Pitchfork Review OverSteps

just lol at the whole idea of 1-10 scoring.

OMG I GOT DA HIGHEST SCORZ ON TEH INTERWEB!!

and it's always like Radiohead 9.9

bach 6.3

They paint themselves in a corner with their animal collective scores

ah, they're well-intentioned. and they like some good music. they just happen to be a massive bunch of fags on the most part.

the day i decided this was the day i read this eternal golden facepalm of a review.

  On 3/23/2010 at 3:11 AM, kaini said:

ah, they're well-intentioned. and they like some good music. they just happen to be a massive bunch of fags on the most part.

the day i decided this was the day i read this eternal golden facepalm of a review.

I think far more apologies, and perhaps a first born, are owed to Douglas Hofstadter for that fucking gem.

  On 3/23/2010 at 3:11 AM, kaini said:

ah, they're well-intentioned. and they like some good music. they just happen to be a massive bunch of fags on the most part.

the day i decided this was the day i read this eternal golden facepalm of a review.

"Achilles: You sound like a critic."

I fooking love that review. ^_^

haha yeah dominique leone was so terrible. Mark Richardson is the only good reviewer on that site, I think he was actually pretty spot on with his quaristice review. although his use of metaphor is a bit difficult to relate to. I guess I'm just happy when the review isn't actively bad. that oversteps one is actually pretty bad even for pitchfork, four paragraphs. it's like they're not even pretending they're not saying anything.

I think the most baffling thing ever was on the onion av club tho. their review of draft

http://www.avclub.com/articles/autechre-draft-730,12018/

that onion one (draft) is pretty decent.

an album that applies Confield's ideas to less embarrassingly stunted ends.

that's funny

sorry if this is a dead horse (or even of interest?), but the dusted review read a little better than the pitchfork fluff

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/5577

kinda got a sense of a more realistic disappoinment (if a hasty dismissal) out of it.

  On 3/22/2010 at 10:00 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

they rated it lower than quaristice? that's just silly

No, it isn't. Think about it.

That Pitchfork review of Oversteps isn't really cringey or a failed attempt at being clever or anything - it's just limp and rubbish and lazy. I mean look at the ending, for crying out loud:

Focusing on creating tension and release within their compositions, they're still incorporating new designs, not merely repackaging the previous products.

There's nothing insightful in that review.

But I don't mind the idea of Pitchfork getting a bit up their own arses. I'd rather that than NME level down the pub music journalism, or the level of insight displayed in that Oversteps review. It does sometimes hit awfully annoying heights, but at least there are lines or metaphors here and there that make you stop. I think hating on them is a bit boring now, isn't it? Mind you, I've only read like four reviews on their site.

i don't mind negative reviews as long as it's clear the reviewer knows what is going on and is descriptive and constructive in their criticism.. lets you know where they are coming from, what they are hearing, personal taste...

now pitchfork. i haven't read pitchfork since they openly insulted and dissed artists they didn't like in their reviews, which would have been like about 4-5 years ago. i just find their reviews frequently sophomoric and pretentious (they're in love with their own prose) in a vain attempt to make up for a lack of musical awareness or effort, and in the end lacking descriptiveness or anything constructive, generally useless. it's a site for 25-30 y/o's who have gone as far conceptually with music as they're going to go, which is nothing above PG-13 please

Well... at least they aren't like Robert Christgau's "reviews". If you wanna talk about pathetic/shitty reviews talk about him.

Here's the Onion A.V. Club on Oversteps: http://www.avclub.com/articles/autechre-oversteps,39424/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=channel_music

  Quote

Oversteps

 

C+

by Christian Williams March 23, 2010

 

 

If you ran a find/replace on Autechre’s polarizing IDM entry Confield, swapping out its skittering, paranoid beats for crystalline stabs of melody, you’d end up with something like the new Oversteps. The Sheffield duo can still leave listeners feeling alienated and alone amid washes of unplaceable sound—and song titles like “known(1)” and “d-sho qub” look more than ever like system files best left undisturbed—but comforting shreds of humanity occasionally reveal themselves in a bit of throbbing drone here, or a primal gurgle there. Like 2008’s Quaristice, the album opens innocuously enough, with ambient squiggles heralding the approach of a busted wind-up toy, but Autechre is at its best when textured, room-filling sound cloaks the more sinister synths hiding in its folds, as during the gloomy tinkle of “see on see,” or the Sierra adventure-game chimes of “krYlon.”

 

Unfortunately, a track like “os veix3,” with its blips, aerosol blasts, and digitized fire, evokes early-’00s Múm without the charm, and Autechre’s mid-’90s heyday without the menace. That said, coherence has never been Ae’s strong suit: The songs are usually too singular to fit together in any immediately recognizable way. Instead, structure and emotional resonance emerge slowly from a mix of disparate sounds, providing a soundtrack capable of transforming the mundane into the alarming, then the consoling, and back again.

