Under monop­oly all mass cul­ture is iden­ti­cal, and the lines of its arti­fi­cial frame­work begin to show through. The peo­ple at the top are no longer so inter­est­ed in con­ceal­ing monop­oly: as its vio­lence becomes more open, so its pow­er grows. Movies and radio need no longer pre­tend to be art. The truth that they are just busi­ness is made into an ide­ol­o­gy in order to jus­ti­fy the rub­bish they delib­er­ate­ly produce.

T. Adorno, from “The Cul­ture Indus­try: Enlight­en­ment as Mass Deception”

A dis­qui­si­tion on how a busi­ness mod­el that once made beau­ti­ful music became a col­lec­tive of data aggre­ga­tors that formed crit­i­cal mass and shaped taste. Or, how skep­ti­cism met “poptimism”…and lost, foment­ing inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing blitzkrieg that results in cul­tur­al amne­sia. As the indus­try strug­gles to remain prof­itable, the recon­sti­tu­tion of val­ue and expec­ta­tions is cru­cial to survival.

Also, how the use of tau­to­log­i­cal mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ences such as SXSW sup­plants any need for A & R, yet main­tains the busi­ness-suit­ed trap­pings of cul­tur­al inter­me­di­aries, while some­how wear­ing a straight-face to talk, Dea­ni­ac-style, about the cur­rent state of the net­roots [via Riff Mar­ket]. Love­ly mys­ti­fi­ca­tions aside: mis­sion accom­plished? [Viz., I half-agree, if imput­ed puri­ty were, say, “tawdry” with cash and prizes.]

In short, you are not only the quar­ry, but also the street team, which was the quar­ry in the first place. This time it’s Thorstein Veblen ver­sus T. Adorno in a streetfight!

[This isn’t meant as a judge­ment on the state of pop music itself, rock­ism, etc. — although that may come into ques­tion — more impor­tant­ly, it’s an attempt to refine a dat­ed argu­ment to suit the needs of a more sophis­ti­cat­ed, and often cyn­i­cal, process.]

Required read­ing: Chris Dahlen’s “Bet­ter Than We Know Our­selves”

Down­load: Liars — “Drum Gets a Glimpse”

Red Desert. June 25th @ BAM. It does­n’t even get men­tioned. Anto­nion­i’s first col­or fea­ture is an out of print tri­umph not to be missed. Sick with the ennui that per­me­ates his films, with mis-en-scene to match.

Down­load: Bat­tered — “Obliv­ion Awaits”

Can of worms: opened. Artmetal.html says it all, but then there’s an argu­ment pre­sent­ed in the sev­en ensu­ing pages meant to edi­fy an unfa­mil­iar audi­ence with “intel­li­gent” met­al. It’s a vari­ant of the high/low cul­ture debate, usu­al­ly reserved for sun­der­ing HipHop, or from a “pop­ulist” per­spec­tive, mod­ern art, but applic­a­ble to all kinds of dis­en­fran­chised or out­sider scenes that aren’t com­mer­cial­ly grat­i­fy­ing. The arti­cle imparts a self-sat­is­fied supe­ri­or­i­ty to read­er and musi­cian alike, at once obscur­ing South­ern Lord’s bou­tique nov­el­ty as well as the met­al scene from which they sprang.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Notes on Excepter, Edan, Prefuse 73 and The Coup, Boris and Espers forth­com­ing, as well as com­men­tary on the recent New York Times Mag­a­zine fea­ture on Sunn and Boris.

In re Wray’s arti­cle, see Mike Pow­ell’s thoughts here and George Steele’s there first. Sunn as mys­tique or pas­tiche, char­la­tan or reifi­ca­tion? Whith­er drone?

More reg­u­lar pub­li­ca­tion forth­with. Promise.

As nation­al­is­tic fer­vor gets whipped up in back­wa­ters across the coun­try, we’ve seen the return of the “jobs that Amer­i­cans won’t do” trope. Not only is this patent­ly false, as there are plen­ty of cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly work­ing ter­ri­ble, dis­gust­ing jobs every­where, but it relies on a false sense of how labor mar­kets are actu­al­ly constructed.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →