do you get enough time to review albums?

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well?

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 09:16 (twenty years ago)

No.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 09:31 (twenty years ago)

I mean, I could make more time, spend less time playing football or walking or seeing my girlfriend or just sitting on my ass playing Pro Evo 4 with Classic Brazil while actually enjoying listening to music, but fuck that.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 09:32 (twenty years ago)

how's HP going Kilian?

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 11:36 (twenty years ago)

i'm not getting enough time to review albums

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 12:38 (twenty years ago)

and they make me say nice things about irish artists, which i don't mean most of the time

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 12:54 (twenty years ago)

oh they'll do that alright! just wait till the rough edits etc, it must be even weirder being in the office, I was just freelance, really burnt my bridges there, for better or worse!

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 12:58 (twenty years ago)

Thankfully, ye olde journal of record publishes not but twice-yearly so I have many times avaliable to obtain the latest grammaphone record, listen on the grammaphone, and scribe a thought-provoking and clear review of the latest music hall etchings.

― Esteban P. Buttez Esq., Tuesday, 12 July 2005 13:13 (twenty years ago)

The question is, do I get enough time to do my other work? With ILM always within easy access and the discussions contained therein, it's a wonder I concentrate on other shit.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 13:26 (twenty years ago)

being in the office usually involves having our 900 year old leather-trousered editor bounding up to with an Irish album to review and saying he wants you to "approach it from a positive perspective" (translation = "pretend its good")

they've said i'll be staying on as a contributor and maybe doing a few office days as well so its aight by me.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 13:35 (twenty years ago)

ask to review the new primordial album. i love it. and reviewed it, actually. can't remember if i had enough time.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 13:39 (twenty years ago)

one of the guys from primordial used to play football with us in the park, he was alot older.

that sucks kilian but I guess if you stay on and play your cards right there are definitely good opportunities there.

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 14:26 (twenty years ago)

i just googled primordial, and they don't look weasel-friendly at all, sorry scott. like their album covers, though.

the thing i've found amazing is the space of time they expect you to have a fully-formed review in. They'd give me 2 cd's and ask for a review for the next day. did you find the same, ronan? i know it didn't take me long to conclude that the jamiroquai album was smelly, but still...

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 15:48 (twenty years ago)

I know what you mean, weasel. It's easy to come up with an opinion, but constructing something thought-provoking and interesting that people will enjoy reading takes a little longer than that...

― Magnakai (Magnakai), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 15:52 (twenty years ago)

Generally, sure. Except when it’s a big-ass deal, major-label, super-secret “we can’t send you a promo until day of release” type record. In which case someone else will get to write the review because they got the damned thing first and my editor couldn’t wait.

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 19:04 (twenty years ago)

(which is why I’m thankful for the existence of outlets that don’t demand that reviews run in exact accordance w/ release dates)

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 19:07 (twenty years ago)

See this is why I can't imagine being a critic. First of all, it can take me weeks to figure out if I like something ... then I might change my mind a year later ... we might just be able to pass judgement on Buddy Holly now.

― Lukas (lukas), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 19:25 (twenty years ago)

No reason to think of reviews as etched in stone (unless you're Xgau).

― Mark (MarkR), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 19:26 (twenty years ago)

I stopped reviewing albums because I wasn't taking the time. Even with the approaching deadline, I would find myself distracted by pretty shapes and glitter. After the sixth or seventh shitty tossed-together review, I figured I wasn't being fair to the readers or the bands. I still like the pretty shapes though. Especially triangles.

― BanjoMania (Brilhante), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

― Rob Uptight (Rob Uptight), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 22:25 (twenty years ago)

"i just googled primordial, and they don't look weasel-friendly at all, sorry scott. like their album covers, though."

that's okay. they aren't for everyone. it isn't every day that i get to review an Irish metal album though. Let alone a great one!

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 12 July 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

Primodial are good fun. Bitter and despairing misanthropic Irish with a dash of romantic melodrama kinda fun.

― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 02:57 (twenty years ago)

yeah Kilian they did do that, sometimes, I am fairly sure once I had to have the review done the same day I got the record from DHL, it's kind of annoying but they never gave a shit because they just palmed off every hiphop release on me, although they did of course give a shit if you included any kind of humour or spark in the writing.

it was seriously weird, I remember getting very bad feedback about what I felt were the two best reviews I wrote for them, one average Usher review and a disappointed summary of Fly or Die, I swear the only reason they went down badly was that they had a bit of attitude and were actually funny! In the Usher review I said "Just like in real life, only the fleeting sexual perversions liven things up", I mean come on I think that's my favourite line of any review I've ever done and it's not as though I didn't actually review the record aswell!

that mag really festers from the top down. are they giving you all hiphop reviews? they never had anyone for those. it still pisses me off how it never worked out for me despite me giving 110 percent with every assignment I got and turning out some really good features when eventually given the chance, but I suppose it was always square peg round hole and the opportunities to give big space to anything electronic or non rock were few and far between.

Think Dizzee Rascal was enough of an auteur or from a deprived enough social group to warrant one of my suggestions finally being listened to but everything else was just treated like a waste of time.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 08:37 (twenty years ago)

My editor just told me that after listening to an album once, you should be able to write a review in ten minutes, fifteen max.

GET ME OUT OF THIS LOCAL FUCKING RAG HELL.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 08:51 (twenty years ago)

I think you do get alot better at writing reviews quickly but yeah to assume it's the best way is a bit stupid, I think it still takes at the very least an hour to make a piece of writing hold water.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 08:52 (twenty years ago)

What makes it even worse that he's prepared to give me all morning to write a story on how the Leeds Rhinos have now got an entrance tune.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 08:56 (twenty years ago)

This is why journalism is not for me.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 09:03 (twenty years ago)

yeah ronan, i think any irreverent humour is seriously frowned upon. i began my jamiroquai review by saying "there are few musicians - or people even - who can provoke feelings of distaste in their fellow human beings as consistently as jay kay". i looked across at the sub-editor beside me a few hours later, and he'd drawn a big x through the opening paragraph and written "kill" beside it.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 11:00 (twenty years ago)

(I agree about local rag hell... Try having to deal with either loving every local release or not getting paid for the review...)

― js (honestengine), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 15:45 (twenty years ago)

Writing about music is fairly easy for me, or was. The reason I stopped was that I got tired of having to slog through shitty promos all the time. The rewards of music writing do not outweigh the costs, in my opinion. What I have to say about an album isn't worth the labor power expended. And my writing was generally for websites and small zines, so I was expected to write reviews for pretty much anything I recieved. Bleh on that. Currently I'm doing a film review blog (only like 15 reviews so far), which I haven't been able to work on lately because of a recent move from Vegas to Seattle. Film writing is a lot tougher, but the result is more satisfying to me. With film you can talk about content more, since there's more of it in the medium- blabbering about form and composition gets old quick, but content and subtext never get tiring to me.

Writing for your own thing is also nice since it allows you to pick and choose what you see or listen to. If I were to ever review music again it would be on my terms. Well, unless there was substantial pay involved.

― James Slone (Freon Trotsky), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

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