False Alephs

The other day, I re-read Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Aleph’. It was a timely reminder that the notional every place is just that, a notion. When it comes to fiction, one of the most important elements can be desire—it makes characters seem autonomous. This led me to considering what makes the Aleph attractive in Borges’ fiction.

The letter Aleph, of the Hebrew alphabet. It is not pronounced as part of words.

Review: Cold Cave--Cherish the Light Years

This is quite an old piece, a year or more old. It was written at a time when I was really trying to translate the feeling of listening to music and craft my informational writing to cram in a lot of detail. At the moment I’m trying to write shorter paragraphs to break things open better. Note, as I have written elsewhere that I failed to pick up on the over compression that was found by Pitchfork. With that said, listening again I still enjoy the music.

My Bloody Valentine: Review of Critical Coverage and the Issue of Product Errors

Fans of My Bloody Valentine should read this blog post before buying the recently released remaster of Loveless.

While of course many CDs have already sold, buyers have the right to know that there are major errors in this release that have now been identified. The two critical problems are widely reported mislabelling of the CDs (as they each represent different tapes of exactly the same sessions and music it's almost farcical) and a clearly identifiable digital transfer glitch sound on one of the versions of 'What You Want.'

It was Analog Loyalist's blog that made the comprehensive case with good analysis, so all credit to him for breaking the story. Here is the litany of woes:

details: My Bloody Valentine Loveless 2012 remasters - manufacturing errors

Pursuant to my other post on critics: notice that no critics until this blog have identified that the CDs were mislabelled, or found this glitch, or indeed attempted to figure out which of the tracks Kevin Shields had digitally limited as alluded to in his interview with Pitchfork.

Pitchfork in their review have now pointed to Analog Loyalist's blog. I have to take issue with some elements of Mark Richardson's review. As lovely as the prose and the history lesson are, I genuinely feel that today's music writers are doing their readers a disservice by not properly holding record labels to account over the quality of remasters they release. Reissuing old material with a new master is often more profitable than releasing new material, and yet the business aspect is hardly ever mentioned. This is at the expense of fans who are seemingly told by a unanimous chorus of voices that the reissue heralds a bold new opportunity to really appraise the artist. Based upon the real level of difference that a remaster brings this is often false.

More after the jump.

Critics and Technical Illiteracy

One compelling reason I've found to try and come up with a method of music writing that aspires to reportage is that it represents an attempt to eschew technical illiteracy that can bedevil critical writing. Critics with technical issues and a book recommendation after the jump.