago)

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