  On 3/23/2010 at 1:56 AM, Alcofribas said:

it's always like Radiohead 9.9

 

bach 6.3

lol

i find that onion review funny. it sounds like the album made him uncomfortable. 'paranoid beats, system files best left undisturbed..' perhaps it's the local medical cannabis making him paranoid not the beats.. (it's potent stuff!)

actually bothered to read the pitchfork review, first time i've read pitchfork in ages.. comparatively not bad, although it says a lot about the reviewer's musical awareness/ears that he thinks oversteps tracks lack 'meter'.

i actually want to kill that guy who did untilted. like, kill him in real life.

i'm not joking.

Simmer down now.

I just get the feeling that there is absolutely nothing that qualifies pitchforkers to write reviews.

typcally, they're either embarrassingly sycophantic and fanboyish or, as in the case of the oversteps review, they seem simple-minded and uninvolved.

it just seems amateurish. at least with boomkat you get the sense that those guys know their stuff and love the music, even though it's like every album is "highly recommended. essential purchase."

  On 3/23/2010 at 6:04 PM, encey said:

Simmm down now.

  On 3/23/2010 at 1:42 AM, oscillik said:

  On 3/23/2010 at 1:34 AM, MAXIMUS MISCHIEF said:

i swear they just throw darts at a board and thats how they come up with their scores.

 

that's the thing though - i'm pretty sure they don't do that. i'm pretty sure that they actually believe, with conviction, that the score is a direct correlation to what their hive mind think about the music.

I interned at their video site, pitchfork.tv, and basically they give good reviews based on the idea (especially if its a debut album or something) of making them a "pitchfork" band... they are basically like a label in the sense that they filter content based on trends and then every year they make a shit ton of money asking these "pitchfork bands" to come to their "pitchfork festival" ... their reviews are meaningless

  On 3/23/2010 at 11:08 PM, karmakramer said:

  On 3/23/2010 at 1:42 AM, oscillik said:

  On 3/23/2010 at 1:34 AM, MAXIMUS MISCHIEF said:

i swear they just throw darts at a board and thats how they come up with their scores.

 

that's the thing though - i'm pretty sure they don't do that. i'm pretty sure that they actually believe, with conviction, that the score is a direct correlation to what their hive mind think about the music.

 

I interned at their video site, pitchfork.tv, and basically they give good reviews based on the idea (especially if its a debut album or something) of making them a "pitchfork" band... they are basically like a label in the sense that they filter content based on trends and then every year they make a shit ton of money asking these "pitchfork bands" to come to their "pitchfork festival" ... their reviews are meaningless

wow.

just.

wow.

for pitchfork

  On 3/22/2010 at 5:57 PM, JohnTqs said:

http://pitchfork.com/features/guest-lists/6044-david-cross-albums-to-listen-to-while-reading-overwrought-pitchfork-reviews/

  On 3/22/2010 at 6:05 PM, theSun said:

wow david cross using ae in his article? does he mean untilted?

 

also, i love david cross.

I thought it was common knowledge that Asymmetrical Head was David Cross.

  On 3/23/2010 at 11:32 PM, Enter a new display name said:

  On 3/22/2010 at 5:57 PM, JohnTqs said:

http://pitchfork.com/features/guest-lists/6044-david-cross-albums-to-listen-to-while-reading-overwrought-pitchfork-reviews/

 

 

  On 3/22/2010 at 6:05 PM, theSun said:

wow david cross using ae in his article? does he mean untilted?

 

also, i love david cross.

I thought it was common knowledge that Asymmetrical Head was David Cross.

lol

  On 3/23/2010 at 11:08 PM, karmakramer said:

I interned at their video site, pitchfork.tv, and basically they give good reviews based on the idea (especially if its a debut album or something) of making them a "pitchfork" band... they are basically like a label in the sense that they filter content based on trends and then every year they make a shit ton of money asking these "pitchfork bands" to come to their "pitchfork festival" ... their reviews are meaningless

well that explains why they penalize just about anything that is the slightest bit adventurous, off the wall or risk-taking

so they take a page from the major industry then.. let's throw a giant gala to advertise our artists every year under the guise of an awards ceremony

  On 3/24/2010 at 1:22 AM, TwiddleBot said:

  On 3/23/2010 at 11:08 PM, karmakramer said:

I interned at their video site, pitchfork.tv, and basically they give good reviews based on the idea (especially if its a debut album or something) of making them a "pitchfork" band... they are basically like a label in the sense that they filter content based on trends and then every year they make a shit ton of money asking these "pitchfork bands" to come to their "pitchfork festival" ... their reviews are meaningless

 

well that explains why they penalize just about anything that is the slightest bit adventurous, off the wall or risk-taking

 

so they take a page from the major industry then.. let's throw a giant gala to advertise our artists every year under the guise of an awards ceremony

now that they get about 500,000 hits a day, all they need to do is keep appeasing their crowd.... once their crowd starts to find their recommendations unsettling or challenging, they will lose readers