Mark Richardson

I'm the editor-in-chief of Pitchfork and I wrote Zaireeka, a book about the Flaming Lips album.

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You have written a whole book on Zaireeka. But P4K thinks it's a 0.0! How come?

Well, we are different writers with different ideas. Bear in mind that Zaireeka was reviewed on Pitchfork in 1998, during the very early days of the site. Jason Josephs basically felt that the record didn’t work because he couldn’t listen to it and he wasn’t interested enough in the 4-CD idea to figure out how to make it happen. Back then, when the site was much more loose, that was an acceptable response. It was (and is) also a fairly common one.

So even though I found that 0.0 upsetting at the time because I was instantly fascinated by the record, I came to understand it. If one of the requirements of successful albums is that they are playable on standard equipment, then Zaireeka clearly fails.

Jason was also often a very funny writer on Pitchfork, and when you are funny, you can get away with a lot.

Posted at 10:17pm and tagged with: flaming lips, zaireeka,.

  1. markrichardson posted this

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