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Alog’s “Et Besok”, from their new album Unemployed. Reviewed their new record today for Pitchfork. Their music has brought a lot of joy into my life.
Mark Richardson
I'm the editor-in-chief of Pitchfork and I wrote Zaireeka, a book about the Flaming Lips album.
Resonant Frequency | Reviews | Highlight Reel | invisible music | twitter | email | "Ask"
Resonant Frequency | Reviews | Highlight Reel | invisible music | twitter | email | "Ask"
Our new video series “Pitchfork Classic” kicks off with a 45-minute documentary on the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin featuring brand new interviews with the band.
I did the Oklahoma City interviews w/ the Flaming Lips for this documentary, very proud of how it turned out, RJ Bentler and the rest of Pitchfork.tv did a terrific job.
Columns I wrote this year:
Music and Dreams
Linda Perhacs, Death, Bobb Trimble, Robert Lester Folsom, and the enduring allure of the seldom-heard cult record. Here I tried to get at why we’re so drawn to obscure artists and how their backstory can affect the way we hear them.
Nine Short Pieces on the Smiths
This year a fantastic bootleg of unreleased Smiths material circulated, and I took that as an opportunity to write about one of my favorite bands.
Some Kind of Trip
Explored one of my favorite subjects: the emotional appeal of sound as sound. More generally, discussed sound quality, David Mancuso, Bill Callahan, Klipsch speakers.
Watch the Sound
Along with another column, below, my favorite thing I wrote in 2011. I talked about rap, fear, agression, and why I can be drawn to music that expresses feelings very different from who I imagine myself to be.
Marked
My “10th Anniversary Column,” more or less. I talked about what got me interested in writing Resonant Frequency in the first place, and tied that in w/ a word about EMA’s “Marked”.
Disintegration Loops and Simplesongs
I wrote this about music and 9/11 and the difficulty of making art about something horrifying.
Taking Pictures of Taking Pictures
Along with “Watch the Sound”, my favorite piece from 2011. I wrote about Lana Del Rey, David Lynch, Dirty Beaches, and the idea of music-making as re-blog. By some margin the most popular column I’ve ever written in 10 years of doing this. That’s what a piece about Lana Del Rey gets you!
I wrote about my favorite album of the year, EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints, as part of Pitchfork’s list of our top 50 albums.
The lists are always fun to put together. I was telling people that assigning these blurbs is my favorite work-related task of the year. I feel like a baseball manager filling out the line-up card for the last game of the World Series. It’s exciting for me to imagine what writers will come up with. Very happy with how everything turned out.
The EMA album felt like a friend to me this year. It’s been a while since I had such an intense emotional connection to a record. I don’t follow many people on Tumblr, but it was interesting to see that a number of the people I do follow also have a deep connection to Past Life. I enjoyed seeing writing from my Tumblr gang about this record this year, even though most of them probably don’t know they are in my Tumblr gang.
There weren’t many, but here’s what I did for Pitchfork this year:
Tennis: Cape Dory
In which I demonstrate that I have room to improve when writing about records that aren’t very good.
Destroyer: Kaputt
I think I belabored the connection to Death of a Ladies Man but felt OK about this otherwise.
Julianna Barwick: The Magic Place
I wrote this on an airplane and just before boarding sent my first-ever Tweet.
Harald Grosskopf: Synthesist
I remember enjoying writing this—I was in my living room and listening to the vinyl and flipping it over every 20 minutes provided a nice rhythm.
Colin Stetson: New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
I used Freedom to write this and I feel like I wrote the first draft in about 50 minutes. Maybe it shows. I had been doing a lot of thinking about the record beforehand though.
Bibio: Mind Bokeh
Remember writing this while laying on my back on my couch. Could have been better.
Cold Cave: Cherish the Light Years
This I wrote in a couple hours in bed before work.
Grouper A I A : Alien Observer / A I A : Dream Loss
The best thing about writing this review was having the full Grouper catalog on my iPod for a couple of weeks.
Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
One of the better reviews I wrote this year I think even though the record was nothing special. Had a lot of thoughts on the Beastie Boys rattling around.
Mark McGuire A Young Person’s Guide to Mark McGuire
Another one I wrote in bed after getting up early before work. Love this record.
Woods Sun and Shade
An underrated band and I wish I’d written something better about them.
Bon Iver Bon Iver
This was a big one. I wrote part of it on a plane and part of in a hotel when I was in New York for a week. I realized afterwards that Bon Iver is more divisive than I had initially realized. This record means a lot to me.
How to Dress Well Just Once EP
What I most remember from this is listening to “Decisions” while waiting for a plane at La Guardia. I tweeted something about that too and now I feel like an idiot for doing so.
Balam Acab Wander / Wonder
Another one I wrote using Freedom, first draft in less than an hour. I’m usually slow so for me this is a big deal. LP is better than you probably think.
Winter Family Red Sugar
I’ve never been very interested in “turning people on to cool things they haven’t heard” but I sort of tried with this LP this year. Winter Family is important to me but probably 200 people in the world care who they are. If you want to be into something good that no one you know has ever heard of, you could do much worse.
Girls Father, Son, Holy Ghost
Like Bon Iver, I love this record but a lot of my peers don’t hear it like I do. I wrote a chunk of this on a plane. Reading negative reaction to this album and my review, I had this idea that if I had only been a better writer everyone would understand. A good motivator, I think.
Youth Lagoon The Year of Hibernation
I went in early, about 6:30 am, and wrote this before work. Feel like I got about 80% there which for me isn’t bad.
Julianna Barwick The Matrimony Remixes EP
A weak and pointless release with a review to match.
The Beach Boys The Smile Sessions
Wrote most of this on a plane. It was big and intimidating but also enjoyable and ultimately I was happy with how it turned out.
Oneohtrix Point Never Replica
Tremendous fun to write this. Not sure if I did it justice but had a blast trying.
Ursula Bogner Sonne = Blackbox
One of those records that I probably like more than anyone else in the world does and I like writing about records like that.
New Resonant Frequency up today. I wrote about Dirty Beaches, Retromania, David Lynch, Lana Del Rey, and music-making as re-blog. If you follow me here you may have seen me talk about a few of these things in 2011.
This song is fantastic, give it a spin.
New column up today — first one in a few months and first one with this new image (what can I say, I like plants.) It’s about 9/11 and music and the difficulty of art that makes use of recent tragedy and it also has a bit about the avatar I use in most places online.
Inspired by Maura. I submitted this to Pitchfork. Not sure I would stand by all of them! But a lot of records here I still play often.
- Mouse on Mars - Idiology
- Fennesz - Endless Summer
- Jan Jelinek - Loop-finding-jazz-records
- Nobukazu Takemura - Hoshi No Koe
- Herbert - Bodily Functions
- Dismemberment Plan - Change
- Daft Punk - Discovery
- Mum - Yesterday was Dramatic, Today was Okay
- Matmos - A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure
- Susumu Yokoto - Grinning Cat
- Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
- The Avalanches - Since I Left You
- Bogdan Raczinski - My Love I Love
- Labradford - fixed:content
- Vert - Nine Types of Ambiguity
- Basement Jaxx - Rooty
- Prefuse 73 - Vocal Studies & Uprock Narratives
- Beta Band - Hot Shots II
- Sunroof! - Bliss
- Flanger - Outer Space/ Inner Space
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